WordPress 2.7! Will it impact me?
It is a well known fact that many of you designers (particularly web) out there are WordPress junkies, such as myself. Needless to say any decent new update, plugin, all the jazz will make you pretty excited. And often with good reason.
So I, like many of you, got pretty excited when I heard about WordPress 2.7 and needless to say, I downloaded the Beta and gave it a thrashing on my localhost. And what can I say other then ‘BRING ON THE STABLE!’. It is very nice, the main difference is the Admin panel (image at end of post) which is very customisable, allowing you to move around and even hide all the little useful bits on all the pages (admin home, writing post, etc).
But while testing, the question popped into my mind… ‘Will this effect how I design in any way?’. Naturally, my cursor dashed to my google search bar and my fingers hammered the question, but not much came up. Apparently it was either a question nobody had asked, or a stupid one that didn’t need to be asked. So I figured the best way to do it would just be to play on my localhost, and the verdict was… drumroll please. No, the template system and tags worked exactly the same thankfully. It has no effect on designing templates and old templates still work on it.
I then realized that it probably was a pretty stupid question, particularly after looking at the new features. Very few of which have anything to do with anything related to templates, and most of which are fixes and features that are either completely superficial, or perform out of common use and sight. So I slapped myself once again and went back to Photoshop.
In short, no, it doesn’t effect us as designers, but damned does it have a cool admin panel.
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?
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…
