On the bright side.
Design, Reflections February 26, 2008
Don’t you hate these times when your “eye” suddenly goes lost, the drive and the clarity of what you are doing and where you are heading are nowhere and you can not decide any longer? Suddenly you find yourself turning in circles and circles with no end, biting your own tail and turning some more. And, like a little Yorkshire Terrier you have bitten so hard into the problem and are not willing to let loose, churning, shaking, putting it away for a few minutes, pacing, pacing, if you’re a smoker you go outside and have a puff or two but quickly get back to it; it can even seep into your dreams and you wake up early, then finally when you’re sitting back at your desk you know it’s time to put an end to it, you’ve turned already too long in circles, but you think just one more shade, maybe that one now will finally do exactly what you had envisioned but no, and you can’t understand why you just can’t see what is the best solution, what really works.
If this never has happened to you and you can’t relate at all, well then you really need to send me your recipe for that!
On the bright side I can state that this doesn’t happen very often, and even much less for clients. Oddly enough it mainly happens when I design for myself or my business.
Take this site for example. I started off with a clear and simple idea. Based on Hemingway but adjusted to gusto. The trouble started when I took some photos and one of them instantly felt like, “this is perfect for the footer” only a few days earlier. So far things did not go too bad. But then I liked the idea of having the footer background color to be visibly slightly different from the image part.
Now the problems really began. Especially after wanting some pat on the back from my husband who happens to be a great 3D animator and designer himself at Wombat Studios. Yes, asking for a thumbs-up like this is asking hell to come for a visit. He really disliked my header over white, and felt it needed something fully across (me, on the other hand, have no problem with a lot of white space).
Thus I began playing around with this idea and from here on I have not been able to come to a final conclusion as I partially began to agree with his viewpoint but at the same time still have mine. As much the ‘barely visible difference’ works at the bottom, it doesn’t work too well on the top. [The image here shows how the site looked at this point]. Problem being that the amount of subtle difference I like, looks only good when you know that this has been done purposely. For the general viewer though this looks rather like an error, an accident and unprofessional. Don’t even get me started in how many shades of gray and tinted gray I tried it. For this reason I have currently reverted to my original version (on white). If you see it differently, no worries, your eyes are still good, doubt must have crept back and I tried one more of the futile attempts to get it just right.
When I get to this point during a design phase I either have to drop it for a week or two, walk away with no looking back or to scrap the complete design and do something entirely different with the site.
What do you do?
