design shortcut?

Flowers in the air ... do you smell flowers when you visit our website?

When some of my students asked me to comment on their interface design projects, I was tempted to illustrate what design is.

I did, but only days later with the completed design shown in Figure 1. However, I will not claim that this is my design as it is not mine at all. Mind you! I only did it in less than 2 hours, and I am not a designer.

FIGURE 1: My first attempt to design a website for flowerSmell.com - a fictitious B2C company selling freshest possible flowers every day, every weeks, every months, and every years.

Why attempt to design if you are not a designer? My purpose is simple enough: I want to illustrate to my students that design is easy but creative design is not.

If you happen to have visited this gabor website sometimes back (Figure 2), you will have noticed the resemblance of the gabor's and my design.

FIGURE 2: Gabor website; the origianl design.

That's right. The layout is the same. I did my research. And my first design attempt "steals" the design layout of gabor's.

Surely it is not right, ethically and professionally. My point is, everyone can do design if the person does his/her homework, keep experimenting with layout and colour combination. I have made my point.

When I said my design is not design, what I am trying to say is, design is more than producing the end product, design is about creativity, originality, and innovation.

More importantly, it is a thing that you can proudly shout,"it's mine!" My design lacks all of these elements - it is a copy.

I have, nonetheless, had applied sound design principles (see below); layout is evidence, and colour scheme is reasonable.

Good design does not give people a feeling of unboundedness, that is to say, you will not likely feel messiness and chaotic. I am not suggesting, however, that we have to always use lines to build the frame. In fact, good design may not necessary needs the boundary lines.

Creative design is loose, wild, and yet it gives a feeling of closure. It takes lots of practice and time to reach that stage; we will need to do research, experiment, and keep trying to get it done right.

In case you do not get it, I am not promoting copy design, in fact, I am against it - it is not professional and not ethical.

I am merely showing my students how a beginner designer could learn from the best practices through research, experimentation, reading, consultation, and asking yourself lots of questions, and justifying your design from the perspectives of sound design principles.

It is just plain too easy to tell an effortless design apart from those good ones. For examples, if I want to put in more efforts in my "design", I could have animated the flowers with some cool transition effects. I could have created my own real cool buttons! And more ...

Design, just like solving any complex problems, needs only one thing from a person - constantly think about it, over a period of time - that is how we solve problems, make ourselves perfect, and to come out creative and innovative ideas.

For a start, look at some good and creative design below and see whether you could create your own creative design:

FIGURE 3: Simon Fraser University; squarish design is restricted, bounded and small. This design attempts to break the squarish constraints. http://students.sfu.ca/ps/acadprogs.html

FIGURE 4: Smart way of using Flash; for its interactivity. http://www.fioriinc.com/ 

FIGURE 5: When you drag the circle over the screen space, you will see the textual description of the person.Interesting, fun but not so usable.

FIGURE 6: Land Rover website is clean, neat, with good grid system in place. The colour scheme is good. http://www.landroverusa.com/us/en/default.htm

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Get the proportion of length to width right as your design will then comfortable and stylishly fits the space available.  Allow different elements on the interface to play its part while maintaining balance such that it creates a sense of harmony to attract the readers visually and allows them to understand the meaning.  Rules (printed lines) and ornaments direct the reader's eye around the page or drawing attention to specific part of the interface.  Text needs to be prioritised in accordance to its order and importance.  Use photographic images to create dynamic compositions and integrate the photograph with the other interface elements.  Colour combination creates moods. To create a feeling of harmony, use analogous colours. For more tension and vibrancy, use contrasting colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel (complementary colours). To give a feeling of dynamic activity, use triadic colours. For harmonious and unified feeling, use monochromatic colours.