Visual designer's advanced approach

Positive attitude

Robin Li Yanhong) Well-people must do what they like and are good at. First, you must be sure that you really like design.

They are keen on discovering, feeling, and creating beauty, and can ultimately explain the beauty. Positive action and thinking are the source of progress. As far as I know, excellent visual designers in the industry will spend their spare time doing many things related to visual design, photography, graffiti, manual creation, and film production... Interest and work can be combined.

Clear goals

What is the task of a visual designer?

• Effective information transmission
• Concise and elegant Communication
• Create a pleasant user experience through visual design

Every time you make a design, you can use the above three points for clarity.

Negative Mentality

I complained more than once that "there are too many company restrictions. What can be designed? No space available. "" It's useless for you to spend so much time doing this. The boss doesn't want this"

A misunderstanding that designers can easily get into in the early stage. He believes that a good design is to make the icons more vivid and rich in texture. All the trace side luminous projection functions must be used once, and every button on the interface can fly out of a flower.

He will be disappointed if he is not allowed to do so. When the design is rejected again and again, the thinking and initiative are lost, and you are no longer willing to create breakthroughs. The boss will do what he says. I started to learn to hold on to work, and I had to spend three days on the first day of my work. The ultimate goal of his design has become "OK when the boss says OK" without knowing it, and then become a real artist.

It cannot be said that this is wrong, and the boss's vision and attention will always be more accurate than ordinary employees. But what I want to say is that if you want to make fundamental progress, you must first start with an open mind and in-depth thinking, and do not want to have too many education voices. This is a fact.

Why don't I ask the boss for this? What do you want from the boss ?" Think clearly about these two questions. Designers need to be objective enough to face everyone's evaluation of the design. "You don't understand design, I am professional." In this case, there is no logic. The design itself serves the masses and civilians, and everyone is qualified to evaluate it.

Everyone has the right to be aesthetic. Any design also has evidence to follow. No good designer can create brilliant results only once. It is an authentic and good design that can withstand the scrutiny of everyone. Why did we say "white is done?

Independent Consciousness

When a designer who has been "broken" by the boss or director for a period of time, he becomes unconfident in his design. The cute thing is: "director, you can't see this texture; I made three effects, one of which is pure black, one of which is a little lighter, and one with texture. Which one do you use?

At this time, the Director either laughs or gets bored. Please think about the differences between the three colors and the actual experience. We need to hold a seminar to determine the differences? You are a designer. With your professional vision and analysis, you can quickly make a decision.

First, I would like to pay tribute to his diligence and prudence in his work. But the key is that the leadership's work is to solve more and more problems, rather than answering too many questions for you.

Communicate with the leaders and always provide solutions, the solutions you have recommended and other possible solutions, and the theoretical basis. Then ask for comments. It is important to dare to think and make decisions independently. Even if the decision is wrong, the impression is even more profound.

Revolutionary Consciousness

There is a famous saying in the workplace-if you want to be good, you need to take some time every day to try out solutions that have already said no. Yes, the design is emotional, and the user is also emotional. The same content is presented in different ways, with different effects. Each solution has its own reason and there is no standard answer to the design.

Maybe a leader always needs to take care of the overall situation and be conservative. He just worries about whether you can take control of the situation within a limited period of time and work out a solution with sufficient tension to ensure proper handling. It is easy to think of updating the cooler idea. The key is that idea tests the designer's grasp in the process of converting it into the actual effect. The ability to grasp needs enough time and quantity to hone.

In this case, the most important thing is to identify which are the sensory factors and what are the basic principles. If you blindly challenge the basic principles, you should be clear about them. The magic weapon of the revolution is gradual progress.

Aesthetic cleanliness

Some visual designers may have a strong personal taste tendency due to personality reasons. First, they have a fixed aesthetic taste and love a certain design style, however, the style is unacceptable because it is too radical. This is like a child's picky eaters. If you don't like it, you don't even touch it.

When designing, he will always bring his personal taste into the company's product design. In the face of color and texture, if the company's cultural requirements do not match his aesthetic, it will be very painful. In the detailed design, I can't help but want to join my hobbies over and over again.

Then, the director or the boss repeatedly shot the video again and again, and finally struggled constantly. some subtle effects could not be determined, and the video was transferred over and over again, resulting in a waste of time and impatience, even frustrated by self-doubt.

It is not opposed to a designer's personality, but as a designer, it is the most basic ability and requirement to distinguish brand needs from personal appetite. The most critical skill is to consciously taste different beauty, rich, gorgeous, fresh, and elegant... They observe their differences rationally and can design by refining their characteristics. This is also the advanced approach of designers.

Designers are always sensitive and emotional. Maybe today's tasks are suitable for their appetite. They are very happy to have a day, and tomorrow's tasks are boring and boring, while yawning and working, when these contradictions get angry and confused, I try to leave it out first and take a deep breath and leave it empty. In my experience, walking is more smooth than sitting in front of a computer.

