The Behance-ation of Design
How to shift focus and redefine Design Value
Value is an evergreen buzzword in Design. Everyone wants it or claims to having it. But do we know where it really is? Is it relevant? Let’s find out.
Over the last few years, I have noticed how design looks increasingly similar, for all the wrong reasons (i.e. disregarding real value): to look good on showcase sites such as Behance or Dribble.
Don’t get me wrong: to connect & share work / inspiration / advice is, in principle, a great thing.
One of the issues concerning me is where our community increasingly choose to allocate value: the shallow, the gimmicks that part of the community seems to appreciate and praise, instead of solving actual business problems.
Most of what you can find comes utterly unequipped to evaluate how good it actually may be. No context, no business case, no rationale or even problem vs solution explanation*.
Oh, man. It is soul-searching time: What and whom do we design for?
It is easy to find articles highlighting the “design trends” of the year, which I tend to be wary of.
For one, I’m not sure I understand: are they telling me I’d be better off following the trend? How are they significantly better than last years’? in other words: where is the trend’s value?
Of course, this may be a rather obtuse approach on my part but, ultimately, I’m trying to highlight that we’re losing focus. Design Trends are an illustrative reality, but you can choose not to believe them blindly.
Massimo Vignelli, in The Vignelli Canon, argues against this culture of the ephemeral trends and obsolescence. Design should be as timeless as possible:
We detest the demand of temporary solutions, the waste of energies and capital for the sake of novelty. We are for a Design that lasts, that responds to people’s needs and to people’s wants. We are for a Design that is committed to a society that demands long lasting values.
…I couldn’t have put it better. Should you find this interesting, you can read the book here.
We are losing focus on pragmatism; on the balance between a nice presentation and honesty in the creative process.
We speak about good design being as little design as possible and about how clear hierarchies are better off without clutter, run our Heuristic Evaluations, even share inspiring quotes on Pinterest…
…Then, back to the real world, we often end up adding lots of crap to our designs!
Showcasing isn’t sugarcoating, be it for lack of confidence in your own design, or to make the client like it or, even worse, because everyone is doing it. I think we do this to ourselves too often.
I believe the reason that a lot of design looks similar today is due to:
- Lack of strategic & conceptual work guiding (and ultimately backing up) our design choices.
In this collective-back-scratching environment, we become too concerned about what the rest of the Design community would think of us, losing focus of what really matters and becoming prey at the boardroom. - We often fail at communicating to clients the true value of Design and how it is central to Business Strategy. With clearly defined goals, beyond what we create at our desk (to then await feedback and execute changes). It isn’t about trends and without this, clients will remain reluctant to buy into your vision.
It is easy to forget that Design is, in essence, strategic work to solve a problem, and NOT a visual style of 2018.
We strive to frame the problem scenario the right way, to ideate (and then develop, test, iterate, loop, etc.) accurate concepts in order to harvest the solutions that would add the most value to our client and, consequently, our own work.
But all of this stems from an adequate conceptualisation of the problem. Then comes your strategic thinking. The deliverable itself would be a souvenir of this journey. Because most of the actual work happened before execution.
Anyone can ask when something is due or what the budget is. We can do a lot better than than; it is our responsibility to ask better, bigger questions to transcend pure execution into strategic planning. Sometimes it may even mean telling the client they don’t actually need us, to then point them in the right direction (again, the value).
Both journey and outcome should respond to actual needs and not visceral, unfounded wishes. Blue-sky thinking is seldom part of the discovery process the exception perhaps being the Magic Lamp question; manage it accordingly and you will avoid scope creep.
Bruno Munari in Da Cosa Nasce Cosa brilliantly explains his own approach to design, which I’ve been a fan of since I read it 20 years ago:
Problems are broken into smaller sub-problems …which, in turn, contain the solution within themselves, like pieces of a big puzzle. It is the Designer’s job to define which pieces do belong in the puzzle and then solve it.
(Not a verbatim quote, but sums it up)
Perhaps we should redefine the Designer’s role altogether. Here are some example questions to ask yourself:
- How did they come up with this premise?
- Why are we really in the room in the first place?
- What is the actual problem space and does it go beyond the scope of the project or my ability?
You may be thinking: Ah, it is logical but easier said than done.
Yet, wouldn’t it help everyone if we knew which ideas are worth exploring beforehand?
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* This is not about IA, where design conventions can help users and some solutions are proven to simply work well. This is all well documented, so won’t delve into it.
