When people talk about design, often times people think of digital posters, flyers, intricate works of art that have had hours and hours put into them. Which isn’t false, but also isn’t the whole story behind Design.
At Do Some Digital, we like to think of Design as “art with a purpose”. It’s more than just having your pieces shown, it’s them being used for something. Whilst yes, art sometimes has a purpose, people very rarely design things to just create. They design a post for social media, they design a poster for an event, making sense so far?
If you’ve ever constructed a powerpoint presentation, made a unique anything, or even a word document to present to someone, then you yourself have undertaken design at some stage. Design is creating, thinking and applying it to a purpose. Therefore, it’s everywhere you look!
Design is more than just creating…
The device you’re reading this on for example, has been designed for people to use. If it’s a phone for example, it’s screen is a certain size compared to the competition, it’s a certain size due to the current trend in user’s needs, it’s a certain size to make sure everything can fit in behind the screen and the shell of the phone to make it work, and it’s also design to create a certain look for the phone. Everything is made, designed, and created in a way that it serves the purpose intended, not to just to look pretty.
The chair you’re sitting on. It’s been designed with an audience in mind, taking the average size of the people targeted into account, so that it serves the purpose of looking how it’s supposed to, and providing a comfortable place for people to sit.
These are both examples of designing something physical for a purpose that it’s intended to fulfil at a high level, not just to look good right? So why not take this attitude towards digital designing as well?
On the wild world wide web there are some questionable design choices from posters, to websites, to logos, but should there really be? You wouldn’t design a chair thinking “…that’ll do”, so why do some people do it with their digital assets? The principle stays the same, design is “creating for a purpose”.
The thinking part of design.
Let’s take the phone example and apply it to a brand. The phone’s buttons are a certain distance apart so that they can’t get confused or more than 1 pushed at the same time accidentally, they’re equally spaced. Text on images, posters and websites should be the same. People don’t need to be struggling to read the essential information laid out on your website by lots of text all crammed together.
The colours of that text and the background should also work together to make it a pleasant experience. Imagine having a clicking button on the side of your phone, and next to it a squishy, soft push button. It just wouldn’t be right.
It’s the same with buttons on a website, colour schemes, social media templates, or anything you can think of for your online & offline presence. Design is more than just artists with graphics tablets creating assets. It’s putting everything together to create a digestible, functioning item.
Design is creating, thinking, and piecing together the pieces of a puzzle to create something unique. Like a phone, brand, website, etc. They’re all unique things that need to be designed and then created.
However, remember all of those artists with graphics tablets we talked about earlier? Thanks to them, the creating part of design has only gotten easier. Software now has become extremely intuitive and user-friendly to allow people to digitally design whatever they need with ease.
Often, first impressions count. Get in touch today to see how we can upgrade your website with our website design service in Hertfordshire.
Design Getting Easier
Now that design has been a part of the online world for a while, the amount of assets, icons, post templates, website templates, and everything else you can imagine in a template, has increased massively, designing your brand and online look has never been easier.
There’s apps now that can put together colour schemes for you, help you with design choices, site structure and so much more. So long as you follow the principles of design when creating something online now, the rest could pretty much be done for you.
The principles of basic design being referenced are things like spacing, readability of text and font, sticking to a brand, suitable colours, and high quality assets like logos, pictures and icons. Being able to follow these and knowing how to apply them sets you up for success very well.
If designing really isn’t your thing and it’s something you’d like to leave to the experts, contact our team today here and see what we can do for you.
