Archive for August, 2010

For centuries color has been used to provide distinction between classes, businesses, kings, courts and everything else in between. So what exactly is in a color? Does it matter that purple has been used in connotations with royalty? Does it matter that most fast food places logos are red to stimulate your appetite? So a color is a color right? Not exactly. Below are a few examples with switched color palettes. Do you think the brand still looks the same? Does it give off the same vibe/aura in a different color?

So if colors are “just colors” these brands being switched should be exactly the same thing right? Starbucks stills feels warm and earthy in blue… Facebook is cool and collected in red. Nasa feels not so smart and more juvenile… And adobe… well, it’s a bit shocking to see a different color palette to icons that we rely so heavily on their color. Many would mistake photoshop for flash in that color palette. So, remember colors aren’t just colors… Research should be put into the color palette just like your branding.

Suggested Reading

A Guide to Choosing Colors for Your Brand

Can Color Affect Your Brand Positioning?

The Definitive Color Wheel

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Is a color just a color?

Product photography could well be the single most important design aspect of any e-commerce website. Without the ability to touch, hold, smell, taste or otherwise handle the products they are interested in, potential customers have only images to interact with. Ultimately, the softer, tastier, flashier and more attractive your products look to shoppers, the more confident they’ll feel about purchasing from you and the better your conversion rate will be.

While any product can look great in a photo (sometimes deceptively so), keep in mind that your images should match your website’s overall aesthetic and your company’s image. Let’s start with a few great examples of how online retailers have incorporated high-quality product photos onto their websites. In this article, we will focus on images of actual items, rather than models, events or landscapes.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Examples Of Beautiful Product Photography

Uncrate
Uncrate is probably the best-looking men’s shopping blog, and a lot of the credit goes to the product photos in its posts. One of the criteria for its blog posts seems to be for product photos to be incredibly well shot. This is a great place to get inspired for your own product photography project.

Ties.com
Ties.com has years of experience with dress-tie photography and has improved the quality of its photos over the years. Now it uses a lightbox effect to offer close-ups of its ties. The layout of the website is similar to that of Amazon. As with any website of this nature, super-clear photos are essential to compensate for the customer’s inability to feel the ties.

Made.com
Turning to furniture, UK website Made.com does a great job of showing its products from multiple angles and perspectives without cluttering the website or making the images feel redundant. Its lamps, for example, can be viewed up close or at a distance within the same frame, while its tables and desks can be viewed from both eye level and low angles. Again, the selective use of color throughout the website directs attention to the products themselves, while giving the overall design a sleek minimalist feel.

Harry Winston
High-end jewelry website Harry Winston emphasizes the brilliancy and luxury of its products by integrating them in a relatively stripped-down website. The sharp, vibrant images of colored gemstones and sparkling crystals command the viewer’s attention on every page, without overpowering the other elements of the design. The brilliant reds, greens and oranges of these products contrast with the neutral black, white and gray color scheme, while complementing the refined cursive and rolling script scattered throughout the website.

Louis Vuitton
Another up-market website, Louis Vuitton also uses wonderful high-res product shots and zooms for its non-clothing items, such as calendars and wallets. While this website predictably has numerous photos of models posing with the products in lifestyle and fashion vignettes, it also does an excellent job of emphasizing the craftsmanship and quality of its items.

Moben
Kitchen designer Moben has a much busier website, using pictures and videos of its products in various locations. The photos here show potential customers the innovative design and style of these products in a unified setting, while still offering detailed shots of individual items. This is a great strategy for e-commerce companies that sell large products or that sell services that are difficult to visualize.

Weber
Moving out of the kitchen and into the backyard, Weber, a well-known maker of grilling and other cooking equipment, has a fine product photography area on its website. The website itself is pretty basic, as you might expect, without much in the way of attractive text or icons, but the sharp images and high-quality close-ups add a lot of visual appeal. If nothing else, this is a good example of how good images can help a website overcome a mediocre design.

Bang & Olufsen
Turning to a website that at first glance seems a bit less inviting, audio-video manufacturer Bang & Olufsen opts for a harder, more architectural aesthetic than some of the other websites we’ve looked at. While there is plenty of black, gray and white throughout, this website is far from cold and sterile, thanks to the side-sweeping product photos, which are bright but do not compromise the futuristic feel of the design. The pages of Bang & Olufsen’s collection have another nice touch: product thumbnails glow when you hover over them.

Leica
As you might expect from one of the world’s biggest names in photography and imaging technology, Leica has some high-quality images, especially of its camera equipment. You won’t find a ton of photos here, but in keeping with the brand’s no-frills, no-nonsense approach, the pictures you do see are high-res and sharp, a perfect example of how to do more with less.

Victorinox
Another brand known for precision equipment, Victorinox has an impressive range of visual content on its website, especially in the product area. The sliding photo gallery in the “Timepiece” section, for example, captures both the mechanical and aesthetic beauty of the brand’s watches: you can really imagine how it would feel to hold and wear the watch, while still being able to see the complexity of its internals. The website is also notable for its great examples of selective focusing and dramatic lighting, which really make the products eye-catching.

CuffLinks.com
CuffLinks.com clearly puts effort into photographing its vast selection of cufflinks. It offers customers a good view of its cufflinks from all angles. It also shows the packaging or box that the cufflinks will ship in, giving us a well-rounded impression. Fortunately for this company, the size and inflexibility of cuff links make them a relatively easy product to photograph. Take a look at their many other products and the different angles the shots have been taken from.

Ties ’n’ Cuffs
Ties ’n’ Cuffs is another e-commerce store with a large selection of cufflinks, ties and other accessories. Like CuffLinks.com, it offers a handful of photos for each product. But Ties ’n’ Cuffs lets customers also zoom into its cufflinks, giving a super-clear picture of product details that one might miss in a wide shot and showing how the crystals reflect the light. Browse around this website to see how they’ve implemented their zoom function for many different products.

Chocomize
Chocomize lets chocolate lovers make their own custom chocolate bars by allowing them to select from a variety of ingredients. Here is a great example of using photos for products that offer a high degree of customization, without bogging down viewers with too many choices and images. The pictures on Chocomize—bright, glossy piles of candy, nuts, berries and decorations that can be added to a milk, dark or white chocolate base—are relatively uniform in size and shape yet distinctive enough to be unique and noticeable. It also has detailed photos of each ingredient.

Threadless.com
The t-shirt giant Threadless.com has a particular culture, and it has done a great job of keeping that culture intact with its photos, while still keeping the product itself front and center. Check out the many creative ways that it displays its t-shirts.

Designbyhumans.com
Another great t-shirt company. It has a super-clean website and keeps the product well in focus, despite the human models (which can sometimes distract from the product).

Apple
While it sounds cliché, the product photos at Apple would make anyone want to purchase an iPad or iPhone. With a limited number of images and a simple twistable 360-degree viewing mode, the designers behind this website visually sum up Apple’s mantra of simplicity and fun.

Four Steps Of Product Photography

1. Prepare Product

To take quality photographs, the complexity and time required will depend greatly on the type of product you’re shooting. Some of the easiest products to photograph are solid objects such as cups and toys; you may just have to give them a good polish before shooting.

Clothing, textiles and other items that can bend, stretch and wrinkle are much harder to photograph and could require hours of ironing and arranging to get a perfect result. Details, like whether a shirt collar is straight, will determine whether the photographs look like they were shot in a serious studio or by an amateur with a point-and-shoot camera.

Whatever the product, inspect it carefully for tears, stains, chips and other imperfections before beginning.

2. Light

To get a great-looking photo, lighting is crucial. Fortunately, with many products, you don’t need much equipment to get a well-lit balanced exposure. For objects the size of a digital camera or smaller, you can use an EZcube light tent with two small 30-watt bulbs on either side. For larger items, such as clothing, two 60-watt soft boxes on either side of the product should suffice. Also consider using a light reflector to get rid of any shadows and obvious highlights.

