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Four years ago Cameron Moll gave a presentation on 9 skills that separate good designers and great designers. It’s a great talk and if you have the chance I suggest you at least check out the PDF slidedeck. I think the points he makes in the presentation are still relevant today and go a long way in educating us in how designers should be approaching their interactive designs.

Good Designers

• Decorate
• “Less” is more
• Fix problems
• Inspired by genre
• Everything at once
• Treat text as content
• Use good typefaces
• Code for one instance
• Redesign

Great Designers

• Communicate
• “Less” and “more” co-exist
• Prevent
• Inspired by total environment
• Selective iteration
• Treat text as UI
• Use good typography
• Code for many instances
• Realign

Communicate

We’ve had this discussion multiple times.

• Artist, designer or hack?
• They do that because you designed it that way
• Web design? Screw aesthetics
• The message of design
• What is design?

Each time the same conclusion is drawn and that is quality design communicates with its audience. It delivers the message it is intended to deliver. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Less” and “more” co-exist

In Minimalism is Mandatory, I talk about designing only what is necessary for your site. Some might take this as removing as much as possible to be left with nothing more than some text, but the point is to remove all the clutter that doesn’t enhance the user experience and message in a defined way. Sometimes having an AJAX popup works wonders in making the site better and that is a “more” aspect because you certainly don’t need it to make the site functional. However, you do need it to make the site better so use it.

The difference is some designers like to add a ton of widgets all over the place and justify each and every one to the point that they miss the big picture and end up with a cluttered and confusing interface. Striking that perfect balance will always be one of the designer’s toughest jobs.

Prevent problems

Admittedly this is something that I need vast improvement in because I am great in designing a solution that fixes one problem, but often times all it does is create another. Nobody will always get the right solution the right time, but great designers have an ability to attain the right solution more times than not, while good designers continuously scramble to fix the problems that they have created.

This point might seem a bit contentious because so often the problems that designers are facing are changing and that situation applies to the final point. However, if you are dealing with a problem that remains constant, finding the solution that prevents future problems from happening is the ideal choice and great designers have a knack for finding it. At the very least they understand the need to search it out.

Inspired by total environment

Last week I talked about inspiration hunting and I wish that I had discussed how you can almost tell when some designers only take their inspiration from other websites versus those that take inspiration from everything they can get their hands on. The majority of my inspiration comes from print design because I deal with so much text. I want people to sit down and get engrossed in Drawar the same way they will curl up on the couch with a good book or magazine. If I were to only look at web designs for inspiration in that regard you wouldn’t get the individual article layouts that are presented today.

Total environment isn’t only relegated to print design. I’ve been inspired by street signs, billboards, album covers, coloring books, fashion and food. Find inspiration in your everyday life. Constantly search it out and you will expand your design repertoire immensely.

Selective iteration

This comes down to macrodesign and microdesign. Good designers are only capable of seeing the big picture in a design, while great designers understand that a design is nothing more than a bunch of individual elements working in unison and each of these elements need attention. The ability iterate over an element over and over again until it fits properly into the larger design concept.

A bad example of this can be seen on the homepage for the Drawar Forums. As of this writing there are two buttons: a subscribe button and a post a new topic button. On their own these buttons serve their purpose, but in the overall design they are out of place. While the rest of the design (mostly) flows, these buttons serve to break the flow. There is certainly a better way the action of subscribing and posting can be designed.

Treat text as UI

Copywriting is interface design. Great interfaces are written.

Jason Friend

Stop looking at text simply as content to fill a page. Think of the different ways it can be formatted to produce a visually appealing UI that offers a better user experience. Besides, web design is 95% typography.

Use good typography

As of late this has been my biggest pet peeve on the web. I coming across article after article that is a pain to read because the person behind the site doesn’t implement basic principles of typography. Maybe there isn’t any sign of leading (line-height for the CSS people) or the kerning (letter-spacing for the CSS people) is completely off, but so many sites lead you to believe that the people behind them don’t bother reading the site.

Code for many instances

Can’t lie, I’ve never coded for other languages in my life. Never designed for them either.

Realign

The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.

A List Apart

Redesigners ask…

When was our last redesign? Is it just me, or does it look old? Will a redesign bring new traffic?

Realigners ask…

Users’ needs have changed. Should we adapt? Do the current aesthetics devalue brand perception?

How often do you redesign?