Universal principles of design

I often come across the assumption that because daily business revolves around a specific medium, one's design expertise is limited only to that discipline. By day, my primary focus is on designing engaging user experiences for the web, but I don't consider myself to be a web designer. In my mind, design is far, far broader than that.

I recently had the opportunity to design an EPG interface for a television set-top box. To me this was an interesting departure from my day to day work in e-commerce, social media and application design; a chance to look at the world from a different perspective.

When the design was complete, the technical director of the project seemed genuinely surprised that I had understood and adapted to the peculiarities of the EPG, and had designed a user interface that was both intuitive and technically correct. Not bad for a web designer.

He'd worked with many web designers in the past who had  attempted to translate their UI design principals to the television screen, and had failed miserably; Delivering a web experience that was neither practical nor technically possible on a television.

The World Wide Web is just one medium that I work with, and I am particularly good at it. But design, for me, is universal. It is about finding a balance between something over which you have no control, and something over which you have no limitation.

On one side you have the immovable truth: The problem, the business objective, the strategy - whatever it happens to be. On the other, you have possibility - a blank canvas. What you put into this space, in order to answer, solve or fulfill the immovable truth, is Design.

Televisions and EPGs have some immovable truths:

• They are generally navigated with a remote control, using directional arrows


• They don't have a cursor


• Anamorphic HD will be squeezed into a Standard Definition screen, losing resolution


• There are 'safe areas' to observe, in order to avoid having your interface cropped


• Televisions don't handle certain colours particularly well

Some might see these as obstacles, but I see them as truths; Neither negative or positive. It's just the way things are, and I have to work around them. I have to design an intuitive and engaging user interface around these truths.

I avoided problematic colours in situations where they might bleed. I used fonts and type-sizes that would shrink gracefully and still be legible when reduced to Standard Definition. I created a grid that respected the 'safe areas' and didn't put anything important close to the edges. I included 'on focus' styling so that the user could see which button they were on, without relying on a mouse-cursor to tell them.

In my world, Design is about solving problems and answering questions. Good Design is about solving problems in new and interesting ways. Great Design is about taking those fundamental principals and applying them to any given problem, regardless of the discipline or medium.

Javascript: A job for designers or developers?

I've come across a number of conflicting opinions when it comes to where Javascript belongs in the website production workflow. Personally, I find working with Javascript both infuriating and rewarding, but is it a developer's job, or is it a design thing?

At first, I thought it was a web developer's responsibility. Afterall, it's a scripting language, right? It involves writing code in order to extend a webpage with some kind of logical intelligence. A web designer, on the other hand uses markup; an instructional language describing the contents of a page to a web browser, with no inherent perception or decision-making capabilities. This seems to make sense, but there is another way of looking at it.

In Defining Web Designer 2.0, I looked at the myriad roles of the new breed of web designer, one of which was that of Interaction Design. As Javascript matures - or should I say the application of Javascript matures - it's becoming more an integral part of an Interaction Designer's usability toolkit. Whether it's providing client-side form validation or visual feedback for a subtle AJAX call, Javascript is very much a part of the User Experience.

Unlike server-side languages such as PHP or Ruby, the quality and application of Javascript code has a direct effect on a user's experience. And I believe it's this subtle qualitative aspect of Javascript that separates it from the rest of a web developer's toolkit.

I know a few designers who would go as white as a sheet, faced with the prospect of owning Javascript development, but I believe that if a designer is to create inspired user experiences, they should have a thorough understanding of the tools at their disposal, and that includes Javascript.

Size Isn't Everything

I'm sure most designers and design agencies, particularly on the web, harbour an unshakable desire to work with the biggest brands in the world. I'm sure most of us have dreamed, at one time or another, of landing a high profile account with the likes of Nike, Coca-Cola or Samsung. For most of us, this represents the pinnacle of our profession; The bigger, the better. But I'm not sure that's true.

Don't get me wrong; I'd love to be working on the next mobile handset launch, or designing a sexy new consumer web application with a seven-figure marketing budget, but I think there's a far more interesting world out there, that is often overlooked in the quest for fame and fortune.

I've been in the web design business for about more than 10 years now. In that time I've gone from freelancer to creative director to managing director, and some of the most challenging and engaging projects I've worked on have been with start-ups and SMEs. The characters behind these companies have a deep emotional link with their brand that isn't often found at a more corporate level; Something I find incredibly attractive and inspiring.

Since founding Moko Digital last year, my horizons have broadened dramatically. As part of The Dene Group, I often find myself pitching alongside Steve Salam, who has a plethora of big-brand experience to call upon that, at first made me feel a little inadequate. It's a difficult act to follow. And then I began to take stock of my career.

Looking back and assessing the true value of what you've achieved can be an empowering experience. And by value I don't mean your profit margin or your market share; I mean the value you have bestowed upon your client through your work. What effect your design work and expertise had on their lives and businesses (which for most start-ups are inextricably linked).

Beyond the nostalgic sense of accomplishment, and the pang of indignity over some of my dubious design decisions in the early years, lay the realisation that I had changed lives forever. I could look myself in the mirror and say with confidence that I have created ground-breaking brands and shaken markets to the core with my design work.

This might sound like a bold and egocentric statement, but it's undeniably true. Some of the brands I have helped fulfill are indeed relatively small when compared with my later work for PokerStars and the like, but my expertise gave them the punch they needed to break new ground and explore new territories.

Their markets may have been local, but it's funny how a confident new brand affects its competitors. It causes shockwaves that ripple outwards, forcing everyone around them to take stock and rethink their strategies. It may have been in a small pond, but the tsunami we created was truly enormous.

I'd urge all designers to look back at your career and the difference your work has made to the lives of those who commissioned it. It can be a confidence inspiring experience, to find the true value in the work you have done.

Defining Web Designer 2.0

A few years ago, the emphasis for web designers was on versatility and multi-tasking. Only those who could do everything themselves would survive, but this seems to be rapidly changing as the web matures. We're beginning to realise that the web, and those who live in it are becoming too sophisticated for a single jack-of-all-trades to properly understand.

Some might attribute this to a post-bubble downsizing, as regional web agencies shrank along with their budgets in the nineties, leaving an entire generation of freelancers fending for themselves. The broadcast television industry had suffered a similar blow a decade earlier, when the arrival of digital TV tipped the budget-to-airtime ratio and studios shut down over night.

The ability to single-handedly carry a web project through from concept to launch was essential to survival for the late nineties web professional, which gave designers like myself a significant advantage later in life. But no agencies meant no strategy, which triggered a torrent of ill-informed web monstrosities, conceptualised by zealous entrepreneurs and marketing directors with no understanding of the medium.

These days, our business is very different. The sector is healthy again, despite recent economical difficulties, and the agencies are enjoying something of a renaissance. Our understanding of the web, and more importantly, those who engage with it is growing all the time. The term 'design' is beginning to take on meanings that were previously overlooked, or misunderstood. These are exciting times.

So what is the modern definition of a web designer? There may be many more, but at Riff Raff, we see design as a combination of the following disciplines in mixed measures:

• Information Architecture


• User Experience Design


• Interaction Design


• Brand Design


• Graphic Design


• Presentation Layer Development (HTML/CSS)


• Javascript Development

I'm not going to go into great depth about what each of these roles involve; They should be fairly self-explanatory. The question I am forced to ask as I recruit new designers to join our band of Riff Raff is: Where can I find the super-human capable of all of the above? Does this person exist?

If so, let me know. I've got a corner office and reserved parking space with their name on it! careers@studioriffraff.com