3. Set Your Camera

Watch out for noticeable light reflections on shiny surfaces. Even though most product photos look very staged, you don’t want yours to look too artificial.

Obviously, you’ll need a camera to take pictures, so make sure you have one. It doesn’t have to be the best or most expensive on the market, but it should at least have manual focus and shutter and aperture controls. These are all standard on most SLR cameras.

Once you’ve arranged the product and lighting equipment, take a few test shots until you get an exposure that isn’t too bright or too dark. Keep track of the shutter speed and aperture settings of your best photos, and use them again in future to maintain consistency. If you aren’t sure how things like shutter speed, aperture and lens focal length affect images, you might want to do some basic research.

If you understand the basics of photography but your photos still don’t look quite right, don’t worry, because you may have to change several in-camera settings before getting the kind of shots you want.

If your pictures look soft or don’t enlarge well, make sure the ISO setting on your camera is as low as possible. The ISO setting affects the light sensitivity of a camera’s photo sensor. By setting yours to 100 or 200, you’ll get a higher-resolution shot with less grain and pixellation. While you’re at it, change the camera’s image size to the highest possible setting. Most cameras default to a medium-sized resolution (around 1500 x 850 pixels).

Next, make sure the white balance is set to handle the kind of light you’re working in. Most cameras have modes for incandescent, fluorescent, direct sunlight and cloudy environments, and you should adjust your camera’s white balance according to these different conditions. If the white balance controls are off, your images might either look too bright or have a sickly yellow cast, especially if your product is white.

Color control settings are important to consider as well. Most digital cameras allow you to select several degrees of color saturation, ranging from muted to normal to vibrant. If your product is already colorful (flowers, for example), a less saturated setting would probably work better. This is especially true with red, which many digital cameras (even high-end ones) have difficulty processing.

Finally, make sure the image format is appropriate. If you’re just putting the photos online, high-resolution JPEGs are probably fine. RAW files, on the other hand, carry more data because they aren’t compressed like JPEG or TIFF files, and they carry fewer digital artifacts; but they take up more space and require special codices and converters to be viewed and edited. Some cameras have a “RAW + high-res JPEG” setting, which gives you both compressed and uncompressed versions of an image. Do a little research on your camera when deciding which format to use, because some models are automatically set to give a softer focus in JPEG mode.

4. Edit the Photos

This is the final and perhaps most important step of product photography. This is when you really take your photos to the next level and make them pop. If you’ve gotten the lighting right and your camera properly configured, then you are well on your way to great photos. Factors such as unwanted colors and objects that couldn’t be removed during the shoot, though, will require some adjustment.

Surrounding a product in white space is common practice. This makes the photo convenient to use on websites and in catalogs because it won’t clash with other elements. To make a product float freely in white space, you have to remove the background with masking in your photo editing program. As common as it is, it is often done poorly, making an otherwise fine photo look amateurish. Masking properly takes time, especially when you are not working with straight lines. Photoshop CS4 has a great “Refine edge” tool that makes it much easier to correct crooked lines.

Many people also use a variety of artistic effects in Photoshop and other bitmap editors to subtly manipulate their photos. One such effect is the soft or selective focus, which, as the name implies, softens a portion of the photo while leaving other areas sharp. This is great for creating the illusion of depth and size, and the trick is often used for pictures of food, jewelry and watches (see the examples above). Depending on your lens, you can get a similar in-camera effect by setting the aperture low and zooming in on the product from a distance.

Also, depending on the product and the look you’re aiming for, you could also experiment with the perspective controls in Photoshop. Most people assume this tool is only good for tall buildings and scenes with noticeable vanishing points, but you can also use it to make geometric objects such as tables and desks appear overpowering, especially when photographed from a low angle (see Made.com for examples).

Additional Tips

Blend Photos With Design

When putting together a collection of product photos, ask yourself if the images you’re taking will match the color scheme and aesthetic of your website. The easiest way around such a challenge is to just keep things simple and minimalist.

Use a Gray Card

A gray card is a middle-gray reference that you can set your camera to for accurate and consistent color rendering, especially on older cameras that have limited controls for white balance and color. A gray card gives a more realistic depiction of your product’s color and reduces the amount of post-exposure color adjustment you have to make later. They can be bought at any photography store and for about $10. Most cameras have a function for taking gray card test photos; read through the owner’s manual carefully.

Get a Flexible and Sturdy Tripod

Taking sharp, consistent and professional product photos is nearly impossible without a good tripod. It can be any regular tripod, but if you are shooting a product on the floor from above, you’ll probably need a horizontal extension: as the name implies, this tool extends horizontally from the head of the tripod so that you can position your camera directly above and parallel to the product itself. This prevents linear distortion, vanishing lines and uneven image depth.

The tripod you need will depend on the size of your camera. If you have a heavy-duty SLR with a long horizontal extension, you’ll need a solid tripod to support the weight of the camera and prevent shaking.

If you put your tripod in storage, make sure you are able to reset it to the same height and position for your next shoot. Measure the legs of the tripod, and mark with tape where the feet of the tripod should stand on the ground.

Use Light Reflectors

As mentioned, light reflectors give photos an even spread of light and a fresh look. They come in many sizes and shapes. A medium-sized light reflector, one as big as a large pizza, should be more than enough for product photography. Anything bigger is more appropriate for videography or photographs of people.

Reflectors come with three different surfaces: silver foliated, gold foliated and white. The gold- and silver-sided reflectors usually reflect the most light, while white reflectors give a softer, warmer glow.

Define the Decision-Making Process

If your standard of quality is high or you’re working on a team, the lack of a decision-making process can waste a lot of time. Set clear criteria for what you’re looking for, and make sure your workflow allows all parties to follow the criteria without constant interruption.

Outsource When Appropriate

If your product is easy to shoot, then outsourcing is a great option. The most important points to discuss with the photographer beforehand are quality and their willingness and ability to contribute to the editing process.

The quality of the photos will depend on the time spent editing them. Some photographers don’t want to get involved with this part, feeling that image masking and other such tedious tasks are below them. Cover all your bases before starting with the photographer, otherwise the process could turn out to be more expensive and time-consuming than you expected.

Further Resources

If you liked this article, then read Smashing Magazine’s recent article How to Use Photos to Sell More Online for another look at photography and e-commerce.

Also consider these:

• An extensive practical guide to photographing various products.
• A guide to photographing watches, jewelry and other products.

Zachary Lowell contributed to this article.

(al)

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© Peter Crawfurd for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: ecommerce, product photography

There are well-known proverbs that imply (or state outright) that beauty is superficial and limited in what it can accomplish. “It’s what’s inside that counts” and “Beauty is only skin deep” are a few simple examples. Because the Web design industry is now flooded with a lot of raw talent, and because virtually anyone can create a “beautiful” website, recognizing a truly beautiful website experience is becoming increasingly difficult. What appears beautiful to the eye might in fact be more of a hindrance.

In this article, I hope to provide a clear demarcation between what is perceived by most to be beautiful in Web design and what is truly beautiful, along with some guiding principles to help designers today create websites whose beauty is not superficial, but rather improves and enhances the user experience.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

Gradients, Drop-Shadows, Reflections, Oh My!

A lot of things could fall in the category of “beautiful” or “attractive” in the context of Web design. But a number of factors would make such beauty shallow. Is a website more attractive if it has tastefully placed drop-shadows, gradients or reflections? What if it has an eye-pleasing color scheme? What about big over-designed buttons? Could these be standards by which a design would be deemed beautiful?

