Unfortunately, the videogamer in me can only see the striking similarities with this: art from Bethesda Software’s Fallout 3 – a game about a post-nuclear-apocalyptic world in which the only law is the survival of the fittest/best-armed.

I’m not sure this is the message they’d like us to take away.

Anyway, must dash – got to get hold of a Land Rover defender, lots of baked beans and a geiger counter.

(This is absolutely not a political post by the way – just graphic design-related! If you’re undecided about where to put your vote I strongly suggest you visit Vote For Policies.)

A few months back I was tweeting about the fact that I’d won a MailChimp t-shirt in their online draw. At that moment a mysterious Twitter account named @hipstery started following me. A few clicks later and I was concluding their checkout process. Don’t talk too loudly about it, but Twitter marketing works.

The concept

In a nutshell, The Hipstery “liberates you from the burden of choice” – specifically, you tell them your t-shirt size, fill in a fancy-dan quiz about your tastes and their t-shirt scientists go find you a t-shirt and dispatch it to your door. The t-shirts are sourced from various cool designers and are usually from rare, limited edition runs.

The delivery

A couple of weeks later (The Hipstery are in Germany and the UK post were probably on strike) a mysterious brown paper bag dropped through my door. In fact, it didn’t drop through my door at all. Instead, a red “sorry you were out and we can’t stuff a t-shirt through your letterbox” card arrived and I had to take a trip to the Royal Mail depot to collect it. So, eventually…

So the mystery is slightly compromised by the fact that the envelope is carrying The Hipstery’s branding but it was the start of ‘the experience’  – not something you usually experience when buying things online.

The grand opening

Using the time-honoured combination of my fingers and opposable thumbs I tore open the package to reveal the goodness inside.

As promised, the primary part of the delivery was the mystery t-shirt – on arrival it was wrapped in a natty plastic bag that is missing from this picture.

The cotton goodness

So, what of the t-shirt itself? What had the t-shirt scientists selected for me? In an attractive shade of grey, my selection was the runner-up of the 2006 London Design Festival’s t-shirt design competition, The Draw – “London Spirit” by Blaise Coutaz. You can read an interview with its designer over here (warning, that link is a PDF, abandon all hope ye who click). The t-shirt is cool and unlike something I might have chosen for myself – all good things.

Here’s a poorly-montaged close-up of the design.

As well as the t-shirt there were two old postcards…

Unexpected but standard enough? Except for the strange coincidence that at the time of the delivery I was wading my way through Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, in which the main protagonists reside in Windsor Castle, the subject of one of the enclosed postcards. Ooooo…

The conclusion

The Hipstery is an excellent way to acquire a t-shirt, I will shop there again. Go forth to theHipstery.com, buy yourself a new t-shirt, feel the burden of choice lifted from your shoulders. Many thanks German friends.

Here are the taps. I’ll give you a chance to spot it.

(If you said ‘the blackening grout in the corner of the tiles’ then you’re wrong)

The flaw in these taps is a manifestation of pitfalls into which any designer could fall.

Lying at the opposite end of the bath, with water running, the most convenient way to stop the water is for me to stretch out a foot and turn off the tap. Normally this is easily achieved. Imagine, though, how difficult it is to rotate the slick metal cylinders that control the flow and temperature with a wet foot.

So, enough with the watery tale – what’s this design lesson? It’s three-fold, around a theme.

Users will always surprise you

The designer of these taps possibly had an image of the bather turning on the bath with dry hands and going away to find rose petals, candles and a Cadbury’s Flake.

Assumption is dangerous and is best avoided:

1. Envisage the different use cases for your product
2. Never underestimate just what your user might consider the ‘best way’
3. Consider a user that isn’t yourself or someone your age, gender, ability etc.

However clear and sensible you may think your product is, get a second opinion. Put it in front of a selection of different users, see how they do things. Just try not to get your notebook wet.

Design should be flexible

If the taps on my bath were regular cross-head tap handles or single lever taps would they have been anymore difficult to operate by hand? Not likely – they’d probably be easier. Design taps with simple foot, face or elbow operation and you’ve kept all (most of) your users happy.

When your product appears on the shelf (virtual or physical) among all the others your prospective customer must be able to envisage how their particularly way of living can be enhanced with your product. By all means cater primarily for the 90% of your users by suggesting a clear way of doing things – just don’t make it impossible for the other 10% to engage.