Think about what the design goal is and whether your Tangle is associated or conflicted with the goal. O is not OK in the visual effect, but it is actually the first feeling. Sometimes it will be lost after a long time, so try to use the first feeling to observe, so that you can truly find the problem, and then contact a colleague to see it.

Never try it out.

Team Resources

Most designers have a "fault". They are reluctant to stand behind them when designing. It always feels insecure. I sometimes feel this way. However, it is not difficult to observe carefully. This kind of psychology is generally only when the designer has no confidence in the current work. At this time, it is easy to enter a misunderstanding of thinking inertia, that is, to fall into the vortex of suffering. The root cause may be a deep flaw in the character-a defect that is unwilling to be exposed and unwilling to be say no.

For example:

Mr. Liu received the need to advertise images, and the demand side gave the basic text and content elements. Mr. Liu began to design the images. Within an hour, he placed them on the images, you may feel that the color and effect are not correct... A few hours later, he looked at the Director with an unconfident figure. The director told him that the train of thought was wrong...

In the initial stage, why do I need to contact him if I have an uncertain direction? Or I can think about several design directions, quickly draw hand-drawn sketches, and communicate ideas with key people or other designers in the team, determine whether the idea is reasonable, and then design it on the computer. After a long morning, I had to struggle with myself and wasted time.

In fact, my experience is that designers need to grow faster in an environment with a high degree of communication and activity.

It is very easy to think out of excellent ideas when one person is bored. More often, when you say something to me, they will penetrate into each other and feel like they are coming soon. It is much faster than getting bored with yourself. First, you are willing to take the first step, create an active communication atmosphere, dare to accept opinions, and be able to think based on the logic of others.

The designers are saplings, and the team is fertile soil. It is vital to have comprehensive and interchangeable nutrients.

Comprehensive capabilities

Familiar with interactive design, accumulated product experience, understanding of user research, and mastering animation design, which is a hard indicator for senior designers by all companies.

The significance of advanced design lies in wider knowledge and higher vision. Only in this way can your design be more authoritative. We always keep a learning heart and a sense of accepting new things. In today's society, there is no "pure" profession.

Spare Time

I also often hear a complaint that "there are limits on products and I am not good at making it available". This is undoubtedly a reflection of my professional design growth on products. We believe that the product cannot grow without its own design. This is actually an excuse.

In fact, the best way to face this problem is to divide the design into two lines:

• Project line: The company's actual product project, understanding and according to the actual situation, to meet the product design requirements and meet the company's requirements.
• Professional line: the significance of this incident is to consciously discover and summarize the shortcomings of current design capabilities, develop specific topics, and arrange spare time to improve. Comparison and systematic drawing exercises, animation techniques, interactive design... Private activities are a great topic.

"How fast you can grow depends on what you are doing in your spare time. My 8-hour work in the company has been paid off by the company. If you want to increase your salary, think about how to use your spare time.

System Thinking

The entire article looks like the most watery content, but it is actually authentic dry goods. This is a reflection of the development of all designers at a higher level and a more professional problem. If we break through, we can do it. It's a hurdle.

When talking about system thinking, I think this topic is too big. I am afraid it is not good enough, but I am also afraid to talk about it. The reason for the length is only summarized. The detailed knowledge at the design level can be set up in another article. Under the product design system, each module is independent, but cyclical, and ultimately determines the product presentation form.

The product visual design system that I understand is unreasonable.

Brand vision:

The company and product soul are users' direct impressions of products. For example, when talking about Liu, his or her appearance, behavior, or language characteristics will always appear in his mind, which is very direct, you don't need to think too much.

Therefore, brand building requires visual design to establish features, maintain features, promote features, and beautify features. For these brand requirements, a complete and matching visual design solution is required.

Operation design:

The purpose of operation design is to allow users to perceive the product as well as themselves; to maximize the product features and push them to users through design packaging.

In this process, we need to think: Is there enough advertisement creativity to attract users? Is the screen visual impact sufficient? Is the text attractive enough? Clear and easy to understand? Does the operation point match the brand positioning?

• The standard for general designers to make operational diagrams is: Make a good look at the diagrams
• Standard of senior designers: Do users have enough interest and affection after seeing the image and are willing to click and experience the product.

User Interface:

The most frequently and intuitive part of a user's contact with a product is to let the user know the product's appearance and temperament. Brand Positioning determines the display temperament and experience of the interface, in the interface design, you need to pay attention to the strength of the visual level, Information Division architecture, user browsing trajectory, color, texture usage, rationality and comfort, and visual durability.

The final design goal-wow, this interface looks really nice, and I want to see more if it's okay.

