MASTERING DESIGN THEORY - HONEST DESIGNERS PODCAST, EP12

I thought it might be helpful to listen to what other creatives and designers feel are important design theories that have helped them in their profession and design careers. I came across a great episode of the Honest Designers Podcast, where they do just that.


   


They discussed what they believe makes a good piece of design and the most simple answer is that it’s ‘easy to understand’. Usually this involves good hierarchy and ensuring there is a main focal point, then all the content around that point supports it. If there isn’t a focal point that guides the viewer around the information then the design becomes chaotic and hard to view and understand. You need to know design theory to do this, you can’t just create good design on trial and error alone. You need to find a balance of knowledge of design theory and creativity, the theory guides you and helps you form a plan and the creativity gives the design abstraction and whats makes it interesting.

They also discussed that good design is about grabbing people's attention, being disruptive during your mundane day to day life - waking you up! Design is often about ‘selling something’ or getting someone to do something. Whether it’s as simple as a street sign pointing someone to the right direction or a complex rebranding system. If it successful in selling to the audience then the designer has succeeded.

They went on to talk about where they learnt their skills and theories as a designer that it wasn’t always during a good education background, that they mainly learnt from others and making mistakes. Sometimes you can’t see a mistake until someone points it out and explains, then you need to go away and correct that and learn how.

One example, which I definitely remember learning myself during my career, is the orphan/widow rule. That a paragraph should never end with a single word sitting alone or a short line ending as it becomes hard to read and digest the information, and makes the design look unbalanced. But when you are learning as a designer you may not know that until you have someone to point it out to you.

Some of the best learning experiences as a designer are from very basic artworking and typesetting jobs. When you are laying out large amounts of copy, it teaches you the fundamentals of typography, how to balance and manipulate text and improve readability. This is arguably the most important design theory.

“The whole point is that you don’t notice how easy it is to read” then you know it is good design.

But does good design always have to follow strict rules. They discuss a piece of packaging design for a bar or soap, its chaotic and comes across untidy and crammed full of horrible typography, but it’s incredibly popular and they sell so many bars! This conjured up lots of questions, like does that mean it’s good design or bad design? Can bad design sell too? Or is that that intentionally bad design is then good design?

Moving on from that they talk about how the most simple designs can sometimes be the hardest and therefore a good opportunity to apply design theories. Like trying to layout a simple business card. Sometimes when you’re using basic content there's ‘nowhere to hide’ your mistakes, your designs become vulnerable. Just the smallest misalignment can make something feel unbalanced and look wrong, without realising.

That’s why sometimes it’s best to learn good design and theories from other people’s work. If you see work you admire and try to mimic what they’ve done you realise how hard it is to replicate it and gain the same results. It makes you work hard to understand how it looks that way and how it feels in their shoes to design it.

They discussed how the best way to practice theories is to take a piece of really ‘bad’ design and rework it. Reworking designs allow you to use all you’ve learnt as a designer. How can you make it better - realign it, improve the balance, add white space.

Ended on a great (slightly unrelated) quote “if you’re not embarrassed by the work you did last year, you’re not growing.”

It was great listening to a group of like minded designers and illustrators talk about what they feel are the most important theories that they apply to their work. It was very apparent from their discussion that the theories they have learnt and apply have come to them through their many years of being working practitioners, that they have learnt them while developing as good/successful creatives. Not just from their past education or reading books, it’s more about working with others and learning from what they do and why.

I thought the point about reworking ‘bad’ design was a great way to apply theory. It will really make you think about what you’re doing. I think when you are a working designer you are designing away and doing what you just know is good design - applying the theories without realising. But by picking apart the mistakes in a piece of work it highlights all the things you’ve learnt as a practitioner, rather than unconsciously designing.