If you’ve been keeping tabs on the Web design industry in the last five years, you’ve probably at some point visited one of the many CSS galleries. Visiting those inspirational showcases is great, and I’m sure we’ve all done it, but we need to be careful not to fall into the copycat syndrome, whereby we prettify our websites for no other reason than to make them CSS gallery-worthy.

Mint.com has everything a client could ask for in a “Web 2.0 design”. Does that mean it’s beautiful?

The designers, developers and content strategists who planned and executed many of the websites in those galleries did what they did because they felt it would truly benefit the user experience and their clients’ bottom line. The truly beautiful websites and apps in those showcases are not just visually beautiful; they’re usable, accessible and optimized to benefit both the user and website owner.

The Dribbble Syndrome

With the recent popularity of Dribbble, the copycat syndrome might be gaining momentum. On Dribbble, a designer reveals a sample of something they’re working on, and then the style of that small snippet starts spreading. The context and strategy underlying it are unknown, yet the style is still viewed as beautiful in and of itself. The designer may have taken hours, days or weeks to arrive at the decisions that informed the design, but now that it’s out in the wild, the snippet becomes nothing more than eye candy.

Dribbble shows out-of-context design shots. Is this a bad thing?

Of course, the intent of this article is not to blame those who share their designs on Dribbble, nor to blame those who review these designs and offer feedback. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that every design decision should have significant reasoning behind it.

The Style-Less Comparison

How do we measure beauty? If a website is difficult to use, then isn’t its beauty without purpose? Look at the comparison in the image shown below.

The Nettuts+ logo and navigation bar.

I think Nettuts+ is a very nicely designed website. But is the fancy navigation and logo section shown on top more usable than the plain blue and white version below it? Taken at face value, some might argue that the plain version is more usable (if only slightly) than the “beautiful” one.

The Facebook home page.

While the Facebook home page shown on top might not appear the most beautiful design to many of us, it still contains attractive aesthetic elements (colors, gradient background, styled buttons, etc.). But when most of these minor elements are made plain, does it really affect the usability (of course, after you increase the color contrast for the form labels in the right upper corner)?

If prettiness is really as important as we think, then the current Facebook home page should perform much better than the plain alternative. How do we know, though, that the plain version wouldn’t outperform the adorned version?

What Makes A Design Usable?

I’m not about to make a case for bringing back blue links on a white background on every website. In fact, as I’ll explain, both Nettuts+ and Facebook may very well qualify as truly beautiful websites. The examples above were more illustrative, and not meant to criticize the designers who worked on them.

Rather, I’m encouraging designers to consider two things when adding “beautiful” enhancements to their designs.

• Responsive and intuitive page elements,
• Branding and consistency of theme.

Focusing on these two things will give every pixel in a design a purpose and will contribute to the website’s overall usability. Let’s consider both of these, with a few simple examples to illustrate their effectiveness.

Responsive and Intuitive Page Elements Make a Design Usable

If a design element makes a website feel more friendly or gives subtle hints as to what’s happening, then this adds to its usability. Look at the simple example below from Design Informer:

On the Design Informer website, hover over the search box in the top right, and you’ll notice it brightens up. This is not intrusive in any way, and it looks especially elegant in WebKit browsers, because the brightening animates with CSS3. The default look of the search box could be a bit brighter to improve the general usability of the site, but in this specific case the idea counts more than the execution.

This very simple effect conveys to the user that this is a usable element, and it makes the search box more inviting. It’s a ridiculously simple technique but has a very powerful effect.

But just because you can use an animated effect does not mean you should. If, as in the case of Design Informer, the effect makes the UI more intuitive and responsive, then it is justified. This statement by Stuart Thursby sums it up well:

If designers think that using HTML5 and CSS3 makes them a better designer just because they use them, then they’re sorely misguided.

Include an element only if it accomplishes some usability-related purpose. If the design is not made more usable by a particular technique (whether via CSS3, JavaScript or something else), then the designer should reconsider whether the extra code is worth the effort. Decoration only goes so far and often has an effect opposite to the one intended, so consider yours carefully before including it in your design.

Another example of an animation that enhances usability is found on Soh Tanaka’s new website. Look at the screenshot below from this post on his blog:

When you hover over any presentation of code on his website, you’ll notice that the block expands to the right (probably via jQuery, so it would work in every browser).

Again, a simple effect, but not just eye candy; it has a purpose. In tutorials, HTML code is often too long to fit in the highlighter, so the code either wraps or creates ugly scroll bars. Tanaka’s solution makes the code more inviting and readable, and it decreases the likelihood of wrapping or scroll bars.

So whether we’re talking about text links that change color on hover, buttons that move when clicked, AJAX that creates subtle yet intuitive effects, we can take a design beyond mere decoration in many ways and truly enhance its usability.

Branding Makes a Design Usable

If an element contributes to a website’s overall branding, image or reputation, then it’s safe to say that it contributes to its usability. Properly planned and executed branding is not superficial or decorative. Carefully chosen colors and graphic elements create an inviting atmosphere that leads the user to make easy decisions and helps them interact with elements smoothly and intuitively.

Look at the screenshot below from 10k Apart:

The laurel wreath in the background and the distinctive illustration immediately distinguish this website as belonging to A List Apart. Consistency in branding contributes to the usability of this ALA microsite and makes it feel inviting and familiar.

And then we have the beautiful and intuitive design for Launchlist:

This screenshot doesn’t do justice to the website’s look and feel; you’ll have to poke around to really experience it for yourself. The design might appear decorative and superficial at first glance, but it’s not. The elements work together to create a consistent and inviting atmosphere, extending the “launch” theme throughout with subtle animations.

Usable Doesn’t Have To Mean Ugly

My purpose here was not to tell designers to forget about slickness, sexiness and beauty. This should be obvious from the beautiful examples shown, which certainly qualify as both usable and attractive. No one expects owners of beautiful websites to suddenly drop their enhancements in favor of the Craigslist look just to make them more usable.

Rather, this post is just a reminder that eye candy is important, but it isn’t everything, and that for a design to be truly beautiful, it has to be functional, have purpose and contribute in some way to the website’s intuitiveness, usefulness and branding. All of these things contribute to the overall effect of a design.

Related Posts

• In Defense of Eye Candy
  Research proves attractive things work better. How we think cannot be separated from how we feel. The next time a boss, client, or co-worker scoffs at the notion that beauty is an important aspect of interface design, point their peepers here.
• Looks Matter Because We All Have Feelings
  An article about the importance of aesthetics in web design.
• Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions
  Gradients and colors and contrast are all good, but there’s a more important side to web design that many people overlook most of the time: Designing emotions. A beautiful article on Web Designer Depot.
• Stop Inspiration Hunting When Designing
  There is definitely a difference between looking at sites for research purposes when beginning a design versus looking at sites just to find some cool stuff you might be able to use. Nice article on Drawar.
• Web Design? Screw Aesthetics
  “When I talk about design I try to do more than mention the aesthetic/visual aspect of it, but it seems people tend to focus on that aspect the most. Web design however adds many more elements to the elegant answer that we are so frantically searching for.” Another interesting article on Drawar.

(al)

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© Louis Lazaris for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Design, usability

I love it when a good story is broken down so that even the simplest of minds can understand. I’m not the smartest, fastest or most creative person in the world, so I don’t like using a lot of big words or fancy jargon to try and impress you — but I’m learning every day, and that is what pushes me on. Let me cut the small talk and dive right in.

The Current State

When I look out on the hillside of design, all I see are copies of what great designers have done before us. The landscape has become so congested with cookie-cutter homes that seeing the real people living inside has become hard. It’s like watching that movie Pleasantville, in which everything is black and white and no one knows any better, and yet there are those pursuing something different, something original.

