Design Criticism

So what were your thoughts on sharing your work online and getting design feedback from the general public? Yeah, I've always kind of stayed away from it, to be honest with you. I've never really shared my work with the design public. So I mean, I did years ago, I used to use one of these like I'm similar to Drupal and Behance, one of those kind of websites and generally the feedback I've got, I can't award work.

It was, you know, I just wanted to see what people were thinking. And yeah, it was kind of positive, you know, the feedback was positive. But then I saw other people's work and I saw the kind of negativity surrounding people's, you know, work and stuff and the comments that were coming out from other designers and you know, it was getting a bit, you know, a bit crazy. I thought, well, I'm not really up for that.

So I didn't share any work again. I mean, I didn't get any negative feedback on my work on the piece that I shared, but I could see the toxicity behind it. And, you know, I can really kind of, you know, put you off. So I just thought, I won't do it again.

But, you know, I've seen other people's work being shared and I've seen comments and constructive criticism and just general criticism, you know, like, you know, I don't like it, that kind of stuff. I think it's probably a good idea for designers, you know, who are out there, you know, people developing their skills and who are trying to get into the industry that we talked about in our last episode. It's probably, you know, good for them. I've seen it and I've kind of like, yeah, I just stay away from it.

Do you think that there's some merit to it as well, where you can get some opinions and, you know, if they are negative opinions? Yeah, they may be, you know, on points which you overlooked, which could eventually lead to an overall better design. Yeah, 100%. You know, I totally agree with that.

That makes sense. What I tend to do is I generally, you know, I pass, I could design that, I've just done this to say for a website or something. I'll give it to a designer that I know that I've been working with recently and just get this sort of feedback on stuff, maybe. Okay.

So narrowing your feedback circle basically. Yeah, I'm not giving it to a wider audience. And then if I get any negative from that, then, you know, that's kind of cool. I'll kind of, you know, accept it and, you know, take it on board and then maybe execute, you know, any kind of like feedback that's been given to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because the biggest sort of, the biggest downside of showing your work to the general public is that they don't get the full context of why you made certain design choices or even the design process, necessarily. Well, sometimes you might be able to share some of that sort, but all the steps taken to lead up to your final, final product.

And that can, you know, it can go both ways. We've just love it for it. A lot of the time, if it's an existing product that people are familiar with or existing logo that people are familiar with, it's generally going to be a backlash first. But eventually, you know, people may come around.

Yeah, I think, yeah, if you've got something out there in the public domain for a while, it's, you know, people are used to it and they've accepted that, you know, as they look and feel of that particular brand. And then, you know, if someone comes around and starts to mess around with it and people get a little bit, you know, annoyed and well-knock about it, you know, not design is like, you know, design is just another thing we'll talk about in a second. But the general public itself, like, you know, when you ask them about, they take on, you know, certain changes made to branding and stuff. They, you know, they'll just say things like, I don't like it, you know, but no reasoning behind it.

I preferred to how it was before. You get familiar with something and then you don't really appreciate it when it's changed. Because it's been quite a few of these sort of high profile redesigns over the past few years. Yeah.

Of course, loads of backlash. The most recent one I can think of was probably Slack. But there's been like, Gap have done it. Uber, Medium, Instagram was a big one.

Yeah, that's huge. And, you know, they all had a lot of negative feedback and they've all had different outcomes as well. So I mean, it probably, if you listen to this, probably familiar with the Gap redesign. It wasn't a massive publicity one because it was only a very short over a short time.

But what basically what Gap did is a few years ago, the crowd sourced a new logo. So I don't know if it was a competition or they just put it out there, like, you know, we're looking for a new logo and, you know, we're open to stop public opinions on it. And what they ended up going with and pushing live was this basically a the word gap written in Helvetica, just capital G, lowcase A and a P. And then behind it had this like faded blue square, which was completely different to anything that they had before.

Yeah. And it just seemed really amateur, really, it seemed like a joke really, like, they were just calling it a lick. It wasn't April 1 or anything. And they pushed it out as they made logo.

Obviously, they had loads of, loads of backlash on it. People were familiar with the existing gap branding, you know, it's pretty iconic, recognisable all over the world. And then within a day or two, maybe at the most, they reverted back to the old one and they just basically swept down to the rug like as if it never happened. But, you know, the internet never forgets.