Form must follow function

The old ones are the best. What does your product have to do? What problem is it solving? How can your product’s design and visual appeal enhance the solution your product provides. Keep it simple, don’t overdesign.

Take more baths.

1. For A Beautiful Web by Andy Clarke (@Malarkey)

Let’s start with a no-brainer. Andy Clarke’s blog is informative, well-written and entertaining too. It’s also lovely to look at. I’d particularly recommend the slides of Andy’s Walls Come Tumbling Down presentation and his write-ups of the New Internationalist design process.

2. Veerle’s Blog by Veerle Pieters (@vPieters)

Veerle’s Blog has appeared on countless ‘great blog design’ lists and those honours are richly deserved. But the real highlight is Veerle’s content, particular her Illustrator and Photoshop posts. For me, as a relative Illustrator amateur, it’s fascinating to see (and learn) how effects are achieved.

3. Hicksdesign by Jon Hicks (@Hicksdesign)

As I vaguely recall it was Jon’s blog that first alerted me to designing with web standards instead of tables and Dreamweaver – it was a long time ago. I’ve been a keen reader ever since. Jon blogs less then he once did and his subject matter is as likely to be cheese as it is design but it’s always worth a read.

4. Bokardo by Joshua Porter (@bokardo)

A new entry for me, Joshua Porter writes insightful posts on all aspects of interface and user experience design for the social web like microcopy, avatars and Gall’s Law. Consistently excellent stuff.

5. CR Blog by Creative Review (@creativeReview)

Boo to the corporate publishing entity amongst the talented individuals – I’ll let them off. The Creative Review blog is a great source of quality creative design work across all fields which will inspire and irritate in equal measure. They do interesting ‘questions of the week’ too.

So there’s my five. Any suggestions for a follow-up list?

Just recently I’ve been giving some thought to the reasons for working this way. Not everyone has a career that can easily be carried on outside as a freelance sideline – some workplaces will forbid it even if you could – but if you take them seriously you can soon turn a hobby (i.e. photography, craft etc.) into work. Whether you’re selling your main work skills on a freelance basis or pursuing a hobby as a job the reasons are likely the same.

Breaking down the reasons

“I enjoy it!”

— [CC] Photo from taniwha

Simple right? Particularly if it was a hobby to start with, the plain enjoyment of doing the work can be reason enough. In the early part of your freelance career this will be a factor but beware: once a hobby or leisure activity becomes the dreaded ‘W’ your attitude to it can change rapidly.

To be honest, even after six years of it I still enjoy my freelance work – I wouldn’t do it otherwise! If you can hold onto this then chances are you’ve found your career for life. Onwards.

“I could do with the money”

— [CC] Photo from hippie

It makes the world go around apparently so I’d best tackle it early doors. If you’re not one of Messrs Jobs, Gates or Abramovich you could probably do with a bit more cash. Using your skills to help clients to good effect in a few spare hours is a good honest way to make a few extra pounds and comes without the complications of large-scale bank fraud or counterfeiting.

For me this is definitely one of my reasons – primarily I enjoy the challenge of my work, to be financially recompensed to find smart solutions to interesting problems is a great bonus. Having said that, where money is concerned it’s sometimes hard to balance the value in pounds/dollars and the value of that time used differently. How much is an hour of leisure time with your family or significant other worth to you? Less than an hour you can invoice for?

“I’m building my portfolio”

— [CC] Photo from cless

When we’ve recruited for designers at my work the first thing we ask for is a link to a portfolio. We’ve interviewed many a designer who has worked hard in a team environment on a large collaborative website project – in this case it can be difficult for them to communicate to the interviewer where their skills were involved. A bit of freelance design on the side is a good way to stuff your portfolio with design work that is exclusively your own and it gives you lots to talk about the next time you’re that side of the interview table.

As I’m currently perfectly happy in my full-time job (hi boss!) I’m not needing to build my portfolio but that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to see it extended with a new site once in a while.

“I like working with different look and feels / brands”

— [CC] Photo from mmmonica

Over the course of my freelance design career I’ve worked for, amongst others, a health charity, a rally driver, a chef, a photographer and an artist. Each of these clients wanted and required a different visual approach. For any designer it’s a healthy workout for the creative brain to apply your skills to the differing look and feel requirements of various clients. This is particularly true where your main job may be limited to the brand requirements of one company.

The value of variety extends to other jobs too – developing skills outside of the ones most regularly tested by your day job is the way to becoming a more rounded person allowing you to replace ‘cinema’ and ‘socialising’ in the ‘other interests’ section of your CV.

