Designing for Yourself

One of the common issues I have when designing a site for personal use if that I often tire of the overall design by the time I’m finished.

Take this site for example. This site was a few months in the making after an unfortunate accident obliterated my last. The final site is a far cry from where I initially began, because as the site developed my overall style changed. Something I discovered; it was more of a challenge designing the style of the general site sections rather than the blog section. Perhaps this is because prior to this my personal sites were entirely blogs, and therefore more casual, allowing for greater style direction.

Additionally, designing for one’s self can be more difficult than designing for a client due to the fact you know yourself too well, or perhaps, not well enough. The difference is, you’ll often get some sort of a style direction from the client that at least points in some general direction. Even those clients that have no idea what they want (in terms of style design) still provide a finite scope of design possibilities. Whereas, designing for yourself, the possibilities are practically infinite because you know all your likes, dislikes and tastes. Add to that the fact that we are often our own worst critics, and you can see the challenge growing.

For example, I once did a site for a client who gave literally no direction at all. His words to me; “We want a site, you decide”. Following my typical project-management flow, I asked (several) follow-up questions but the answer was always the same, “you decide”. Having been given zero style direction, I created my own, using their company t-shirts (of all things) as the color scheme for the site.

But I wear more than one kind of t-shirt, and my taste in furniture differs from that of architecture. I enjoy a multitude of themes in photography and my style of cooking leads more toward spicy. Like most people I am flexible and ever-changing; my style adapts to my mood and the moment I’m in. Whereas, with a company, it’s about a brand identity, an image they’re trying to project; they are not “flexible” in that sense.

So how do you design for yourself? How do you pick a color scheme? Or a layout? Over the next few days I’m going to begin writing a series of articles on designing for yourself vs. designing for a client and maybe we’ll answer a few of these questions.

Published In: Project Management, Web Design