My hope is to inspire you to step away from the computer and open your eyes to the world around you. Expand your mind; think beyond the limits of the liquid crystals staring back at you.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

Getting Started

The first step in any recovery process is to admit that there’s a problem. Once we’re comfortable admitting that we’ve been copying each other’s style, we can move on. The next step in this design detox, if you will, is to close the laptop, turn off the monitor, put down the iPhone and go find a pen or pencil and some paper. Not so fast with that Moleskine journal! It won’t help you. You understand that Apple and Adobe products don’t do the work for you, and neither will the Moleskine make you a better [fill in your profession]. Only with time, patience and practice will you begin to refine your skills.

Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw. I hear that a lot, and I wish people would remove the word “can’t” from their vocabulary. Maybe you’re not good at drawing people but are amazing at drawing monsters, or maybe you’re not good at drawing buildings but are excellent at sketching wireframes. Just because your drawings don’t look like those of people you admire does not mean your drawings are no good.

Live in the Moment

Time does not stop — shocker, I know. You can’t fight it. Rather, think of it as the Rolling Stones do: time is on my side. Realize that time will make you better. The get-rich-quick approach is a cheap substitute for an investment of time: it might work for a few people, but it never lasts. Save yourself the trouble and commit to the long-term effort. Better yet, take an art history class and learn how long it took the great artists to achieve success. You’ll find that some were not recognized until after they were dead.

Pioneers Of the New Frontier

So where do we turn for inspiration? I always look to artists in other media. I’ll mention a few who have set a high standard — one so high that it hasn’t been beat. Still, I believe you have what it takes to run faster, jump higher and think bigger.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was the original Renaissance Man. Not only was he an amazing painter, he was also an extraordinary mathematician, sculptor, anatomist and writer — and those were just a few of his occupations. His career, which left a legacy that is still unsurpassed, is characterized by a passion for discovery and creation. If for no other reason, da Vinci is an inspiration to us because of his fervent passion for learning.

M. C. Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher is a great example to us because he pursued his passion and succeeded, even without a degree. M.C. Escher’s artwork — an excellent source of inspiration for modern design — has a great deal to do with mathematics, but he never had formal mathematical training. Those of us building the Web could learn a thing or two from Escher’s work on symmetry and patterns.

Norman Rockwell

Normal Rockwell defined a generation. His depictions of the American lifestyle in the early-20th century are iconic. If Rockwell were alive today, he would definitely be one of the all-stars posting stuff to Dribbble.

Closing Words

There’s nothing like the feeling of accomplishment that comes from doing something you didn’t think you could. Whether you want to build websites, paint a mural, design icons or draw characters, I encourage you to make time for practice and to get away from the computer at least an hour a day. Pick up a book, take a walk, call a friend — do whatever you can to take your mind off technology. In those moments when we quiet our minds, inspiration comes and we can just be ourselves.

P.S.

Just one last nugget before you leave: don’t let a lack of inspiration overwhelm you or make you feel like less of a person. I know from personal experience that drowning in inspiration makes me feel unsuccessful. And yet when we judge ourselves against our own work, we hinder our growth. We have to find a balance between being inspired and being true to ourselves. That’s what makes the journey so exciting.

(al)

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© Kyle Steed for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags:

There is a rush of anticipation one feels upon cracking open a fresh sketchbook. The blank page is a small area yet also an expansive laboratory for the creative process. Over time and around the world, artists have developed many ingenious techniques to advance their creative reach.

Despite this, one of the most powerful means we have to develop concepts is deceptively simple: ink on paper. Far from fading in popularity, the fascination with sketching is exploding. Flickr groups like Moleskinerie, Line Drawing and The Drawing Club are growing as international professionals and hobbyists inspire each other.

In the following excerpts from Flickr, we see how these artists utilize simple lines — clean or grungy; thick and thin; controlled or spastic — not only to recreate reality, but to create their own realities.

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Drawing the Line

“In only a few short years, electronic computing systems have been invented and improved at a tremendous rate. But computers did not ‘just grow.’ They have evolved… They were born and they are being improved as a consequence of man’s ingenuity, his imagination… and his mathematics.” — 1958 IBM brochure

The Internet is a medium that is evolving at breakneck speed. It’s a wild organism of sweeping cultural change — one that leaves the carcasses of dead media forms in its sizeable wake. It’s transformative: it has transformed the vast globe into a ‘global village’ and it has drawn human communication away from print-based media and into a post-Gutenberg digital era. Right now, its perils are equal to its potential. The debate over ‘net neutrality’ is at a fever pitch. There is a tug-of-war going on between an ‘open web’ and a more governed form of the web (like the Apple-approved apps on the iPad/iPhone) that has more security but less freedom.

An illustration of a computer from a 1958 IBM promotional brochure titled ‘World of Numbers’

So what’s the next step in its evolution, and what’s the big picture? What does the Internet mean as an extension of human communication, of the human mind? And forget tomorrow — where will the web be in fifty years, or a hundred? Will the Internet help make the world look like something out of Blade Runner or Minority Report? Let’s just pray it doesn’t have anything to do with The Matrix sequels, because those movies really sucked.

This article will offer in-depth analysis of a range of subjects — from realistic expectations stemming from current trends to some more imaginative speculations on the distant future.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that we are publishing a Smashing eBook Series? The brand new eBook #3 is Mastering Photoshop For Web Design, written by our Photoshop-expert Thomas Giannattasio.]

Security

“Death of the Open Web”?

Those words have an ominous ring for those of us who have a deep appreciation of the Internet as well as high hopes for its future. The phrase comes from the title of a recent New York Times article that struck a nerve with some readers. The article paints a disquieting picture of the web as a “haphazardly planned” digital city where “malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters unsafe and unsanitary.”

There is a growing sentiment that the open web is a fundamentally dangerous place. Recent waves of hacked WordPress sites revealed exploited PHP vulnerabilities and affected dozens of well-known designers and bloggers like Chris Pearson. The tools used by those with malicious intent evolve just as quickly as the rest of the web. It’s deeply saddening to hear that, according to Jonathan Zittrain, some web users have stooped so low as to set up ‘Captcha sweatshops’ where (very) low-paid people are employed to solve Captcha security technology for malicious purposes all day. This is the part where I weep for the inherent sadness of mankind.

“If we don’t do something about this,” says Jonathan Zittrain of the insecure web, “I see the end of much of the generative aspect of the technologies that we now take for granted.” Zittrain is a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University and the author of The Future of the Internet: and How to Stop It; watch his riveting Google Talk on these subjects.

The Wild West: mainstream media’s favorite metaphor for today’s Internet

The result of the Internet’s vulnerability is a generation of Internet-centric products — like the iPad, the Tivo and the XBOX — that are not easily modified by anyone except their vendors and their approved partners. These products do not allow unapproved third-party code (such as the kind that could be used to install a virus) to run on them, and are therefore more reliable than some areas of the web. Increased security often means restricted or censored content — and even worse — limited freedoms that could impede the style of innovation that propels the evolution of the Internet, and therefore, our digital future.

The web of 2010 is a place where a 17 year-old high school student can have an idea for a website, program it in three days, and quickly turn it into a social networking craze used by millions (that student’s name is Andrey Ternovskiy and he invented Chatroulette). That’s innovation in a nutshell. It’s a charming story and a compelling use of the web’s creative freedoms. If the security risks of the Internet kill the ‘open web’ and turn your average web experience into one that is governed by Apple or another proprietary company, the Andrey Ternovskiys of the world may never get their chance to innovate.

Security Solutions

We champion innovation on the Internet and it’s going to require innovation to steer it in the right direction. Jonathan Zittrain says that he hopes we can come together on agreements for regulating the open web so that we don’t “feel that we have to lock down our technologies in order to save our future.”