Exactly. Yeah, it never forgets, is it? Yeah, I just saw that now. I had no idea.

And I was like, what the hell were they thinking? But now that you mentioned that it was in a crowdsourced kind of thing, then, that makes sense. Yeah, it was an experiment, wasn't it? And they just backfired completely.

Yeah. But then, you know, obviously, gap, they completely did a 180 and went back. But then there's other companies like Instagram, when they changed theirs, they had their original branding, their sort of their camera icon. The camera icon, yeah.

Brown and... Yeah, brown camera icon. It's even harder to describe what it is now. Yeah, yeah.

And you know, their new branding, which is just sort of colourful, colourful. And it's become the norm now. It's hard to even remember what the old one looked like. But when it first changed, because it was so different, I remember, like Twitter was just saying, mad for days and days, people complaining about it, people parodying it.

And yeah, it must be quite hard being the designers at Instagram, who have put in, you know, however many months, weeks or months doing that rebrand. And then everyone's just basically saying, no, we don't like it, change it back to you. Yeah, cool. I liked it because of the simplicity of it.

And, you know, it's flat and it's just, you know, it's just clean. I really liked it. And because the old one was like very, here's Brown, for God's sake. And it was just too intricate and detailed.

And there's a lot going on with the little camera in there and stuff. Yeah. I got one. And you can run to time because things a lot of companies were going flat.

Yeah. Anyway, and Instagram was one of the ones that still hadn't. And it almost felt like they're holding onto their roots. You know, they don't want to change it.

They're going to stick by the guns and keep their classic look no matter what the industry is doing. Yeah. And then when they did change it, they were completely crazy, because they then became the most colorful logo on your phone. Well, everyone else had like a single color in the background or a lot of them were having white backgrounds on their icons.

Yeah. Instagram just flipped on his head. So, but now it's the norm. And now, you know, some of the other companies are doing similar things with a lot of color.

Yeah. Eventually, it becomes a norm. Yeah. I think the design of behind that, I don't know who it was.

It was an agency of it was internal, but I'm pretty sure they must have had a lot of a focus group around that and those different concepts and ideas, but to the table and, you know, that whole process, I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing we don't see none of that.

Not necessarily anyway, we might see like a press release or a case study, which has the best of their rebrand, you know, the best concepts that they went through or, you know, some nicely composed photos of people, storyboarding and stuff like that. But you don't see the, you know, the day to days or pressure that the company is under to sort of do something or. Yeah. Yeah.

I would have loved to see, um, seen the comments on that. Like if that was like uploaded to be Hansel dribble or a similar kind of site, I would have loved it in the comments. Like if it was like a uploaded for feedback before. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That would have been interesting. And I wonder if they would have sat by the guns or something completely different, if they had some public opinion along the way.

That'd be interesting to find out. I've seen people do their conceptual kind of redesigns of like brands. And if you've seen that kind of stuff, like Instagram, I'm telling you redesigns. Yeah.

Yeah. That kind of stuff. And, you know, I've seen the feedback on that. And again, it's like cringe, man.

It's makes me like, I'll just switch off. I just want to read the comments. Yeah. I mean, some of the designs are really good, but, you know, you can't eat any context as well.

It's like, it's very hard to then take a website like Facebook, for example, if you were to go and do a redesign of that. Yeah. There's some things you could improve in the UX or Facebook. Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, Facebook is the way it is for certain reasons. There's a reason for that. And that's even insider.

You know, there's reasons. And you can't really say, oh, you should change this, or you should make it a logo green, whatever. Yeah. Because that's just an aesthetic thing.

There's a deeper reasoning behind things as well that you need to consider. Yeah. Definitely. There's a science behind it.

And that's the reasoning, you know, behind why it is the way it is. But, you know, you can imagine being the part of the design team at Facebook. And, you know, because, you know, as users of Facebook, we see these subtle changes released here and there. The smallest thing.

And you'll pick up on it. You know, like the header on Facebook pages have become, you know, slightly bigger or become slightly smaller and the layouts change slightly as well. So you pick up on these small changes here and then, you know, and as a designer, you know, I get it. You know, it makes sense.

But, you know, I've seen the backlash from people from owners or pages like, oh, my God, why do they do that? You know, why have you changed the layout? I can't find this link anymore or, you know, I can't find the options or the settings. And, you know, one example is the Facebook business manager.

