Web Design And The Creative Process

You see a beautifully designed website, now ask yourself “how was it created?”

Some might think a designer, possessed by the ecstasy of creative genius, drafted the front end graphics in one sitting. Others may suggest that the client and designer had a meeting, the look and feel was discussed at length, and the designer was able to interpret the client’s desires perfectly the following day.

Both would be incorrect.

Perfect website creations rarely happen in an instant. It is also impossible to describe what one see’s in their minds’ eye in a way that the listener is guaranteed to envision the same exact image.

The reality is that the process takes a lot of trial, error and revisions before a client approves the final design of a website. If a client doesn’t have a solid and decisive understanding of the “look” they want to achieve, this process can become incredibly long and costly.

Upon listening to the clients desires, and viewing other websites as examples, the designer will come up with a series of first “rough drafts”. Then the client will pick the one they like best, make suggestions, or even mix and match different elements of the draft from which the designer will create second design that is very close to the target, final tweaks are requested and a final design is approved. Then the development begins. If the client has effectively communicated the look and feel they want (and shown proper examples for color scheme and other visual elements) and if the designer has obeyed these guidelines the client and developer will approve a final design rather quickly.

But there are many factors that can slow down this process.

1) The designer has a certain style and has difficulty designing something out of their comfort zone.

2) The client doesn’t really know what they want, or hasn’t thought it through enough.

3) Miscommunication, or the lack of visual examples for the designer to work from.

4) No two minds think and envision alike. Everyone has their own interpretation of things, both visual and descriptive no matter how you attempt to describe an idea with words.

5) Being vague about describing visual problems when design issues arise.

If you’re thinking about launching a website, make sure you’ve come to a solid decision on what your website should look, like otherwise the designer will use their best judgment- and their stylistic tastes may be very different from your own. If the designer seems to be entirely missing your idea for “the look” after the first round drafts, try being as specific and as descriptive as possible about what’s bothering you and provide visual examples, it is probably just a matter of “too little information” for the designer to work with.