Blog 4

I liked all of the different things that these magazines had to offer, and I especially liked what I saw in Smashing magazine, where each different designer was critiqued on what they did well and what they could do better. Out of all the designs, I thought the website that used handwriting and almost a “brainstorm” design for its menu was my favorite, simply because I have never seen anything like that so it was very distinct. After looking at all of these pages I thought of three specific things that designers need to do to stay relevant in their fields:
Designers have to be distinct and unique, but not too different. Every example of typography and web design that I looked at on these websites were different, but they all had things in common: they were legible, used color schemes that were cohesive, and clearly communicated what the designer or company wanted them to communicate. If someone were to make a page to “out of the box”, people may like it, but one of the aspects that make it useable could easily be missing.
Designers have to be constantly watching what other people are doing and tweak it to make it their own. In order to be successful, people usually have to have some kind of example to go off of, and design is no different. If one designer is doing well with something and if getting a positive response, it would be a good idea for other designers to take some of the elements of whatever the other designer is doing and tweak them to make them unique (but again, not too different). This way, they are keeping their own creativity while staying in touch with what people want and what works.
Designers have to make sure that they know about the newest technologies and trends in order to stay relevant. Design is just like anything else in the world, for example, cell phones. When a new cell phone with new technology comes out, people are going to want to buy it, or at the very least be interested in what features it has to offer that are so much better than the phone they already have. In graphic and web design especially, designers are typically selling some kind of product, service, or idea, and they best way to get people’s attention is to a) find out what they want and b) figure out the latest and greatest way to present the information. People are naturally curious about things that are new, which makes them more likely to check something out if the latest technology is used.