So they're constantly changing it. And it was such a simple tool to use before. And now it's like, you need a buddy, masters to use a damn thing. It's just all over the place.

I guess it's a reason behind that. Yeah. And that's the sort of thing that they wouldn't get public feedback on. No, no, because they'll get way too many opinions and, you know, they'll never actually get anywhere.

They need to make it in themselves and stick with it and just hope that people like it. And if they don't, they'll either stop using it or they'll get used to it. Exactly. Yeah.

That's right. I mean, I'm just constantly swearing at the buddy thing because I just hate it. That's my criticism there. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's going to be difficult for big companies to do this for. For people like, for individuals who are designers who are showcasing their own work, yeah, I think then getting public opinion is probably okay because, yeah, you know, if you're, if you're getting a lot of backlash on your designs, you're only going to get that if you're a popular brand. Right.

Yeah. An independent designer who's got a small following who's sharing their work on beyond sort of dribble, they're not necessarily, they might get one or two negative feedback just from trolls. But overall, they're going to get some constructive feedback, at least. And most people will be there to help.

It's only when you, when you reach a certain level of popularity, that's when, you know, your work really has an impact and changes really have an impact on people's, apparently on people's lives. But it doesn't really impact people's lives that much. No, no, no. Yeah.

I've seen, like, another area I've seen is, like, my art and, you know, drawing and things like that. And there's a YouTuber that I follow just just to get some inspiration on portrait studies and drawing people's faces and things like that. And what she does is she actually carries out critiques of people's work. Now, okay, this isn't like branding, we thought this is people's artwork.

So they're learning from her and then they attempt to draw the same portrait and then they upload it and then she does a critique, like a live critique. And oh my God, she destroys people. Yeah. Like, literally, just makes you feel like, I don't want to draw ever again.

And it's raw. You know, it's like, how can you be so ruthless to people you don't even know? And I get it. Like, you're teaching them, oh, you know, I understand the passion behind it and the reasoning.

But some of it's just really, you know, it's just ungrateful, you know, it's really bad. So, and, you know, and again, it's okay, I don't want to share my artwork on, you know, on my Instagram page, my other Instagram page, my art one. And I don't get any kind of negative comments on my art. Everyone's just being nice and I love that.

That's amazing. That's really cool. Yeah. I think you go back to this smaller circle, doesn't it?

Because people on Instagram are going to be there because they like your work and they know you're like, they know you personally, or they've had some sort of interaction with you or maybe this podcast or something. So they're generally not going to be there to just, you know, put your chain really, are they? Yeah. Yeah.

Whereas if you're a company and you had thousands of customers, hundreds of thousands of customers, even, then those sorts of things might get a different reception. Yeah. You know, so I think it definitely depends on the size of the audience. But do you think that they're, they get the point where you're so big that what you can do, like, what if Apple changed their logo?

You think there would be a lot of negative feedback? Or do you think people would just accept it because of it being Apple? I think I think people kick off this Apple's a huge brand, right? And I think that's one of the brands where the general community, the people who use their products will feel something.

They'll feel a bit of, you know, they'll, they'll be upset about it. I think there's a lot of people out there that don't remember the old Apple logo, the original one. And the colors in it. Yeah, the colorful one.

And, you know, to forget about that, they only have this memory of the current one, how that looks, you know, clean and simple kind of thing. That was the change then all these people who use their products, they'll probably, I think they'll be negative. I think people kick off about it. Yeah.

Unless they went back to the colorful one because then there will be a, you know, a nostalgia factor from the level you are, you know, in their 40s, I would say 40 plus. Yeah. We would probably remember it. Yeah.

And they'll probably welcome it. I mean, there was rumors that they were going to release the new MacBook that's just been released to 16-inch. Yeah, the 16-inch. It was a reason that that's going to have the colorful logo on again, the six colors on.

And there was some, I think there was like a elite image out in the world where someone was saying that, look, it's got the color of logo on it. It was quite a low quality image. Right. So you couldn't really tell.

But, you know, just listening to other tech podcasts, they seem to be quite a lot of interesting that happening. And, you know, people quite keen on that happening. Yeah. But I'm thinking more like, why have they completely changed their logo to a different shape, Apple?

