Let’s face it! That’s how you learn, that’s how we all learn. During my high-school, my father used to take me as a guitar player in his band on various occasions.

And you know what? That’s how I learned to play guitar. Well, mostly. But once on stage, I would spend all of my time there picking on the keyboard player, trying to figure out the chords he was playing and struggling to keep up with him. I had to continuously steal!

When it comes to design (or, really, anything else), being original is really hard. I’d argue that sometimes is even dangerous.

However, it’s logo design that requires originality to a higher grade. And with thousands of logos out there, it’s really hard to be original.

There’s a lot of examples where big companies have failed to come up with something truly original. For instance, what would you say about these two logos:

They surely look alike. I won’t tell you which one came first.

Graham Smith goes into detail about what he calls “The Uncertainty And Pains of Originality In Logo Design“. Very good reading!

A question I may ask, following the argument that Graham is making in his article: what do you do when you find that someone else, most certainly independently of you, came up with a similar design?

You know how science works? It starts with a question, then they test a possible answer. Then they ask more questions, and then do some more tests. Then they build theories, and they test those too.

The theory that passed all tests will be the winning theory. Or so you think! In fact, there’s no winning theory. Never! Because you know what they’ll do? They will do even more tests, imagine more facts to test the ‘winning’ theory against them.

You should do the same. Be a scientist doing UX science. Your intuitions won’t work, your boss won’t tell you what’s right, your colleagues don’t know either.

The rest of the reasons for performing extensive testing are found here. Excellent article!

Hi there,

Here’s a quick tip for you. While diagramming a sample wireframe on the new Twitter design, I figured out that I could enhance a bit the built-in grid support of FlairBuilder. Here’s how I did it:

1. First, create a master page which will hold the grid settings.

2. Using rectangle components, draw the major design layout ares of your wireframe. You can even specify exact dimensions for each area. And now the trick:

3. Set those rectangles as being not visible, so they will show only in design mode and semi-transparent.

Have fun wireframing!

An interesting article on compromise in design from Mark Boulton, a designer and author I follow and enjoy reading.

Compromise is an interesting thing to master, in design, as well as in life. And Mark’s take, or Andy Budd‘s opinion mentioned in the article, both reflect that this is a thing you need to know and bring in from outside.

One face of compromise that I don’t personally feel confortable with, is the compromise for inside ‘design committee’, those people that most of the time don’t care about the end user or the customer.

In the end, Mark sums it up really well.

My experience in design is that there’s a lot of grey. Nothing is ever cut and dry. People are complicated. Perception and behaviour is difficult to account for, and using a design process that welcomes new data, can course-correct effectively, is a process every designer should be working to create.

Enjoy the full article, though!