Design Itch

Web design is a fre­quent itch for me, as inspi­ra­tion comes from every­where. Quite often, I come across a beau­ti­ful site that has a clever ele­ment here or an inter­est­ing pat­tern there, and get the urge to redesign my own.

But as there’s no such thing as a per­fect ath­lete, there’s no such thing as a per­fect design. Minimalism, while func­tion­al and acces­si­ble, tends to lack per­son­al­i­ty. Style — while beau­ti­ful and full of char­ac­ter — tends to be biased and stag­nant. I find myself in a con­stant state of flux between the two ideals.

Right now, I’d love to have a big­ger can­vas, some­thing like Days With my Father, where I can dis­play my pho­tos in a much larg­er for­mat (because, real­ly, the impact of a pho­to­graph is lost when it’s small). I’d love to have items orga­nized by columns fit that per­fect­ly in a grid, aligned along nat­ur­al ver­ti­cal rules. I’d love to have some­thing a lit­tle more com­plex, some­thing that invites a view­er to explore fur­ther.

But I’m hap­py with this one. It does what I want. It looks right, no mat­ter what day or mood I’m in.

Having a design that match­es my sit­u­a­tion is impor­tant to me, which means they gen­er­al­ly don’t last longer than a few months, as I tend to evolve with­in that time. There have been many times that I’ve writ­ten, “This is the last redesign for a while”, only to be unsat­is­fied in some way and to change it with­in a few months. I unveiled the cur­rent one at the begin­ning of the year, and it’s prob­a­bly the one I’ve been most sat­is­fied with. Whenever the itch strikes me, I browse through the archives and admire how clean every­thing is, and how dif­fer­ent types of con­tent seems to work in the same area. Then I real­ize how hard it would be to come up with some­thing bet­ter, and the itch goes away.

So no redesign for a while.

Promise.

9 comments

  1. oh the redesign itch. when it hits, it’s dif­fi­cult to over­come. some­times it’s bet­ter to just suc­cumb (:

    as an aside, thanks for link­ing Days With My Father. it’s beau­ti­ful.

  2. The prob­lem is that I suc­cumb too often, and spend much time redo­ing things. As long as we’re con­tent with the design we have, there’s no need. So I hope your hia­tus does­n’t mean you’re chang­ing the beau­ti­ful­ly clean design you had last. :)

  3. Do you ever won­der if you could redesign your­self? Silly I know as no one is sup­posed to be perfect.….but damn if I don’t wish I could be a lit­tle clos­er to it

  4. Re: Web Design Itch

    No scratch­ing in pub­lic or at tai­ji class and try Gold Bond® Powder — first wash and dry the affect­ed parts and then apply that heal­ing dust lib­er­al­ly!

  5. Not relat­ed to your post…

    but I wrote some­thing that I start­ed think­ing about after I read one of your posts… Very in the address to one-time/cur­rent sig­nif­i­cant oth­er style you fre­quent­ly use. I love those posts… Anyway, maybe you’d like the bit of writ­ing?

  6. @Lucy — I like to think that I redesign myself all the time. Even our bod­ies go through a cycle and replace the entire­ty of our cells in sev­en years. Are we ever real­ly the same per­son?

    @Michael — I would have thought that Purell would be more of a pri­or­i­ty, espe­cial­ly when doing inter­ac­tive exer­cis­es!

    @Maeko — I’m going to take a look right now…

  7. Minimalism, while func­tion­al and acces­si­ble, tends to lack per­son­al­i­ty. Style — while beau­ti­ful and full of char­ac­ter — tends to be biased and stag­nant.

    I know exact­ly what you mean. I think the high­est goal of good design is to reach that equi­lib­ri­um between style and a clear visu­al hier­ar­chy. As soon as the for­mer mud­dies the lat­ter, you’ve erred.

    Not that it has­n’t been said before by far greater minds.

  8. Function Schmunction. STYLE STYLE STYLE. Ok maybe a stream­lined, stealth func­tion.

  9. @Andrew — I can total­ly see how an equi­lib­ri­um would suit many sit­u­a­tions, but I find that sites with one extreme or the either are the ones that take my breath away. Otherwise, they don’t stand out near­ly as much.

    @Xibee — Stealth func­tion­al­i­ty is as dif­fi­cult as stealth style. Many peo­ple believe that func­tion for­goes style for the sake of things like acces­si­bil­i­ty, but just as not mak­ing a deci­sion is still a deci­sion, min­i­mal­ism is still a style in itself.

Leave a Reply