“I’m keeping up with newer/other technologies/techniques”

— [CC] Photo from balakov

My full-time work is constantly iterating the functionality and design of a large website built on .net 3.0. When I build a website for a client I’ll build it in PHP5 and MySQL along with packages such as WordPress and Drupal. Lost yet? The terms don’t really matter – what’s important is that familiarity with two very different environments is helpful and valuable for your future career! When new techniques arrive it’s good to have a variety of projects to try things out on.

“I’m aiming to do [x] and [y] by [year]“

— [CC] Photo from kaptainkobold

Numerous blog posts and books I’ve read recently (hello Five Simple Steps) have emphasised the need to kick off any part-time work career with an attainable target in mind.

It could be you’re cutting your teeth on freelance projects so you can break into doing your hobby full-time, maybe you’re building your skillset to earn a promotion or maybe you’re building your client base to set out on your own one day soon. Most of those writers will agree that the situation is only sustainable for a limited time (from six months to two years!) so you may as well be honest with yourself on this one!

This pursuit of “[x] in time for [y]” is more or less where I came in – I’ve never been particularly clear on my long-term aim and I’ve done nearly six years. Having that clear aim in mind can help you make decisions on which clients to proceed with and which ones to pass up. It can also help you decide whether to continue taking on freelance work at all.

So why do I do it?

For me, the crucial part of my freelance work is the enjoyment I get from the challenge of designing for different clients – this is what drives me to continue. My ambition to improve my skills in my chosen field means I’ll invariably choose the projects that grab my attention as an opportunity to hone skills I don’t use so extensively in my main work. With the world economy the way it is, the chance to earn a small crust doing that is a positive factor

Thoughts?

So how about you? What benefits can you see to working this way? What’s your long-term aim? Why do you / don’t you freelance on the side? Would you if you could?

Why did it take so long?

The design you’re seeing now isn’t the first one I made. I actually had a fully-working design that integrated my blog and my portfolio into one site.

After a couple of weeks of Photoshop and WordPress-wrangling I decided it didn’t do the job – particularly it didn’t tell a very clear story about my freelance design work. So I went back to the drawing board, did a rapid redesign of my design portfolio and put together a separate blog design. I’m pleased with the outcome and hopefully now I’m happy with the blog it might encourage me to post more!

I could also throw in one or two other excuses for the delay, like having other projects to do in the mean time! Still, I’d appreciate any feedback, particularly if anything is looking messed up!

Cast an eye over the Scrumpy website and you’ll discover that Scrumpy is a project planning and management web application for all sorts of projects, big or small – it’ll be great, you’ll love it and all being well it’ll be launching pretty soon… if you want to be kept up-to-date with exactly when, head on over to the website and tap in your email address.

More details to be revealed soon.

Kuyper’s eight essential qualities for effective brand guidelines…

This post expands on brand identity expert, Jerry Kuyper‘s eight “qualities to achieve in identity standards.” They struck a chord with me, highlighting many issues I’ve run into with corporate identity documents in the past. So, how do the best brand guideline documents exhibit these qualities?

1. strategic

“Focus on why it is important and what the company is trying to achieve, not just how to do it.”

This is great advice and put into practice by the beautiful (but expensive) I Love NY brand guidelines. Down from the logos to the execution of the illustration, every decision has a reason (good or bad – you decide!) behind it that is clearly explained. In many situations the buy-in from implementers is key to the success of brand guidelines.

Explaining what can otherwise look like draconian direction is vital.

2. visual

“Demonstrations are often more effective than lengthy text.”

The guidelines for the venerable University of Cambridge do this well with their imagery section – yes, there’s a clear text description but in this case only one media can effectively communicate the style required: example photos.

3. easy to understand

“Develop content that is engaging and avoid unnecessary jargon.”

Rather than attempt to communicate the linguistic style and how it applies to individual words, the guidelines for the equally venerable Cunard use a simple table of words to make it crystal clear how choice of words applies to the effect of their brand.

Even to a casual observer this is an accessible and interesting list – which means the people who need to be interested are happy to read it.

4. short

“20 pages of useful information may be more effective than 50 pages.”

The brand guidelines for the building initiative Think Brick run to a grand total of 13 pages. Whilst the brand is a simple one, its difficult to find a wasted word across those pages. In fact the grab above is probably the closest example. Even then its a simple representation that branded products should carry the logo and adhere to the guidelines already set out.