Yeah, yeah. Or just lately changed it. Yeah. You know, they do, they do little variations of the logos now and then, like, you know, for different events, they'll give it a particular style for that event.

But, you know, they call logo doesn't change. Yeah. Yeah. So I wonder if, I wonder how it would be received if they did, because like Google, right?

You know, see, they changed their logo. Yeah. OK, it wasn't a massive change. It was a tidy up really.

But pretty much, you know, that sort of size company as well, that sort of impact. Yeah. And I think there was very negative comments about the Google, I think, generally was positive. But it definitely was an improvement as well.

So yeah, it's clean. And, you know, you know, it's all the other tools as well part of the Google suite. Everything's very, very consistent. You know, I like that.

It's nice and neat. It's clean and, you know, it's fresh. That's what I like about it. So I was positive about that.

I didn't, I wouldn't have any kind of negative thoughts or opinions about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I like that a lot. And again, yeah, just like, I don't know. And you look at the old logo and it just feels really dated. Yeah.

And they'll be a reset. They're looking at it every day for best part of 10 years. No, it's really not. It's horrible now.

Yeah, definitely. OK. So generally, I mean, I think it's, I think it's pretty safe to share your work online. Yeah, I'd advise it.

Any designer out there, any new designer getting into the industry and stuff, I'd say, yeah, do it. And any kind of like criticism, negative criticism, you get on it, just take it looking to sort out. I'm alive, right? But I'd advise you, yeah, do it.

Just do it. And then, you know, you learn from that as well. You know, other designers giving you tips on, you know, certain things, especially for web design, you know, that can be really, really helpful. You know, if you're uploading your work to like the Hans or dribble, the kind of criticism you get, and there is, you know, it's constructive.

It's not, you know, just someone just saying, well, I like it. That should change a kind of pink, you know, the reason behind it. They don't have any reasoning. And, you know, so if you go to places like that and upload your work, definitely welcome the criticism you get because it's only going to help you develop, create better designs going forward.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, if you are part of a large company with a big following and you are going through redesign, just expect it, expect it, expect it, expect some criticism. And you can't please everybody.

Yeah. Just got to sort of take it on board and just try to sift through it. Generally, the, you know, the crowd goes towards a positive reaction. Yeah.

In the end. And yeah, it all just becomes a norm in the end anyway. So it's all good. Yeah.

All right, cool. Well, I've got a few links of like other blog posts, which have shown some controversial redesigns and stuff like that in the past. So I'll put some of those in the show notes. If you could dig out that YouTube channel you're saying, we'll sit back.

Yeah, that would be interesting to see. Yeah. And if you've got any other opinions on this topic or if you want to share some of your designs with us, then you can do that on Twitter. And I'll give us a critique on the inspector logo.

Yeah. Well, the inspect logo had a redesign about it. Yeah, it didn't. Yeah.

Just before you joined during the podcast, I gave it a bit of a redesign. The website went to a redesign. Did anybody notice? Probably not.

Probably not. Yeah. Nobody may notice. It was very subtle.

But no complaints. Never had any complaints about it. So that's fine. Yeah.

Yeah. If you go into criticism by it, I'd love to hear it. Because, you know, I like doing redesigns. Yeah, even the site, you know, let's just put it out there now.

Let's just get people who are listening to us and just get their opinion on the site. You know, and the logo and, you know, how we could improve it or, you know, anything about it that they don't like, maybe. Yes. You know, it's up.

That's no. Yeah. It was one good thing and one bad thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that we can do that on Twitter. It's fine.

That is better for. Yeah. Her cool. Before we go, have you got any recommendations this week for anything?

Recommendations. Oh, so I started broadcasting my gaming on my PlayStation 4. I was of self-witch. So I set up a Twitter account and I was playing Apex Legends.

And yeah, it was just a test broadcast. I was sharing it on Twitter and I think a few people got annoyed with me and then I had a few people watching it. But if you're into your gaming, definitely set up a Twitch account and let the world watch you play your games. Seriously, it's so much fun.

When you see the numbers of people pop up on the app, like on your phone and like in the screen, you're playing it. This was really cool. You've got an audience watching you play the game. The next thing I want to do is get a camera.

It's quite easy to get the stream running. Very easy. Just press one button. It's built into just download the app on your PlayStation or your console.

