From Chaos to Concept

CH 3MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

“Design is the silent ambassador to your brand.”

—Paul Rand

This chapter won't teach you to be a graphic designer. It will teach you how to evaluate a design from a user experience point of view and provide you with further reading if you want to learn more about how to be a graphic designer.

With all that research and planning from the previous chapters out of the way, you might think the design work is mostly complete. In reality, what we have from all the previous work is a solid foundation on which we'll build out the rest of the design. If we were building a physical structure that visitors would experience in person, at this phase we would have a concrete foundation and all the ceilings, walls, and floors framed out like what is illustrated in Figure 3.1. That being said, we wouldn't have any paint, flooring, windows, doors, fixtures, or furnishings chosen or in place yet. This is a loose analogy because digital designers may have more control over the final user experience than interior designers do, but the idea that a research-based and user-centered foundation should be in place for the digital designer to work from is a solid comparison.

Design is often thought of as being very abstract and more of an art than a science, but that is not at all the case. One of the things about working in this industry that is the most frustrating is that many designers approach their work and promote their process as if it is magical as well. I won't deny that ...