According to Vint Cerf, vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, “I think we’re going to end up looking for international agreements – maybe even treaties of some kind – in which certain classes of behavior are uniformly considered inappropriate.”

Perhaps the future of the Internet involves social structures of web users who collaborate on solutions to online security issues. Perhaps companies like Google and Apple will team up with international governmental bodies to form an international online security council. Or maybe the innovative spirit of the web could mean that an independent, democratic group of digital security experts, designers, and programmers will form a grassroots-level organization that rises to prominence while fighting hackers, innovating on security technology, writing manifestos for online behavior, and setting an example through positive and supportive life online.

Many people are fighting to ensure your ability to have your voice heard online — so use that voice to participate in the debate, stay informed, and demand a positive future. Concerned netizens and Smashing readers: unite!

Freedom

Net Neutrality

Some believe that the fate of the Internet has been up for grabs ever since the federal government stopped enforcing ‘network neutrality’ rules in the mid-2000’s. In a nutshell, net neutrality means equality among the information that travels to your computer: everyone has the right to build a website that is just as public, affordable, and easily accessible as any other. However, some companies like phone and internet service providers are proposing ‘pay tiers’ (web service where you need to pay premium fees in order to allow visitors to access your site quickly). These tiers of web service could kill net neutrality by allowing those who can afford premium service (particularly large media companies who don’t like sharing their audience with your blog) greater access to consumers than the average web user.

The debate over net neutrality reached a boiling point when Google and Verizon announced a ‘joint policy proposal for an open Internet’ on August 9th, 2010. Despite the proposal’s call for a “new, enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices” amongst online content, many criticized it, citing leniency and loopholes.

Net neutrality needs to be made law. If the Internet were to have a slow lane and a fast lane, your average web user could lose many of his or her freedoms and opportunities online, thereby shattering the core values that make the Internet so profoundly valuable to society. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for this thorny issue. To learn more, read the full proposal or watch the Bill Moyers episode ‘The Net @ Risk.’

The World into the Web

Browser-based Everything

Google is developing a variety of applications and programs that exist entirely within the browser. Their PAC-MAN game was a preview of what’s to come because it allowed in-browser play of a simple, lightweight video game that required no downloads and relied on pure HTML, CSS, and Javascript. At the company’s 2010 I/O conference, Google laid out its plans to develop “rich multimedia applications that operate within the browser” (according to this New York Times report on the conference). The company plans to sell in-browser web applications like photo editing software (imagine using a Photoshop equivalent entirely within the browser) that it will sell in a web applications store called the Chrome Web Store.

If our programs and applications are about to be folded into the browser, what will exist within the browser in ten years? Currency? Education? Consciousness? Personally, I’m hopeful that my browser will be able to produce piping hot cheeseburgers sometime soon.

The Internet as a Collective Consciousness

The Internet is a medium, and philosopher Marshall McLuhan believed that all media are extensions of the human senses. The engine of our collective creative efforts is the force that’s causing the web to evolve more rapidly than any biological organism ever has.

Transcendence is one of the great themes of human culture. Image of seated Buddha statue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Internet is an extension of the collective human mind and it’s evolving into a medium of transcendence. By constructing a place where the collective human consciousness is both centralized in one location (on your computer) and globally accessible (for those with the means to reach or use a computer, that is), our human spirit is transcending the human body. Way back in 1964, McLuhan himself wondered, “might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness?”

With the advent of trends including social media, ‘lifecasting,’ and ‘mindcasting,’ the Internet is being used as a real-time portal for the human consciousness. Perhaps those trends will be inverted by some web users of the future: instead of bringing offline life to the web (as so-called ‘lifecasters’ do when they stream live video of their attendance at an offline event), some web users will live their entire public lives online. Imagine a pop star who conducts her entire career online: every interview, live performance, music video or album release conducted solely through a browser window or mobile screen. Or a media theorist who exploited the platform of the web while discussing the theoretical ramifications of those actions. It’d be a great gimmick.

The Web into the World

The ‘Web of Things’

The ‘web of things’ or ‘Internet of things’ is a concept that will be a reality (at least in a rudimentary form) in the near future. The idea is that devices, appliances, and even your pets can all be tracked online. With Google Maps for iPhone, you can currently track your location on a digital map in relation to the streets and landmarks in your area. So it’s not hard to imagine a world where you can zoom in on your location and see detailed, 3D renderings of your surroundings: the cars on your block, the coffee machine in your kitchen, even Rover running around in your backyard! And it’s a good thing that you’re digitally tracking the location of poor Rover; he’s liable to hop the fence and make a run for it now that you’ve created a satellite computer out of everything you own (including his dog collar) by attaching a tracking device to it.

AT&T is betting big on the web of things. According to this Reuters article, the phone service provider is investing in tracking devices that could be installed in cars, on dog collars, and on the pallets used to move large shipments of products. The dog collar, for example, “could send text messages or emails to the owner of a pet when it strays outside a certain area, or the device could allow continuous tracking of the pet.”

Combine the concept of the ‘web of things’ with Second Life-style 3D imaging and you can imagine a web-based duplicate world — a virtual world that corresponds to the real one. But what are the implications of a world where every physical item has a corresponding digital existence online? Can we track the physical effects of climate change in the web of things? Will there be a digital avatar for every pelican carcass in the vicinity of the oil spill that’s devastating the Gulf of Mexico? It’s a tragic shame to develop a virtual world if we let the natural one go to waste in the meantime.

Interactive Landscapes

It has been said that today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality. Unfortunately, most good science fiction stories are cautionary tales set in dystopian nightmares.

QR codes on the façade of Japan’s N Building. Photo: Gizmodo

Simon Mainwaring reports on the N building in Japan, where “the whole building facade has been transformed into a real time dialogue between smart phones and what’s going on inside the store.” The exterior of the building is layered with QR codes (an alternate form of bar code) that can deliver real-time information to your phone. In Stephen Spielberg’s film Minority Report (adapted from a short story by mad genius Philip K. Dick), Gap ads came alive to hawk khakis to Tom Cruise. Looks like we’re about one step away from this scenario.

Mr. Mainwaring imagines a future with “billboards that watch you shop and make targeted suggestions based on your age, location and past buying habits,” and “stores will effectively be turned inside out as dialogue and personalized interaction with customers begins outside the store.”

The technology is cool, but it sounds like a pretty annoying future if you ask me. Who wants to be accosted by a holographic salesperson? The web grants us a great opportunity to use our collective voices to speak out on topics that matter to us. Because there are no regulations yet for much of this technology, it may be up to concerned citizens to make themselves heard if Internet-based technology is used in intrusive or abrasive ways.

The ‘Innerweb’

Cyborgs are among us already — humans whose physical abilities have been extended or altered by mechanical elements built into the body (people who live with pacemakers are one example). What will happen when the Internet becomes available on a device that is biologically installed in a human? What will the first internal user interfaces look like?

Here’s one speculation.

In the near future, we may be capable of installing the Internet directly into the user’s field of vision via a tiny computer chip implanted into the eye. Sound far-fetched? I doubt that it would sound far-fetched for Barbara Campbell, whose sight has been partially restored by a digital retinal implant (CNN reports on Barbara’s artificial retina).

Ms. Campbell was blind for many years until she had a small microchip surgically implanted in her eye. A rudimentary image of Ms.Campbell’s surroundings is transmitted to the device, which stimulates cells in her retina, in turn transmitting a signal to her brain. It’s a miracle that the development of a bionic eye has begun to help the blind see.

