Know yourself, its important

I have been reading a lot more blogs then usual lately and its a lot of fun ill admit, people seem to know what they’re talking about. Even those who don’t, they get me thinking about why they don’t know what they’re talking about. The key of that is that they are making me think.

Although a lot of what I have been reading is about blogging itself, I can also see some key links to design in the advice a lot of these better written blogs are giving. One of the most important points which seems to be coming up a decent amount recently, and one which I myself have learnt a lot about through reading, is that your personality in your blog isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its a great thing.

3by9 (a personal favorite) wrote a post at the start of the year titled ‘I Know What Is King‘ which made some very important points about how the personality reflected through a website can often be more powerful then content, assuming the two are put together correctly. This is not only crucial advice to bloggers, but also to designers.

In my last post I briefly touched on finding, and then breaking your style as a designer. I will come back to breaking your style, first lets talk about finding it. Lets look at a situations, say your designing for your personal portfolio, a portfolio you intend to show at a job application next week. And this is a job you really want, if it were legal you would physically attack the other applicants to prevent them from applying, that kind of job opportunity. Since you can’t actually attack them (well, shouldn’t) you have to battle them blindly through the interviewer and outcompete them by proving your the better designer, and very importantly, the better person. A lot of designers will fill their portfolio with designs they think that the interviewer wants to see, rather then their actual talent. This may be good if your going for a single job, say designing their website just this once, but otherwise it may not be so powerful.

Your better bet, in this case, is to fill your portfolio with the things that you are strong at designing. Nail those pictures and make them absolutely brilliant because its your strong point and quite simply you can. It will give a better impression that you know what your doing, as opposed to if you produce a bunch of half as good designs because its what’s ‘in’ at the time. To put it simply, the person looking at your portfolio, in this case the interviewer, doesn’t know what your strong points are. They will just see a lot of well produced works. Unless they all look the same. And here is where the ‘break your style’ part comes into play.

Breaking your style is very important because it allows you to experiment with other styles, and who knows, you may just find a style which you love more then your own. A more likely situation is that you will find bits and pieces from other styles which you love and will start incorporating in your own works. Having a style which is a mish-mash of other styles is a particularly hard thing for any designer to pull off, but if you can, its bloody impressive and it makes you stand out from the rest. Why should your artworks be similar to that of everyones who work in that style? It shouldn’t. In truth, being in a well known style isn’t even important, and making your own style can be pretty powerful, but again, a very difficult thing to pull off.

Ok, so this article is straying a bit from the title i’ll admit so i’ll get to the point shall I. If you can’t find yourself as a designer, how can anyone else. You better then anyone know your capabilities, so if you show works that hardly flatter you, the person looking at your work isn’t going to be thinking ‘this isn’t shabby, but he can do better with something he enjoys’ because they don’t know that. You do, and its your job to prevent this type of thought towards your works. And how better to do this then represent your personality through your works? Works that represent you will always be your most powerful, and often your most impressive. This is largely because its a topic you (should) know a lot about because it is you. Why not sell yourself through the message of your artwork, as well as the quality?

Design Update

Ok, as I may or may not have mentioned, the previous design which lasted about a week was only intended to last that long. It was bland, boring, and pretty colourless. So over the last few days I have been working on this, and I am proud to say that it has been released. And yes, it has more fancy features;

• Firstly, the link when you click on the comment count from the front page of the website or a category page will not take you to the comments, as intended.
• Beneath every post is a ‘More’ section with features for readers to share the posts, as well as stay up to date with them. Please, if you feel an article is worthy of being shared, do so. It can be immeasurably beneficial to the development of a new website such as this.
• My comments are now blue, so it is easier to see my replies. This is a feature that was mainly put in for the sake of tutorials so that users can find my posts easier should they be looking for support with the tutorial that may already be covered in discussion.

Discouraging world of a designer

If you’re anything like I am as a designer, its likely that you spend a lot of time browsing the internet and the various design communities that it caters to. These communities hold mass amounts of designers and its not unlikely, nor hard, to run into a designer who you feel is better then you. Due to this, designing can also be very disheartening at times because of the amazing amount of designers there are out there and the world, and the even more amazing amount of designers who are absolutely brilliant. It can really make the skill, which at heart you know is a strong one, seem insignificant and subpar. Read More…

Again? Are you serious…

Welcome to v14 of Designkai.com!

To anyone who is a regular here, they will most likely be confused as v13 was only released a very short time ago and was only up for maybe… a fortnight or so. This was because the database was having apparently irreparable issues with content and comments so I decided I would take it down and re-content it from scratch. However, while it was down I began thinking (thats never a good thing). Anyone who has visited Designkai previous to this version will be aware that it also included a portfolio and blog for myself, and was essentially a website about myself and things I enjoyed talking about, which was more or less shit. In my mind, this was very unprofessional, so I decided to make a drastic change. For the first time, Designkai would no longer serve as a portfolio for me. Ever again. I decided I would split my portfolio into a separate website which is completely stand-alone as just a portfolio. This should be running soon.

However, during this drastic overhaul I figured it would be worthy to re-build the way Designkai handles and presents content. The new Designkai, as of now, will serve as more of a resource/article website for designers or people who like to read the ranting of a madman often bored. But don’t get my wrong, I don’t intend to keep it as just me writing, hint hint. So what will be the benefits of the new Designkai? Lets have a look shall we;

• More interesting articles - they will now have a point, they will now make a point and they will now hopefully fill a small void of information as well as provide an informative and hopefully useful view on the world, although generally restricted to the world that is the internet.
• More structure - yes, much more. The articles will be researched, thought out and drafted to hopefully avoid the general bullshit that previous versions of Designkai was oh-so-good at pumping out.
• And finally, more useful - I can only hope. My aim is to provide you with the information you were looking for, and if you weren’t looking for anything, provide you with an interesting read.