And yeah, there's a broadcast button on the option within the PlayStation 4 menu. OK. And it just sends it out and you can that app on your phone picks up that you're broadcasting. And so you can stream your phone as well onto a TV and all that kind of stuff.

So it's really, really good. So if you're into a gaming and you want to audience and you want to earn a little bit of money from it because they. Yeah, you get donations for it as well. But you've got to make it interesting, right?

So you can't just be quiet and play. You know, you're going to have something about it playing. Yeah. I've never done it myself.

I do watch a few other people who streamed in and the switch. Like this is a bit more long winded. I think you have to get like a an intermediate box that you connect to. Oh, right.

And then that has like a double output one goes to your PC. Yeah. And then you have to laptop whatever and then you like accept the feed from that box and the other feet goes to the TV. Bloody, oh, that's long winded.

So it doesn't have any apps on there, does it? For sure. But yeah, what's if you and you have seen the sort of money that's coming in? It's all live and it's all there's people throwing hundreds and dollars at these people just watching the play.

So it's good. It is. So yeah, I'd recommend it. You know, if you love your gaming, get self-twitch account and just more cost and share it with the masses.

What's your twitch using? Oh, it's bad ninja, but it's B4D and I and J.A. Yeah. OK, cool.

Yeah. Keep an eye for that insurance. I think I'll watch you next time. Yeah, wicked.

All right. I don't really have a recommendation this week. It's been one of those weeks. It's been quite, but I've got a new phone, a bought iPhone 11, bro.

You got the 11, bro. Oh my God. You've done it. Yeah, I went for the smaller one.

I didn't get the max. Yeah. And I went for the black space grey or space black. That's nice.

Had a look at the green one. I wasn't that keen on it. So I just kept it. Get the classic.

Yeah. And I went for the middle storage option, a 256 gigabyte. Yeah. But yeah, what a phone mate.

Like, well, I've upgraded from an iPhone 6S. I think you go. Yes. You're shooting in between four and a half years old, so right.

So since then, there's been the seven, eight, 10, 10s, and then 11. So five generations, really of improvements. And you know, the success had this tiny little single camera. Now I've got these like three quite large cameras on the back.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all the choice. I don't know why camera is just brilliant.

Yeah. Yeah. Just changes the way you look at voters. It's like, wow, all of a sudden, it just opens up all the space.

Around you. Yeah. In your viewfinder and it's wicked. You get some really creative angles and you can just capture a lot more detail and then crop into it afterwards if you need to.

Nice. It's nice to have that option to go wide and face ideas. Brilliant. I know like this is old news now.

And it's going to be non- Yeah. You don't put in no pins or you know, it's brilliant. It's just one thing is the success had touch ID on it. So I was used to doing all that, but some to easily.

So I think I did that now on the one that you've got. They've got to have touch ID. Yeah. There's no touch.

It's not. Right. So there's rumors that it may come back again one day behind the screen. Like some of the other phones have got it behind the screen.

Yeah. Yeah, this facial recognition apart from when the phone's on the table and you're not sort of sitting directly above it. Yeah. When you're maybe leaning back in your chair a little bit, then obviously you can't see your face.

But that gets a little bit annoying. But otherwise it's fine because I have one mounted in my car. So it's seeing my face all the time there. So you're like, yeah, don't touch it then.

Yeah, well, you're driving. Yeah, I need to like put my thumb on there. Yeah. I just tap screen and then it unlocks.

So it's a lot easier to unlock it for you know, if you need to accept my phone call or something. Cool man. So yeah, good. It's a nice phone.

I need to take a lot more photos. But the weather's going crap now so. Well, you've got that phone over that amazing camera. So you need to be making use of it, man.

I need to see those shots as well. So yeah, I'll upload some of that stuff. Yeah, I'll send you some comparison ones. Yeah.

I'll try and recreate some of the photos that took on my success. Yeah. Like around the house or something. And I'll show you the difference.

And it's just crazy. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. So I'm enjoying it.

It's good. Good. So cool. Let's know your opinions, get in touch on Twitter.

And we'll catch you next time. Yeah. See you then. Yeah.

Thank you for listening to the show. Be sure to subscribe in your podcast player and feel free to drop a rating or review in Apple Podcast. You can follow the show on Twitter at Inspector Tim and find the show notes for today's episode and full archive of all shows over at Instech.fm.