How else might doctors and scientists take advantage of the internal microchip? Perhaps the user’s vision will be augmented with an Internet-based interface with capabilities including geolocation or object identification. Imagine if technology like Google Goggles (a web-based application that identifies images from landmarks to book covers) was applied inside that interface. The act of seeing could not only be restored but augmented; a user might be capable of viewing a landscape while simultaneously identifying web-based information about it or even searching it for physical objects not visible to the naked eye. Apply the concept of augmented sight with the idea of the ‘web of things’ — an environment where physical objects have a corresponding presence on the web — and you can imagine a world where missing people are located, theft is dramatically reduced, the blind can see, and ‘seeing’ itself means something more than it used to.

If the web is an extension of our senses, it follows suit that the web may be capable of modifying those senses or even accelerating their evolution.

The Crown Jewels

“The next Bill Gates will be the deliverer of a highly technological solution to some of our climate change challenges.” — Lord Digby Jones of Birmingham

In preparation for this article, I considered a variety of wild ideas and fun speculations about the future. Could the Internet be used to solve the problem of climate change, generate tangible matter, or contact extraterrestrial life? Maybe those ideas sound like the stuff of imaginative fiction, but in a world where quantum teleportation has been achieved and researchers have created a living, synthetic cell, it almost seems as if the concept of science fiction is being eradicated while real technology brings our wildest fantasies to life. Here is the result of my most daring (absurd?) speculation.

Time Travel

The functionality of the Internet relies on a linear series of events. Image: Eadweard Muybridge

I called on physics teacher Mark Stratil to answer my last burning question: could the Internet ever be capable of facilitating the development of time travel? Here’s Mark’s answer:

“The Internet is still based on computers, which make linear calculations. Right now, all computers are based on binary code, which is a series of yes and no questions. You can make something that’s incredibly complex with a series of yes and no questions, but it takes a certain amount of time. The Internet still has to go through those calculations and it still physically has to make one calculation that will lead to the next calculation that will lead to the next. So no matter how fast we can get our computers – they’re making billions of calculations, trillions of calculations per second – there’s still going to be some lag time. They’re still limited by time in that way. They still need some time to make that conversation or that calculation.

In that way, they’re kind of chained to time. Their whole existence is based on a linear sequence of things that happen. In order to create something else, something that goes outside of time, you would have to make it a non-linear system — something that that’s not based on a series of yes and no questions, because those have to be answered in a precise order. It would have to be some kind of system that was answering all the questions at once.”

So Mark’s short answer to my fundamental question was basically that the Internet, in its current state, would not be capable of facilitating time travel. However, if the Internet was liberated from the linear structure of binary code and migrated onto an operating system that ‘answered all questions at once,’ then maybe it could have the potential to manipulate time or transcend the boundaries of time.

Sounds unlikely at this point, but one of the Internet’s greatest capabilities is the opportunity to share and develop ideas like these!

Conclusion

Responsible Evolution

Through technology, we hold the reins to our own evolution.

For the first time in history, it might be said that there are moral implications in the act of evolution. The Internet is an extension of our senses and our minds, and its progress is propelled by our own creative and intellectual efforts. The future of the Internet will be shaped by millions of choices and decisions by people from all walks of life. Designers and programmers like us have the advantage of technical skill and specialized knowledge. Given the increasing presence of the Internet in our lives, our choices can have deep reverberations in human society.

We’ll face small choices like what color to use for a button and larger choices like which platforms to endorse and which clients to support with our work. But the real questions form broad patterns behind every media trend and every mini technological revolution. Can we use technology to develop solutions to environmental problems — or will we abandon the natural world in favor of a digital one and the ‘web of things’? Have we fully considered what it means to merge biology and technology? And finally, do we really need a digital tracking device on our coffee machines?

What a thrilling time to be alive! Let’s proceed with great enthusiasm and a commitment to designing a future that is meaningful, peaceful, and staggeringly exciting.

Partial Bibliography

• New York Times Magazine: “The Death of the Open Web”
• Simon Mainwaring: “The Future of Shopping: What Happens When Walls Start Talking”
• The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Parallels Between Pre-Printing Communication and the Digital Era
• New York Times: “Google Pitches a Web-Centric Future”
• Google Talks: The Future of the Internet
• Moyers on America: ‘The Net @ Risk’ (Video)
• Pew Internet Research Poll: Future of the Internet IV
• Google I/O: The Web is Killing Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, and TV (TechChrunch reports)

Related Posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• The Evolution of the Logo
• The Dying Art Of Design
• Lessons From Swiss Style Graphic Design
• Art Manifestos and Their Applications in Contemporary Design

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© Dan Redding for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: analysis, future, internet

“The need is constant. The gratification is instant.” That’s from the American Red Cross, and it was copy that I plugged into a poster for a blood drive at a comics convention. Sitting beside an image of the sexy and well-endowed Vampirella, the words took on a different meaning. Oops! But I was struck by how these words are a perfect assessment of our society. We want it all, instantly and as cheap as possible. We are a Walmart culture. Fast and cheap have entered our every pore and changed our society, our lives and our livelihoods. Compounding our daily worries and pressures, we now fight to keep our industry professional and profitable. Clients want our blood for free, and the “hacks” are designing us out of existence. Most people blame the laptop and easy-to-use software. Many blame art schools for favoring quantity over quality. Can any of these be blamed merely for doing business? If someone who has no idea what they’re doing wants to purchase a computer and a slew of graphics software and call themselves a designer, then they’re in business. All you need is a computer, software and beard and you are an ARTIST!.. Right? Should we call this “competing in the marketplace” or just “giving it away… and eroding respect for what we do in the process”? Every freelancer who has dared to provide an actual estimate for their work has heard in reply, “I can get it done cheaper.” And the client can. The job, which requires thousands to be done properly, can be delivered for hundreds, and its horridness would never be noticed by the client. They will not notice the lack of a return on their investment or the consumers avoiding their service or the people making sport of their new logo online. And if they do — which would likely happen after they’ve gone out of business for making all the wrong, cheap decisions — they will blame graphic designers. All of us. When a staff designer makes a blunder — even if only a perceived one — all designers need to have a watchful eye. We are the weird kids, the ones who drew pictures in math class while the kids who became marketing directors and account managers told on us. Yes, we need watching. If you ever wondered how the practice of presenting several ideas in a meeting gained such a foothold in our business, just imagine some of the incompetents in the Floogelbinders Guild in the 7th century who really screwed up and codified the practice… before their heads were chopped off and their limbs burned. Ah, the good ol’ days, when they really knew how to maintain professionalism.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the Smashing Book?]

What Exactly Is A “Hack”?

Let’s take a look at dictionaries. Hack: noun.

1. A horse used for riding or driving; a hackney.
2. A worn-out horse for hire; a jade.
3. One who undertakes unpleasant or distasteful tasks for money or reward; a hireling.
4. A writer hired to produce routine or commercial writing.
5. A carriage or hackney for hire.
6. A taxicab.

Those who responded to my query in social media had great insights and varied opinions on what is a ‘hack’. Wrote one designer:

It is not as regulated as other professions, such as interior design and architecture or accounting for that matter. To call oneself a designer, there is no apprenticeship required, no test to pass, no certification to obtain. If you have access to the software, it’s open season.

One creative director wrote some very kind words:

I view hacks as part of the overall ecology of what drives business when it comes to design and branding. On the one hand, hack has a connotation as it relates to businesses that are starting up or struggling to survive or that simply don’t take design seriously — the kind of business-folk who just look for the lowest bidder. Then there are the sincerely talented designers who simply lack ambition, business savvy or both, and who do not get past five years in their careers. Either situation actually helps cultivate a wonderful ecology of design business, in my opinion.

Surprisingly, an editor-in-chief of a well-known news service responded with an outrageous number of typos and grammatical errors (corrected here):

Every industry has hacks, but most artists I have met (most, not all) really do strive to be original and to use their imaginations to come up with new ideas. Very few jaded ones will rehash old stuff or try to peddle work that is derivative. It is always “buyer beware” in this case. If the guy seems like a slick used-car salesman, find someone else with whom you can work. On the other hand, artists look out for people who don’t want to sign contracts, people who can’t tell good art from bad, people who can’t make up their minds after being presented with 20 different sketches, and people who will not pay an advance or a set-up fee.

