Strategy & Workflow articles

There’s a lot riding on your shoulders as a freelance designer. You have to play the part of salesperson, project manager, web designer, accountant, and more. That’s why it’s critical to develop more efficient ways to work while maximizing results. One way that agencies and even small teams of designers do this is through design systems. By taking the time to create a collection of design standards, reusable components, and documentation,...

Heart-warming or not, co-creation with a client—the utopian ideal of shared vision—has its drawbacks. There are only so many times you can hear the words “brand strategy” before actually chewing your own face off. In the age of Wordpress, Drupal and, dare I say it, Wix, it’s never been more tempting to pay lip-service to research and consultation. Instead of building a principles framework from scratch, why not roll out something...

Okay, you need three to five new ideas for articles, all on the same general topic. Go… Now here’s where we separate the people who have to come up with regular content all the time from the people who don’t. The people who have things they want to write about but can never get around to it can probably start listing ideas off the top of their head. The people who have to do this for a living, or at least as a part of their job, just groaned in mock agony....

Truth be told, there’s a lot of value that comes from doing design sprints. However, it’s not as simple as adopting Google Vision’s original system and instantly being able to create better digital products or getting greater consumer buy-in.  Let’s take a look at what design sprints are, why they can be valuable, but why you also might need to steer clear of them.  What Is a Design Sprint? In basic terms, the design process looks like...

In a perfect world, we’d all have all the content we needed before we ever touched a wireframe, on paper or otherwise. The hate for lorem ipsum is real, and I do understand why, but it’s a simple fact that we do not live in a perfect world. Clients are often ready to hand over a down payment, but not actually ready to build the site yet. If you find yourself in this situation (and it will happen a lot at the beginning of your career), you’ll need to...

It’s no surprise that some businesses are convinced that all they need is a Facebook page and some awesome paid posts in order to go viral. I get it. It’s relatively cheap. It’s easy. And they see it as a faster way to success than taking the time to build a website, grow an audience organically, and wait. But social media virality is hard to come by and, when it does happen, can be short-lived. Now, making a website or blog go viral? That can have...

As you draw closer to the finish line with a website, does your client see it just as clearly as you do? Or are they still wavering on design and copy choices even while you’re in the final stages of QA, or talking about additional features they’ll want to add to the site “some day”? Unless you are getting paid — and paid well — for every single hour you put into a website, you have to be willing to enforce a final stopping point. If you don’t,...

You’ve done the hard work: you’ve taken a lead and turned them into a paying customer. Congrats! Now, you have to build their website. But is it that simple? The client signs the contract and you immediately get to work on designing the website? You could certainly approach the kickoff of a web design project that way. However, you’d be missing out on the huge benefits of having a well-laid-out onboarding process. By the time you have a signed...

So you’re designing a new website or online store, and you need a web developer. You might need them to develop a site from scratch. Or maybe you just need them to work through some tweaks, changes, issues, or extra functionality. Either way, your relationship with your web developer can be difficult to manage. I’m a developer, so I know that there are so, so many ways the relationship can fall apart: Missed deadlines Lack of communication...

Last year, Rachel McPherson shared 9 ways to organize successful creative projects. It’s a very useful article that highlights the main things to do if you want to bring greater control and organization to your web design workflow. Tip #2: Take Advantage of a Project Management Tool, is the one I want to focus on today. Specifically, I want to look at some of the best tools for web designers, how to choose the right one for you, as well as give you...

At least once every day, some designer somewhere in the world will look at something made months or years ago; failing that, some executive will get the bright idea that they can make their mark on a company and the world by changing something that already exists, instead of making something new. One or both of these people might get this sort of itch in the back of their head, accompanied by a sense of dissatisfaction and ill-defined purpose. The...

Development time is a precious resource. In order to be more efficient and responsive, product teams continuously try to use advanced techniques for product creation. One of the most popular frameworks that help the product team to achieve this goal is a design sprint. A design sprint is a framework that helps answer critical business questions through rapid prototyping and user testing. Basically, it’s a shortcut to learn without building...

There’s a certain peace to be found at night, when the world goes dark and silent. You might settle down on the couch for a moment, and just soak in the absence of noise and bustle. However, if you’re at work, and the world goes dark and silent, it’s a lot less comforting. At the very least, it means a delay in your work. If you’re a freelancer, that could very well mean a delay in getting paid. It’s stressful, and it can happen anywhere, to...

Stepping into a website that’s already well-established isn’t always easy. For starters, you have to be careful about not stepping on anyone’s toes (the client’s or even the previous designer’s) when providing feedback or suggestions on a new direction for the site. Secondly, there’s much more at stake with a redesign. Not only could a wrong turn hurt an established brand’s identity, but there’s also the disruption to...