My personal Design Guidelines
Or “About being the art and design director of a small agency”
An introduction for the team
Dearest LatteCreatives,
Being an art and design director is not an easy job, you know: great power, great responsibilities. First of all I wish to thank you guys for being an awesome team, because that makes my life a lot easier.
To make everything even easier I’d like to share with you some guidelines: I wrote them for myself, and I try to follow them everyday so that I can handle my role the best I can. And this does not only mean making things work, but also bringing an explosion of awesomeness in every project we work on together.
We don’t launch rockets to Mars, or perform difficult surgeries that save lives, and yet our work is important. We move people, we spread voices, we plant ideas and help them grow, we inspire action. That’s what we really do, not just websites or infographics.
Keep in mind that guidelines are not rules set in stone. The only rule is always be the best you can at your job.
The Introduction
For the last 2 years I’ve had the great opportunity to work at Latte Creative, a small creative agency specialised in digital campaigning for no-profit, cultural and social projects.
When I started, there were only four of us and a scattered network of freelance professionals without a physical office. Now the team counts almost 20 people, two offices in Europe, a good client portfolio and still a lot of potentially great projects and ideas to work on.
I had never been an art director or design director before, and to be honest, I had no clue on how to do this particular job. Of course I can design interactions, prototype, analyse, design graphic and visual, and also code — I was the classic one-man-band of freelancing — but when it came to managing teams, I was a total noob.
I am not a big fan of manuals, so, as usual, my approach was strictly empirical.
1. Try, 2. Observe, 3. Deduce, 4. Fine-tune, 5. Again from point 1.
Ironically, I actually ended up compiling a mental guideline on how to do things, how to make faster and better decisions and how to advice my team members. These rules are not universal, probably there is still a long way to go. But I believe that sharing my thoughts may inspire other young directors, as well as get me valuable feedbacks that will ultimately improve my skills.
One last (but not least) thing to say: I wrote these guidelines for myself in the first place, not for my team. First of all because I don’t like to deliver without an appropriate testing, and second, because I think that setting a good example is always the right move to start with.
Team job
Team job is the key. You can do a great job only if you are working together, sharing ideas, asking opinions and letting others inspire you and be inspired by you.
First: a good team is based on mutual trust. Make sure that your colleagues can always count on you and trust you. For every problem — big or small, it doesn’t matter — you have to be there for them, and never try to cheat on them.
Second: it is important to design projects as a team. Design is the combination of many different aspects that need to match each other. That’s why every skill is welcome, because a great project is made up of great components and great professionals: that is, you.
Third: if you grow up within the team, the team grows up too. Learn from your colleagues something new everyday, don’t be afraid to ask why and how others are doing things. Your colleagues are exceptionally good at something, ask, let them teach you. And don’t be jealous of your skills or resources: exchange information, mix up your competences.
Fourth: design as a team doesn’t mean crowdsourcing decisions. Opinions are very welcome from everybody, everyone should be able to explain their point of view, and why we should choose a direction instead of another. But decisions follow the line, and the last word is up to your boss. If you are in charge of some task, well, you have to take the risks of making your own decisions. Taking risks is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Communication
“Everything you do or don’t do, and everything you say or don’t say, communicates something to those around you. You can’t NOT communicate”
Use the right media for the right purpose: If you need instant feedback call, if you need feedback within an hour use skype chat, for everything else — or if you are writing in some odd time of the day or weekends — emails will do.
Skype
We are scattered all over Europe, an office in Rome, another one in Brussels, another unofficial one in Turin, many collaborators and clients from every part of the world, each one with different habits and times.
We need to communicate somehow, so having skype open is a must. Don’t overuse the skype chat. It is tempting, I know. But just try not to use it, because sometimes it’s just a waste of time. Use it to plan calls instead, then call. And always turn the webcam on.
Email still kicks asses in matter of communication. But use it wisely. If you don’t know how to write a good email here you can find a nice article about how to email a busy person, by Tobias Van Schneider
Content
“Design in absence of content is just decoration.”