A well-known writer, checking in as “misery-loves-company,” added:

There are hacks in every discipline. Try working as a professional writer. Anybody with a keyboard and the ability to type can claim this for a calling.

A gentleman with the title of “Business Development” added another view that creatives might not hear often:

I’ve thought about the definition of hack. It is conceivable that a person with no formal training or someone who did not do well in design school could rise to the top of their profession. They would have to be driven to succeed and committed to quality, I am sure. But there is no guaranteed correlation between the eliteness of one’s education and the quality of their current work.

Is “CrowdSourcing” and “Fixed-Price” Online Shops the Future?

I was once invited to witness what crowdsourcing could do. I guess I was being lined up for the next firing squad and lured by free pizza. I honestly thought I was attending a gathering of designers at a promotional advertising company. Mmmmm, nope! The owner described the projects, mostly logos, and showed what a source of 8 “designers” could design. Seems that was the unpaid part. The “best designer” would get paid for finishing the project, which might not be his/her logo but a mashup of every design the owner, who now also owned all of the unpaid designs, decided to create…because he was so creative. “That’s a win-win situation” he closed with. I could hear him from the supply room, where I was helping myself to my “out-of-court settlement” for having been dragged to this thing. HOW Magazine’s July issue has an article on crowdsourcing. Quotes from two authors on the subject in that article say:

Perhaps, as Debbie Millman writes, this trend does devalue our services. Perhaps, as David Baker observes, it weeds out the low-level clients we shouldn’t be working with, anyway. Is crowdsourcing really “stealing” work from professional designers — or has it simply replaced the quick-print guy and the executive assistants?

The editor adds:

One answer to that question may be: Let’s reinvent crowdsourcing so it works to the benefit, not the detriment, of both parties in the exchange. Maybe we could invent a way for a small group of designers, vetted for their expertise, to engage with a client, present their ideas, earn compensation for those ideas — and then the designer whose concept is chosen is further paid to fully develop and execute that idea. Talented creatives from all over the globe could participate in a project they would otherwise have no access to. Designers and clients have an opportunity to interact, so the solution isn’t derived in a vacuum (as is often the case with crowdsourcing). Clients can connect with a range of qualified creative thinkers to build their business. It doesn’t have to be cheap. Everyone gets paid. The client chooses the best solution.

Aside from other glaring mistakes in the article on business practices, the editor is quite obviously fond of glowing rainbows and unicorns. Every creatives’ guild or organization is against this practice because companies use it to their best advantage financially and people continue to provide work. Those attending this cult-fest of design suggested the same thing the HOW editor outlined, to the crowdsourcing person who called us to the ill-fated meeting. Pay MORE money for the same work? It wasn’t going to happen in non-unicorn world. HOW? How MUCH, is more like it. “Mommy, I hate designer’s guts!” “Shut up and eat!” To their credit, they did mention the position of organizations, which they totally ignored when sprinkling pixie dust on the subject and presenting it to readers who want to know “HOW?”

Professional organizations must tread lightly in advocating against unpaid work, as AIGA discovered in the 1990s, when the Federal Trade Commission ruled that any statement or code of ethics that advised members not to work for free amounted to price-fixing. Its current position supports fair compensation for design work, and delineates between spec work (where a creative works for free in hopes of compensation) and unpaid work like pro-bono projects or internships (where services are willingly given away). The Graphic Artists Guild warns its members against competitions where the sponsoring organization retains all rights to all submissions, and helps creatives avoid unfavorable contracts.

Surprisingly, Forbes aired an article on crowdsourcing and of course, the self-appointed “capitalist tool,” seemed more impressed with it as a business model, rather than a threat to an industry. To be fair, they were balanced in exploring a few quotes echoed by other professionals in the field.

Mix crowdsourcing, the Internet and a huge pool of underemployed graphic designers, and the outcome is a company that’s grabbed a great deal of attention. In the two and a half years since it launched, Web startup 99designs out of Melbourne, Australia, boasts that it’s helped to broker 48,000 graphic design projects for big name clients like Adidas and DISH Network as well as for thousands of small businesses.

Personally, I’ll be sure to remember that when I need new sneakers or satellite TV service. Will other creatives?

Acting as a middleman between business owners and graphic designers, the 99designs site hosts contests in which clients post their needs — website design, logos, print packages — and designers compete to fill them. Instead of bidding for the job, designers submit finished work tailored to the client specifications in the contest listing. 99designs calls it a win-win scenario: Its clients gain access to the site’s pool of 73,000 active designers, while the designers are given a chance to compete for “upwards of $600,000 in awards paid out monthly.”

So, if my math is correct and every one of the 73,000 designers won just one competition a month, each would get $8.22. Sure not every one will win with the four to six entries they must submit to each contest…assignment…act of piracy on the high digital seas…whatever, so some designers will get $16.44 or maybe $32.88 per month? If I lived in Bali…and was stealing someone else’s electricity, I could live well. Well…live.

“99designs is something akin to a Walmart,” says Dan Ibarra, industry veteran and co-founder of Aesthetic Apparatus, a Minneapolis design studio. “It’s not necessarily dedicated to bringing you good work, but to bring you a lot of it. That’s not necessarily better.” Ibarra’s thoughts echo the general response from designers to a 2009 article Forbes ran on a 99designs look-alike called Crowdspring.com. Many critics of Crowdspring’s business model directed readers to NO!SPEC.com, an online campaign dedicated to educating the public about the risks of speculative work — which is, as defined by NO!SPEC, work in which the designer “invests time and resources with no guarantee of payment,” a “huge gamble” for designers competing against thousands of others.

Other professionals I have spoken with on the subject feel it’s just not a threat to the “design experience” or the “personal touch.” Several feel it just separates the serious design clients from the casual small business.

You have to remember that everything is consumer driven. What I mean is that the consumer is the one that dictates how we set our prices. If a consumer is unwilling to spend $100.00 for an original work verses spending $50.00 for one located on-line…what can you really do?

I really hope that it’s not. I think (and hope) that there will always be a market for those of us who don’t have quite a structured pricing plan, and who are willing to pay more for quality instead of quantity.

I’m still waiting for the day graphic design is held in the same regard as auto mechanics and plumbers… you don’t get fixed rates with them, and they’ll laugh at you if you ask for it. There’s a price for parts and and an hourly rate for service, end of discussion. You can give a flat rate by estimating (to yourself) how many hours it will take and then padding that for how many revisions the client will ask for. If you fall short, remember that the next time, but don’t penalize the client. Keep good records of your time. And… you obviously can’t charge the same fee for logo design for a company on the scale of Coca Cola as you would for Joe’s Landscaping down the street. It’s a different value to each. Large corporations get much more use and ROI from a logo than a one man show. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

With regards to fixed vs hourly, we almost always do fixed. Even on big application development projects. Sure, there are concerns with client requestitis and scope creep but thats part of the consideration. With hourly you are always guaranteed to be punished for your efficiency and experience by getting paid less. As for cheapo logos and web templates? Go for it I say. It’s nothing new. The clients that find that type of thing valuable are the ones I don’t have the time to educate on the real value of thoughtful design.