User Guide:

In order to allow users to learn some functional operations of the product more quickly, such as some advanced or hidden operations, the user is usually notified through a bootstrap chart, product introduction, and reminder tips. Its design principles should first be concise, intuitive, and easy to understand. Secondly, it should conform to the user operation process sequence and arrange the guidance at the appropriate time.

Then, the design should be user-friendly and decentralized so that users can be interested in guiding and will not be disgusted by interrupting their operation tasks. User-guided design is also part of the interface design. Its visual experience sometimes needs to be separated from the restrained interface texture to achieve attention through visual contrast. User guidance is similar to telling stories to users, so the design should be lightweight enough.

To put it bluntly, it is necessary to establish a complete and clear Design System for the designer's mind to think about it. If you can apply this system to every decision, the design scheme will be considered more comprehensively. Its role is to help designers make all problems and solutions logical and modeled. Come out of chaos and design it rationally.

I still remember what the director told me before I left Baidu: "The biggest challenge you face now is system-level thinking. This is also your current lack of ability. The degree of understanding determines your score ". When he said this sentence, I felt excited.

In fact, he did not know that I had secretly used my spare time to think about and sort out this problem a few months ago. Until now, the context of systematic design thinking has become clearer in my mind. I sincerely thank him for his guidance over the past two years.

Design communication and work Communication

First, you must have sufficient awareness and willingness to communicate. This is a direct credential for your work efficiency and no rework.

The second is to tell anyone about your design. You should also be clear and concise. How do you think, how do you start designing, and what problems have you solved through design? How to verify the design? There are many processes and methods.

Before you talk to the team about the design plan. You have to think about the comments and objections you may encounter during the process. Prepare answers in advance. Ensure that preparations are prepared before the meeting, and efficient communication is conducted at the meeting. Only core discussions are conducted, and the minutes are kept in a timely manner. You know, when you talk about the solution, this is actually being designed.

Comments on Design Modification

When you hear the following comments and suggestions on design, you must clearly understand their nature. People have subjective differences in their visual feelings for the same thing. But a good design is definitely recognized by most people at a glance.

1. It feels a bit strange: Tell him where to blame? Is it a strange color? Or graphics blame? Or is the layout uncomfortable? If he can't tell where it is, tell him to find the reason and decide again.

2. Can you change the color? I don't like this color... For such personal taste requirements, you need to explain your ideas through design knowledge and guide him to realize that this suggestion does not conflict with the design experience. You can leave it unchanged.

3. If the product has doubts about visual layout and information display. Follow these steps to see if there is room for optimization. This opinion is crucial because designers often lack the ability to measure design from the product perspective and listen carefully to their opinions.

4. In the face of the boss's modification opinions, you can clearly convey your thinking point. If he persists in letting you modify it, change it! Sometimes, trial and error are the only method. The consciousness of verifying design results afterwards is very important.

5. Disputes over small details should be avoided. small changes that do not affect the user experience should be accepted as much as possible. After all, people also need to talk about their feelings in their work. You can give others an extra level of personal taste and win others' approval.

Deadline Concept

Draw two pictures, take a look at Weibo, draw two more pictures, and chat about QQ... After one day, the task is constantly interrupted and restarted. I don't know how much time is wasted... If the task is completed in three days, it will be done in idle time. If it is said that the task should be completed in advance, it will take a long time and then work hard. In a mess...

When receiving the request, explain it first. After the communication is confirmed to be correct, ask yourself how long will it take? Whether there are parallel events. If you set a time limit before you draw an icon accurately, it is the best. This mode of thinking is definitely an advanced magic weapon.

Everything is always more time-consuming than expected, leaving room for time. It is always the best rule to do things. Always have a buffer before deadline.

Work Management

This is the consciousness that every profession needs to possess. How can we sort out the messy and parallel work list, how to sort priorities and time, and when and to what extent... The same is true for design. After all, time determines everything.

Design Evaluation

The purpose of doing this is to build a richer resource library in your mind, and to quickly observe and resolve the excellence of the design case, is the color extremely comfortable? What is the most eye-catching architecture? What is creative? What is the coincidence of text writing? Or something else. Over time, you will get idea faster and faster

Poor memory

This sentence seems to have nothing to do with design, but this is my biggest achievement in Baidu.

• First, make sure that the aura in your mind will not be forgotten;
• Second, draw a sketch first and then go to the machine. This is definitely the most efficient and easier to sort out the logic. If you don't believe it, try it and observe how much time you will waste without drawing a sketch.

Just as I wrote this article and wrote it out, the idea is clearer.

Design Talent

Some people say that "I have no visual talent" is a weak and violent paradox. Science shows that IQ is normal as long as you are not blind. So you are no different from other good designers. In other words, design is not a creative art, but a solution to the problem. There is no conflict between the two.

Summary

I believe everyone will be familiar with this. These are not only the problems faced by designers. It also applies to all occupations.

You are welcome to explore it together. I believe there will be many more.