3 tips to help you become a better visual designer.
At Pivotal Labs, we’ve got our product design cycle figured out. We know how to learn, test, and iterate on an idea. But lately I’ve been thinking about how to improve our visual design process. How do you get quicker results? What can you do to hone that edge? Here are three tips to help you improve your visual design process.
1. Make decisions based on emotion.
I’ve been talking to a lot of colleagues about how to push your visual design to the next level. What activities can you do, what exercises help, how many critiques should you do, and when… and what I’ve realized is that great visual design is based on emotion. You need to take a step back, and make a decision based on how you feel about the composition. When you get stuck — find inspiration. Patterntap, Pttrns, and UX Archive are a few great places to look. So what should it feel like? If you aren’t sure maybe you need to take a step back and try moodboarding. InVision created a feature just for this. But remember to align your emotive reactions with your primary persona. For example, are your color and layout choices helping them achieve their goal faster?
You’ll find that when you remove the analytic layer and use emotion to make those micro design decisions, you’ll start to feel more comfortable with the solution you land on.
