Just like slow food, slow life or slow parenting, a trend might emerge in design, and might praises the benefits of getting things done slower. I encountered the “slow life” movement two years ago in Italy, when the love for the “dolce vita” might have inspired some people to get “slower”. No need to say that life around our over-connected societies is nothing but a fast-food chain for everything. Deadlines, clocks, real-time social medias: our day is filled with time pressure. But that might ruin your creativity in the long term…
DOING FASTER IS NOT NECESSARILY DOING BETTER
As a matter of fact, the contrary is true most of the time. Graphic design in a mind process, and more than the technical time needed to accomplish a task, it’s the thinking you’ll need the most. Being head first in a project for a short period of time doesn’t help you seeing flaws in a design. You don’t have time to refine the details, or worse, to explore new paths as they come along your thinking forks.
Forcing designers to work too fast on a complicated project, as identity work or complex layout design, is a waste of time for both clients and designer. It ensures frustration and low quality work most of the time..
LETTING THINGS SIT MIGHT BOOST YOUR CONFIDENCE
When you’re not entirely satisfied with a design, having some time to put it aside and come back later gives you a fresh vision of your work. Structure and contrasts become clearer, and soon enough, you might be able to produce some high ranking work. Which might not have been possible if you forced your way around it in order to finish quickly. Result: less frustration, a fresh view, and a free ego boost when you finally come up with something completely finished and polished.
NOT SHOWING A WORK AT FIRST MIGHT GIVE SOME RESULT
Trust your own design process and take some time to design for yourself, and yourself only. Showing everything you do at earlier stage can ruin a design. Not that an extra pair of eyes is not useful at time, but being given advices too early might make you doubt about your creative choices. People can’t have the exact same vision as you have. The final product might be better than they expected it to be in the first stages: trust your instincts, and keep some work under cover from time to time.
WORKING SLOWER DOESN’T MEAN NOT WORKING EFFICIENTLY
It’s not because you’re allowing time for the creative process that you’re discarding everything from deadlines to productivity. It’s just like praising quality over quantity: know your pace, allow for having multiple yet interesting projects at the time, but especially take care about your methodology. We don’t talk about procrastination here, but about researches and process.
Of course, all those pieces of advices have small to no chances to reach a standard workplace. As much as banishing workaholics, having a 4-day week or washing away long and inneficients meeting for that matter. It’s all about stopping to think about the design industry as a business, but about a real craft.
Don’t get me wrong here — I ain’t no utopist: during my day job, having a whole week to design a website layout (clients corrections included) is pure luxury — I know it’s not something we’ll reach by tommorow. But when working on my own, I’m definitely slowing it down, enjoying every single minute of it. and I hope you too, sometimes, do the same.
Your first part about having time to think, experiment and prepare reminds me of this quote:
On your second point I agree entirely about taking time out, do something entirely different and get it out of your mind. In fact this is one of the vital stages in James Webb Young’s techniques for producing ideas.
I think the third point may have some confusing language there. You say to design for yourself, but if you’re designing something for a client, audience and/or product then it’s my view that the designer should keep their personal opinion and preferences out of the work. However I’m guessing what you mean is to keep complexities down and minimise feedback from others so that you can focus on the job… ?
I would love to work in a slower environment with more time for thoughtful process and experimentation rather than aiming to get everything out as fast as possible, cutting corners and doing the bare minimum to “maximise return”. Efficiency is good but not if it’s confused with just doing things faster.
Hi Ryan! Thanks for your comment — as always, an interesting insight with lots of useful elements.
I really loved the quote.
About the “design for yourself” part, I have two different approaches of the problem, and might have both a bit mixed up in the blog post. As English is not my primary language, I sometimes get confused while trying to express an idea.
On the one hand, I think you should sometimes design for your own pleasure, and not putting the work under anyone’s eyes before your get completely satisfied with it. That is “designing for yourself” as a hobby, and probably as a creativity boost.
On the other hand, there’s, of course, working in a client-based system. In this peculiar case, I do agree with you, the designer should put aside his or her personal aesthetic views in order to produce a work that only answers a specific problematic (something that doesn’t seem so common in my opinion). But as you correctly assumed, what I wanted to say is that it’s better to “minimise feedback” at first — as I noticed you tend to get influenced a bit much in the first stages and not always have the time to push further your “guts feeling” intentions.
