In this respect, your career is like all others. There is always more to learn; there are always new skills to develop. Consider any other major profession. There are continuing education requirements in order to keep medical, legal, teaching, and accounting licenses. You don’t have a license to keep, but you do have to keep on improving and evolving. If your designs seem “lame” to you right now, think about these reasons why they may be failing, and how you can fix them.

Not Having Your Own “Voice”

If you have gone through design school or if you are self-taught, there is a grave pitfall for many designers. You tend to be inspired by designers that have “made it.” This is normal. But at some stage, you have to have your own point of view – a style that is uniquely yours and with which you are comfortable.

This may involve some risk-taking on your part. You may have to get out of that comfort zone of emulating others and into experimentation with a design until you’ll find your own “voice.” Start experimenting and feed that creative passion within you. As long as you keep emulating others, your designs will never live up to your expectations.

Not Committing to Self-Education

You can continue to take courses in design (traditional or online). And you will continue to get lots of training in the “science” of design. These courses are valuable, of course, but they have their limitations.

You will still study the work of others; you will still refine your concepts of the principles of design. But that creativity is still on you. And that may come from other forms of self-education. You need to engage in activities that promote your own creativity – spend time in nature, go to the zoo and the art museum, sit in a public place and observe the people around you, read and write, listen to music that you love, put yourself in the company of other creatives from all fields.

These are the activities that will give you creative ideas. While there is much to be said for formal education, it is still only the “science” of design.

Trying to Please Everyone

Your voice is unique. And it will never appeal to everyone, even to every client you may have. You have to find that balance between pleasing clients and not compromising your own principles.

When much of this depends upon your basic needs for income, you obviously have to bend more. But try to influence your clients diplomatically. You don’t want a design or project out there that will hurt your reputation within the design community.

Not Keeping it Simple

People who view your designs want simplicity. Whether you are designing a logo or a website, always ask yourself how you can make the message simple. Avoid complicated and busy page layouts. Do not make visitors “work” to find what they need to find. A website is not designed to meet your needs or the needs of your client. It is designed for the needs of the users.

You want your creativity to shine, but not at the expense of efficiency.

Not Using Grids

Every page must have synchronicity of design. You may like asymmetric stuff, but most users unconsciously do not. They want to experience order when they visit a web page. When a page “looks” orderly, there is a psychological appeal to a visitor. They are more likely to stay and partake of what the page has to say. You are designing a site so that your client gets traffic.

Your creativity cannot contribute to traffic loss.

Not Placing Value on Whitespace

Eyes get tired when the design is too busy. You may be trying to “kill two birds with one stone” and it will not work. You want to get the message out there, but you are cramming too much on a single page. Find a way to divide up the message, even if it means more pages. If you don’t create enough whitespace, visitors will leave.

Consider white space as important a design element as anything else you do.

Inconsistency

The idea of a “theme” for a website is just that. There is a consistent theme that is portrayed by color scheme, font, and every other UI element. Excessive creativity may lead to inconsistency of design among the pages of a website, and this is never a good thing. It confuses visitors and makes the entire site seem random.

Overdoing the “Bells and Whistles”

There is a certain amount of visual content that is expected and that attracts users. Sharp, well-placed photos and images can be really engaging. Banners can be good on certain pages; animation is a great attraction. Overdoing these things, however, becomes a distraction and takes visitors to a site away from the main messages. Some users are in a hurry. Always have a “skip” button when you have a video or an animation that may take up valuable time.

Unreadable Fonts and Text

There are so many design elements involved here. Beautifully handwritten fonts may be fine for print, but they are not great for reading on a website. Users want reader-friendly fonts. And watch colors of backgrounds against any text. Black print on a dark purple background is a major fail because there is too much work involved for the reader. Find the right balance of background and text color. And don’t forget consistency of font, layout, and color.

Conclusion

You are creative and very passionate about that creativity. And that is a huge plus in the design world. You have to find the right balance, however, between those creative urges that make you unique and the demands of clients and site users. If not finding that balance, and not finding compromises, the result may just be “lame” designs. You won’t be proud of them, your clients will not be happy, and users will most certainly be “turned off.”

The post 10 Reasons Why Your Design Skills May Seem Lame appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

If you have had the opportunity to take a look at some of the most popular Japanese websites, you have probably noticed how different they are when compared to what is generally created by most Western cultures, and by many others Eastern cultures as well. Their websites are colorful, chock-full of text and images, and look quite confusing and overwhelming to us. And yet, there are quite few things we can learn from them.

Lesson #1 – Information Matters

In Japan, it isn’t acceptable to take any risk caused by a lack of information. Businesses are expected to let their clients know absolutely everything about their products and services, from specs to warranty. Each aspect must be described, demonstrated and explained, so the customer will know exactly what they are buying. It isn’t acceptable to try to trick the client into hiding aspects of the product, or only letting them know something when they ask.

kakaku.com

Lesson Learned: Respect for the client is key. While we still don’t want to overwhelm the customer, all possible information about the product or service should be available somewhere on the web page, so that they can decide if they want to read further or not. To achieve this, you can add extra “Learn More” links to your website, or pages from where they can download PDFs with all of the products’ specs, for instance.

Lesson #2 – Details Matter

Japanese web design doesn’t follow the idea that “less is more“. There, the more elements you add to your website, the better it gets. You probably realize that this is a reflection of Japanese art, which are famous for their rich detail.

www.uniqlo.com/jp

Lesson Learned: Being attentive to detail is more than just proofreading your website and ensuring that all links are functional. It is about making sure that you have carefully considered each element individually, and ensuring that all of those elements add value to the reader or buyer.

Lesson #3 – Colours Matter

The Japanese love for for bright colors, can be seen everywhere, not only on their websites. Even if you have never been there, the image that you picture of the streets of Tokyo is probably full of tall buildings with fluorescent and blinky ads. In the land of the rising sun, colors matter, and they are essential to Japanese web design for creating engagement between businesses and customers.

honeyce.com

Lesson Learned: Colors aren’t there just to make your website beautiful. They can communicate and add subtle information. Plus, it is scientifically proven that colors can trigger emotions, so you should choose them wisely, and gain more knowledge about the psychology behind them – and not just their best combination.

Lesson #4 – Space Matters

Japan is an archipelago composed of 6,852 islands, but they altogether represent only 377,972,28 km², with almost 130 million people living there. In other words, they have the 10^th biggest population in the world while only the 62nd largest territory. These stats make it completely understandable why space is so important, and as a knock on effect, why Japanese websites look so overcrowded. Every pixel is used and used well, and they clearly know how to make the most of it.

www.takeopapershow.com

Lesson Learned: As a web designer, you should consider the importance of each pixel of your screen, and use it wisely.

Lesson #5 – Simplicity Matters

Despite using almost all available white space, the Japanese culture is fundumentally rooted in simplicity. So don’t be fooled by the vast number of elements that you can find on their websites. There web layouts may seem too much to our eyes, but all elements are there for a reason, and there really isn’t anything complicated about any of them. Each piece of content can be easily understood and consumed by their intended reader or buyer very easily.

hanamichiya.jp

Lesson Learned: Make it simple. People are very busy nowadays, and they don’t have the time or the patience to be rooting around for information. Improve your website’s user experience, and don’t try to add any non-essential features. This way, you will increase your traffic and the length of time that visitors will stay on your website.

Finished!

Even though Japanese web design seems so different to ours, it is possible to learn a lot from them. Japan does enjoy the 4^th biggest GDP in the world (almost US$5 trillion), so rest assured that they do know how to conduct business, and build websites, effectively.

The post 5 Lessons We Can Learn From Japanese Web Design appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.