Michael Roller

Verbal Vampirism

The man behind Bored Sketchbooks is a talented and observant graphic designer with an awesome and unusual sense of humor. I appreciate the overlap of good design and a sense of humor and Gabe Shultz often nails this combination. His IDEATRON blog features a section called No: Things That Are Not Good. Check out this post on Verbal Vampirism:

If you say an idea and someone kills it, then resurrects it to serve their own dark purposes a couple of days later, they’re a verbal vampire. Once an idea turns vampiric, there is almost no way to re-kill it. Ironically, vampire ideas are the ONLY ideas that see the light of day.

Because immortality is truly a curse, verbal vampirism = no.

Gabe has been away from his blog working on some other projects, but hopefully he’ll be back soon!

See also: Not Designed By Me

Tags: definitions, designer bias, Links

Designer Bias: Novelty

To be a better designer, I try to identify the subconscious preferences we have for our work, opening up communication towards objective evaluation. I’ve written about designer bias in the past, and Design Sojourn currently has a related post that reminded me to do this again. A common bias of industrial designers is the Novelty bias. The Novelty bias is a preference for products concepts to be unique, regardless of how appropriate for this is for the project.

The Novelty bias is a preference for products concepts to be unique, regardless of how appropriate this is for a project.

For example, if you’re designing a new car, it better not have round headlights. It would almost certainly look like a Beetle or Mini (and that would be bad). New cellphones or laptops shouldn’t use rounded rectangles, because then they would look like Apple products (and that would be bad too). Selecting from a wall full of ideas, designers gravitate towards the most unusual, not necessarily the most appropriate.

We designers are hyperaware of products and details, much more than the average consumer. It’s a strength to have this sensitivity, but it becomes a weakness when our fifth bottle design project for the year starts to take its toll. We crave novelty, but we don’t need it. To regular people, a simple cylinder might be okay for a new energy drink, even though all the other energy drinks come in the same stock bottle (in fact, traditional forms help them understand new products). Consumers don’t cringe in disgust when HP and Apple both use rounded rectangles as a formal element in their products. Sometimes novelty is important, but sometimes familiarity is just as meaningful. To make smart choices, we designers must be ready to remove our hypersensitive lenses and evaluate our work in the eyes of our consumer.

Tags: designer bias

Design Philosophy

I’m always considering the definition of good design and trying to keep a sharp point of view on the subject. I compare my aesthetic preferences with current trends, integrating some new color, texture, or form language to my work when it makes sense. But some day, I’ll need to put down my pencil and let the kids take over. See, I realize my styling abilities have an expiration date, so it’s important to find ways to strategically impact design work before my sketches stop turning heads. Hence this blog and posts like this one.

There is no bad design. There is only bad context and bad execution.

This is my (current) philosophy on design. It came from a conversation with Lara, my interior designer wife. Her coworkers were evaluating criticizing another designer’s work (potentially the not-designed-by-me bias). They abhorred the tassels that were used as drawer pulls and promised they would never use them in a project. Lara and I found that to be a bit extreme, and we wondered if we wouldn’t find good uses of tassels at a place like Anthropologie or Design Sponge. It’s easy enough to find some, and this philosophy was born. You might not like a color, shape, or detail, but who knows when it could come into fashion or fit with a certain design theme. I prefer to maintain a relativist point of view and stay open to new ideas and executions.

Tags: designer bias, philosophy

Designer Bias: “Not Designed by Me”

I’m still enjoying the comment from my previous post. It pinpoints one of the problems we designers sometimes have when evaluating the work of our peers. Mostly i don’t like the designs which are designed by others even if they are beautiful. If you’re not a designer, this might not make any sense. If you are, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Most designers have some preference towards their own work. Honestly, we should because it shows that we’re passionate about our ideas and working hard to develop the best solutions possible. Things start to go bad when this preference begins to effect how we evaluate the work of our peers. Finn McKenty and I call this the “Not designed by me” bias.

For this bias, a designer will find something wrong with any product, layout, or experience they’re asked (or not asked) to evaluate. A current example of this bias might sound like this:

I don’t like the iPhone. I don’t like how the white earbuds look plugged into a black phone. It’s not integrated enough. Why can’t Apple make black ones?

Once you’ve identified this bias, my recommendation is to share it with others. First, identify the last time you made a ridiculous design critique. Were those radii really .050″ too big, or is it just that they were not designed by you? Taking the first bite of humble pie will make it easier for others to follow, and you’ll start to overcome the “Not designed by me” bias.

Tags: designer bias