124 - Developing The Style

Is a style for a designer a good thing to cultivate, or a bad thing? Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode Trampled by P C III Waitng by Ars Sonor In curtains by J Hacha de Zola Line-by-line notes I’ve always been heavily conflicted as a designer I’ve never really thought I fit in with what lots of other designers think of themselves I love designing things, and I love coding things I love technical stuff as much as design stuff But I call myself a designer That puts me in a weird no mans land with lots of designers And the other thing I’ve never had Is an outright style as a designer Let’s talking about designer’s styles for a bit This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC Style Having a style works for lots of things This podcast, has a style A model may have a particularl style And a singer usually sings in a certain way or style It’s still a weird thing to me to associate with design though In design, you should be producing the work that’s most appropriate for the situation Regardless of personal preference, and style Maybe I’m being a little idealistic After all, we all have styles, whether they’re carefully cultivated or not We all have go to typefaces, or colour combinations that we like We all have styles of photos that we like and layouts that we think work best All this stuff builds up a style And at first, this style is an unconscious thing for most people Eventually though, a designer twigs on and starts to make more work like their other work And this is where things get weird for me Because I genuinely don’t understand this bit Why, as a designer, would you ever want to suddenly start making the same work using the same methods, over and over? I understand the idea of niches, and how you can make a lot of money if you stick to a niche I get all the commercial reasons I just don’t get the personal reasons To me, once you’ve settled on a style, that’s it You’re developing a designer as far and wide as you could be any more You’ve decided you’re going to sit in a very particular box And you’ll continue to do your work from inside that box For me, I love making all sorts of things in all different styles I relish the challenge of producing a brand for something I’ve never done before Or designing something in a style I’ve never even considered They’re all interesting challenges to me And as I take on things like that I become a better designer But if you suddenly develop your style, you...