Storytelling
Storytelling is key. Always use stories to communicate, explore, persuade and inspire.
In every story there is a hero, so in your stories the user is always the hero.
Research and Information Architecture
Structure First. Content always.
http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/structure-first-content-always
Before presenting them to the users, explore your contents in deep. You want to know everything about them, you need to research for more informations and become the maximum expert about that topic. Organize and sort the content before building the layout. Don’t use Lorem Ipsum, websites should be built while having in mind which kind of content goes where.
Interaction Design
“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”
User first
Keep in mind who is going to use your product, why they’re going to use it and what are their main goals. A personas analysis is just fine.
Design Patterns
In interaction design you don’t have to amaze people, because that means you are confusing them. The great power of every human being is the ability to learn from other experiences, so use solid design patterns instead of inventing something new. The occasion to create something really disruptive in this field will come, don’t be hasty.
Prototype with code, Not JPGs
“The only way to experience an experience is to experience it”
Bill Moggridge
Build your prototype, make it interactive, then test it yourself and make other people test it. Then Iterate.
Correcting things after the coder has already developed the product is almost impossible, and even if it is possible it is also inefficient and time consuming.
Web Development
Rage against the virtual machine.
Kill -9ING IN THE NAME OF?
Now you sudo what they told ya
Lead the innovation
It is better to look forward than backward: learn and try to understand the latest technologies available. The best way to learn a technology is using it for a project. If you are not confident in adopting a specific technology for a project with squeezed timeframe, invent your very own weekend project to experiment and learn.
SVG is the new PNG
JPGs are meant to be used for photography. For everything else, there are SVGs.
Tools
Choose dedicated libraries over monolithic frameworks. Be quick. If you can’t find the right tool to do something, consider building it.
Graphic Design
“There are three responses to a piece of design — yes, no, and WOW!
Wow is the one to aim for.”
Milton Glaser
Typography
The right font for the right function. The font will define the character of your project: search for the font that fits perfectly with the mood. Be bold, be original, stay legible.
Google font is super, but that doesn’t mean the right font is necessarily on Google font, so you may want to give it another try — fontsquirrel, typekit.com, myfonts.com, fonts.com
Image resources
Avoid stock photos, try to always create the right image — most of the time you just need a scanner or a camera. Oh hey! My smartphone has an integrated camera!
Style
“Don’t follow trends, start trends.”
Frank Capra
Trends come and go: create your own style.
Copying is ok. Quoting is also ok. Sometimes you just want to explicitly reference someone else’s work. Stealing is never ok, so be smart.
Inspiration
Be creative also when you search for inspiration. An idea for an illustration could be found inside the fridge or under the bed. Let the world around you be your inspiration, rather than what you see on internet.
Add tools
Computer is just one of the tools you can take advantage of. And inside of it you can find or build infinite tools. Furthermore, you can always use your hands☺
Random Inspiring Readings (so far)
9 Things I Learned as a Software Engineer
Inspiring approaches for work and life
How to Ship Without a Deadline
Great approach and analysis of deadlines and work organisation: First, unintuitively, not having a deadline does not mean “there is no deadline” — it means “the deadline is ASAP.”
Process is not sexy
How to make process sexy: process is not for the sake of process — it’s for the sake of helping great people do great work
Leverage an Extensive Library of Design Knowledge
Useful library with case studies, verified intuitions and best practices.
The Product Death Cycle (worst-case scenario)
You are doing it wrong!
How to design your design team
Directors ask why, senior designers are able to explain the reason behind their choices.
52 weeks of UX
Inspiring collection of best practices in UX
The God Login
Interesting approach: …a useful way of setting boundaries and asking yourself hard questions about what you’re doing and why: how would God make this thing?
Instead of starting with your constraint, start from the best solution possible, the one only God would be able to realize
The History of Graphic Design and Computational Form
Graphic design is a relatively young way of expression, primarily a response to the needs of the industrial revolution.