It’s the future for clients that have a “checkbox mentality”, where a logo, a brochure, a website, are just things on a list to check off, rather than key elements of their business strategy. Those clients have never been good clients. They’ve never paid well, or been good to work for. For a brief time, as design exploded and became available to businesses that couldn’t afford it previously, they had to buy more than they wanted, and employ real designers. Now that the supply of “designers” has also exploded, these design-blind clients can buy what they actually want, which is a cheap template with their words and photos stuck in it. They’ve never wanted real design, the market has evolved to give them what they want. The market for clients that do want real design is still there, and still very profitable for designers with the right skills and talents. But the bar for that market is very high, and people that can’t reach it are stuck in a no man’s land between the heights of success and the pits of mass-produced junk design.

Since clients have variable needs and budgets, there is definitely room in the marketplace to offer low-cost design services online. The clients who use these online design resources may not be a good fit for those of us who are answering this question, but they have a need with a tight budget and online creative services seem to fulfill that need. Traditionally, junior designers and recent graduates have had access to the low budget projects more experienced individuals have passed on. I think the online sites provide a similar outlet. Students may benefit from putting their hat in an online ring to get experience – especially when they will (most likely) be charging similar low rates. Established creatives and businesses probably have other methods of finding work (the Internet is a great tool for getting business, but does not replace all other traditional marketing/networking/prospecting) so I do not think fixed-price online creative sites will completely ruin our ability to maintain a viable business.

Does Art School Make You A Professional?

Being an art school drop-out myself (12 credits shy, and going back over a decade later to get them) and having much success without a degree, I naturally understand this point about art school. Many echoed this sentiment: that creativity has nothing to do with a degree. I was teaching at Parson’s School of Design long before I went back to take the four art history classes I needed to graduate. My work for major corporations did, however, require a four-year degree. Guess the “accomplishment level” can mean something. Ah! but is it art? “HA! As the sole surviving creative, I can charge $50 for a logo!” (it’ll still be argued down to $20). It is a popular major, though, as one designer noted:

I asked nearly the same question to the owner of the art college I eventually graduated from: “Do you think similar two-year programs are flooding the market with graphic designers?” His answer was a resounding “No,” and he followed that with, “Talented artists will always find work when untalented artists don’t.” With the designers I’ve met or worked with and the ones I’ve read about, I’d have to I agree.

Naturally, sticks and stones were thrown:

From what I understand from meeting other students, the quality of education is lacking. Apparently, many educators simply like to take home a pay check for doing the least amount of work. A lot of the students suffer from not having any mentorship from a qualified teacher. However, the top students always find their way through the educational maze to get the cheese.

Should art schools teach online fixed-price business to students? Most people say, “no!” Shouldn’t an art school prepare a student to enter the field from day one with all the material and professional skills needed to enter the field as a peer and not a “hack” who lowers the bar for fees and professional demeanor?

Mediocrity runs rampant in today’s society. I don’t think design schools should teach the principles of online stores but make their students aware of what is out there and what they will come up against in the real world. Unfortunately many will go that way. But a true designer is worth their weight in gold, and will always cost more than Walmart pricing.

I’m sorry but I’m still laughing too hard at keeping a straight face while typing about art schools training students to enter the field. Pile on the insults as you will but I rarely see graduating portfolio shows that aren’t frightful, not due to the talent, but to their ideas on what they expect once they graduate. Several months ago I received a request for an essay of 2,500-5,000 words a dean at a Chicago art school wanted to “relay” to students. Naturally he was shocked I wanted to be paid. Guess those students stepped into a world of do-do. As a student commented on the question of fixed-price:

There are some pros and cons for hourly and fixed. However really as a designer you might benefit more from fixed pricing. Example: You design a logo at $20 an hour. Let’s say for the first time you do this logo it takes you 5 hours. The next time you do the logo, you get it done in half the time. 2.5 hours. You just cut your profit in half.  Now the designers that are charging $50, should wake up and realize there offering a service that is worth WAY more than what they are charging. In the beginning of starting my own design business I charge fairly cheap as well. I wanted to build a portfolio and clientele list. Once I had references and a portfolio to show, my rate can go up, because I can prove I’m worth it.

Yes, $20 an hour and $50 logos will shore up the prices she was going to command one day. No, it will set the bar with anyone you quote those prices to while I’m trying to charge a fair market rate. You have lowered that fair rate. Thanks for learning how to run a business within an unlicensed industry that relies on a standard of practice not being taught anywhere. AAAAAAAH! I’m still wondering what kind of logo is created in 2.5 hours. Oh, a “hack” one!

A Solution To Reconcile These Views?

Would a guild or union distinguish between an apprentice, a tradesperson and a master craftsperson? Some have tried. Years ago, I was a member of the board of the Graphic Artists Guild, along with several legal rights groups for artists. The prospect of unionizing was a constant buzz. Every meeting, time was set aside for the subject. There was discussion of joining established unions if no plan could be found to successfully create a union hierarchy and stop those who do not belong dead in their tracks. Neither plan would ever work. Unions on the whole no longer have the clout or power they once commanded. The removal of organized crime really hurt them. The mob knew how to get things done. Now politicians try to do the same but without any efficiency. No union would take on the cause of an entire industry with so many holes as ours. No organization could ever stop the incursion of single-person home studios and $99 logos… or the equivalent on the Internet. “Billy tried unionizing his art class in school. The other kids were heavily punished. I hope they learned a lesson, too!” In an effort to establish standards and set pay levels for professional positions and freelance projects, the Graphic Artists Guild publishes a annual book entitled The Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. I highly recommend it to those starting out. It’s loaded with contracts, pricing, rights and considerations we must all apply to every job, so that both parties come out of a project eager to work together on the next one. We are an unregulated business — anyone can join. I believe had we adopted the tactics of organized crime, we would be living the life of Las Vegas celebrities, and I get to be Elvis! Family heads, lieutenants, enforcers — face it, the mob gets things done. Can you imagine an enforcer negotiating with a client? Many years ago I tried pitching a comic feature to design magazines about a mob boss in the witness protection program, set up in a secret identity as an illustrator’s representative. “Zip Atoné & the Bull Pen Boys” was Goodfellas meets the publishing/advertising world.

Client: “I don’t sign contracts!”

Zip Atoné: “Well, that’s too bad because either your signature or brains is gonna be on that contract when I leave!”

Wouldn’t that be great!? Back to reality…

Design Contests Erode The Industry

The Graphic Artists Guild, along with every other professional creative organization, is against “contests,” in which the creative submits a design, illustration or photo (which become the property of the contest runner) in the hope of winning some measly prize that is not even worth the fee their work would have earned in the open market. But these contests get floods of entries. Who are the people who enter them? AIGA has a form letter on its website encouraging people to post when contests come up. A noble effort. These contests are not advertised on cereal boxes. They appear in the inboxes of creatives. They are advertised on design blogs and websites. They are run by the same corporations that earn millions by selling us burgers and sodas every day. So, winning an iPod seems like a fair trade-off… in Bizzarro World! Getting our money and putting toxins in our bodies just isn’t enough for them. Your “prize” is equal to what this costs…a stroke and your eternal soul! In the end, we are the regulators of our own unregulated industry. If business is this cut-throat, then are we being lax by not making the removal of hacks and crowdsourcers from the industry our primary concern, or have they been doing the same to us, successfully, and we didn’t see it until it was too late? Does it just provide a cheap alternative for customers who don’t know quality, branding, marketing, customer appeal and retention? If, as mentioned in the article on Forbes, big companies are now getting into crowdsourcing, is there to be any leverage for freelancers or design and development firms? We will never be unified by a union or organization but we can listen to our peers either through networking or organizations like AIGA and the GAG for some semblance of order. The experienced creatives need to mentor those entering the field. Art schools need to focus on business and professional practices as much as technique and other creative skills. There will continue to be clients that want it for nothing and will get what they don’t pay for. There will be plenty who understand the need for quality and that it costs a fair wage, sort of. Please, just keep the previous from calling me! (al)

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© Speider Schneider for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine Post tags: designers, hacks, professionalism