Rather than attempt to cover every possible eventuality in your guidelines keep it short and refer enquiries to an expert within the company.

5. respectful

“Understand who will be using the standards and don’t insult their intelligence.”

Lloyd’s put this one into practice. For the most part it’s fair to accept that those reading the finer points of logo usage guidelines are likely to be familiar with the terminology of print design. Pitch it at their level.

Having said that, striking a balance between this and “avoid unnecessary jargon” is a challenge.

6. balanced

“Identify the appropriate balance between structure and flexibility”

Keeping the ‘balance’ of a brand guideline document is very much a case of judging the requirements of the document and the brand in question.

My example is from Channel 4‘s digital TV station, E4 – instead of specifying exactly how the effect of the logo as a sticker is achieved the guidelines simply set out that “it must retain some dimensionality.” This guidance leaves the exact execution in the hands of the designer and allows variety into the brand without losing sight of the purpose and effect.

7. digital

“…pdf files that can viewed online, emailed or downloaded and printed the standards can eventually be established as an online identity resource”

For a behemoth organisation like the UK’s NHS an online version of their brand guidelines is essential – the above is a grab from their branding microsite where they can quickly publish amendments and special guidance for specific audiences.

A printed brand book may look nice on the bookshelf but quickly becomes outdated and hard to come by.

8. scalable

“…can be expanded or revised help to establish that identity management isn’t a static or one time event”

In many ways this is an extension of the above and cements the case for your brand guidelines being a digital document. When a video execution of a brand is required a printed document detailing the page templates and paper choice for letterheads is not appropriate.

Brand guidelines should be ready to be speedily and easily updated for any eventuality – from 3D animation to the introduction of Blade Runner-esque advertising blimps.

In conclusion

Jerry Kuyper‘s eight points are excellent benchmarks against which to measure your own brand guidelines document. Hopefully the examples above have shown how they can be applied and will inspire you to develop more useful and just plain better brand guidelines.

Any thoughts? Post them in the comments down there…

TechCrunch announced last night the demise of Pownce and the acquisition of its people and technical resources by Six Apart – I don’t tend to get involved in too many startup communities and this is one of the first I can remember from start to finish despite the fact I only got as far as signing up and clicking around for five minutes.

On my brief look around after a clickthrough from Digg I really liked the clean and characterful design of the site and the extra functionality it added to a Twitter-style core. But eventutally that seems to have been its downfall. Whilst the world and his significant other are waking up to Twitter (including late-starters like myself) a social network who’s core function was something very similar was always going to have a hard time.

In the arena of websites and applications every company is competing for the most precious asset of modern life, customer’s time. It seems that Pownce didn’t grab the time of enough people in its relatively short tenure and has left behind it a collection of time-invested disgruntled former customers. Promises to “come back with something much better in 2009” are all well and good presuming you can convince the prospective users of your something that this time they can rely on you.

For me, one section jumped out discussing the original Mac team’s approach to design:

“Rather than survey a bunch of users on every decision, the Mac team decided each issue among themselves, invariably going for the option that might amuse a user the most, that would give a user the most pleasure, and therefore imbue the Mac with personality.”

As one who has a love-hate relationship with user workshops and focus groups this is music to my ears – confidence in your own abilities over those of the crowd. Clearly the problem is that those self-sourced decisions have to be resolved correctly. Undoubtedly other companies have taken this auteur approach and failed miserably where Apple have succeeded. Equally companies have released products fully backed by a panel of target audience users that have failed. Apple’s magic-touch is indisputable and ongoing. Surely not, though, impossible to replicate.

“…it’s one thing to be, uh, “creatively inspired” by what other companies are doing, it’s quite another to have a philosophy that enables you to do it first.”

Which leads me to two conclusions:

1. Believe in the vision of your product
   The designers and engineers on Apple products seem to believe completely in the vision of what they’re building. More importantly than that though, that belief runs through the whole company, all the way down from His Jobs himself. That belief has to be above all things – the team will make the right decisions as long as that remains the case.
2. Create a pleasurable experience
   Every product should be fun to use, even if it’s subject matter is far from it. Online banking could, and should, be fun in some small way – it’s never going to beat playing a game or watching a film but a nod towards enjoyment as well as functionality and security can play a massive part in creating a positive feeling around your product and your company.

Now to quit rambling – back to the kitchen, I have sauce to mix.