Both ideas are the same expression of the “follow your instinct first” path I’d like to follow. Which is, of course, pretty difficult considering the high number of people giving you said feedbacks and corrections during a project.
I think having time to research should be allowed more often: losing some bare productivity time for a little brain training session might do some good for a team creativity from time to time.
(Ps: definitely excuse my english here, my home computer does not allow for spell-check. a further proof that practicing everyday is still not enough to get totally fluent
)
Ah yes I agree with what you’re saying then
(And your English is great!)
Here’s another related quote I’ve just come across in Less and More
Oops I broke the link.
Fixed!
I can’t agree more on that quote. Most of the design process happens when not in a work environment. Doing completely different things might trigger great ideas. Unfortunately, work places are not that great for inspiration and working while listening to your internal clocks, are they?
Yeah, I can agree with pretty much all of this. I’m annoyed with the fact that the design world is trying to make design happen in a flash when it really doesn’t. Not everyone thinks the best option for a client involves all the same Web 2.0 trends that every other site is using. Sometimes you have to take time to allow for original concepts to flow to you.
Then again, the whole world seems to be speeding up when, in reality, it should be slowing down for a closer look.
I like this article as it really reflects how I’ve been with a long debated/planned/idea sketched/etc theme design I’ve been working on for myself and my website. I am not going fast by any means, in fact, I could probably go a bit faster with it than I am and still fit well in with what this article is saying. I’m hoping that a completely awesome design and final theme results from it.
I’m glad this article founds some echoes in the designers reading it. As for the slow life movment, it’s all about taking time to focus on the small details. Of course we could go faster, but the pleasure is all in the time spent doing nice things I guess
Thanks for your nice comments
I really appreciate having other insights!
This is so true. People need to take the time to be original, and make things functional.
I am currently designing a user interface, I began the process with research and LoFi wire-frames – which I plan on doing user testing on.
I am really taking the time to focus on the user, and making the UI easy to use. I am happy with my progress so far.
Thanks
I agree with your points. Before I start any project, I take a few days of visualizing ideas I have for the site. Once I have a few ideas for the site, only then with I start working on actual designs.
Great post. Thanks!
Francisco – Curitiba – Brazil
I love this post, I was talking about this only yesterday. I couldn’t agree more. Thanks.
Thanks for a great article. As a traditionally trained artist who’s just now getting into web design I appreciate this classical approach. The process is equally (if not more) important as the execution.
[...] follow, ‘mrjoepayton’ (twitter)… and he posted a tweet, http://www.ilovegraphics.net/2010/05/the-benefits-of-slow-design/, concerning the benefits, and maybe ‘thoughts’ is a better way to state what the [...]
I couldn’t agree more, and I was just discussing this with a friend. One of the biggest challenges design faces is the binary dialectic of creativity and automation. When I’m managing a project, I insist on the creative buffer. And yet, I know, with 100% certainty, that even if we are on schedule and on budget, I will be called in to defend the timeline and present our progress.
You mention “research(es) and process.” For some reason, “research” affords some allowance, but the “process” of fleshing out the inspiration and ideas (mining for the nuggets of gold) isn’t tolerated.
Design isn’t query-based. It doesn’t just happen if we load all of our research into one application and hit enter. Sure, we all develop signature tools and tricks for expedition. But when the need to use such mechanisms serves as an override to a lack of research and process, then it is no longer design. It is assembly line production.
The Industrial Age is so yesterday. We are not just cogs in the wheel. This is the Creative Age.
I could not agree more… I really wish clients understood this concept and the idea behind taking time to approach a project; to thoroughly think out your process and the approach to the problems you are trying to resolve when designing. Design can be done quickly but i think you can easily miss better solutions to your problems and miss details when you try to develop designs in a rapid manner.
Great Post!
I’m student from china; thanks a lot’
Oh my gosh, I thought something was wrong with me! I just graduated from uni and of course, school is a bubble that prevents students from seeing some harsh realities about the work world. One of which, is the amount of time needed to do a design versus the time you’re given in the work world…UGH. I’m doing an internship with a web design company and…I have felt so dumb and inefficient because I was taking 2 hours to do an ad and the director told me it takes him 15 to 30 minutes….(confidence boost! right?)
I know that I have to suck it up and force myself to go faster, but I keep going at the process I was trained at in school…a.k.a research, read, let it sit in my head, and come back to it 2 days later. PSHHHH.