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Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

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Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#11

Post by BradGutting »

Ever notice how a lot of start-up websites look pretty similar? Lots of the same typefaces, same visual approach, same graphic techniques and colors--you see Helvetica/Arial, the same set of textures, quasi-3D effects, and so on. The cumulative effect is generic. It says, "we're roughly imitating what everyone else is doing because everyone else is doing it." Bad message. Good design won't compensate for flawed business models, but it will maximize the potential of a strong one.

Independent thought and ingenuity trumps everything on this list, I'm afraid. The stuff there is price of admission; you're not even a designer without it in your toolbox.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#12

Post by ssharp »

niekmaas wrote: post #3
mikx wrote: post #2

The skills are critical for any front-end designer, not just the ones in startups. Companies that embrace skilled designers as their culture compete much better than others.

The word "startup" has almost reached the status of buzzword. "Cloud based startup" would have been even better..

The use of "startup" along Amazon Associate links with very little value-add makes this page seem spammy.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#13

Post by antidaily »

rimantas wrote: post #10
antidaily wrote: post #9

I hate this list. Want to be good? Look at sites/apps you admire and learn to emulate them. Don't read a 300 page book on User Experience or ugh, UX... unless you're doing for enjoyment.

Sounds like a good plan for cargo-cult web design. A good book on UX (which stands for the same User Experience, btw) will teach you why you admire particular web sites.

That has nothing to do with producing a good design, fast - which is the #1 qualification I'm looking for in a designer at a startup.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#14

Post by nonrecursive »

antidaily wrote: post #13
rimantas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good plan for cargo-cult web design. A good book on UX (which stands for the same User Experience, btw) will teach you why you admire particular web sites.

That has nothing to do with producing a good design, fast - which is the #1 qualification I'm looking for in a designer at a startup.

You really don't care if someone has a conceptual understanding of UI/UX? I guess that's fine if you're not doing anything unique. But if you are, how is your designer going to be able to think through the unique design problems posed by your product?

I mean - take Mint, which has been widely praised for its design. Would a designer have been able to produce it by cobbling together half-understood components from other sites?

I'd really like to hear more about why you don't think a designer needs to be able to understand what design is. I'm curious about how you think he'd even be able to successfully emulate other sites if he doesn't understand what to emulate and why.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#15

Post by dylanrw »

rglover wrote: post #8
blankenship wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration" It is?

I think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). As a budding designer, Dribbble is definitely helpful in allowing you to see "the bar" and improve how you approach certain projects. However, it is most definitely NOT easy to "pick up [visual design] by cruising Dribbble."

You are both referring to style.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#16

Post by dylanrw »

I bet if I made a list like this highlighting what a programmer must have when working for a startup there'd be some serious hating going on.

While this may be a good list if you want to read up for a month, this does not cover years of art theory, learning how to choose your battles, developing a refined sense of taste, pure objectivity, and a myriad of other skills that are subtly nuanced into almost every project.

I'm sorry, a good designer's "Must Haves" cannot be encapsulated in a list.

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#17

Post by stylejam »

mikx wrote: post #2

The skills are critical for any front-end designer, not just the ones in startups. Companies that embrace skilled designers as their culture compete much better than others.

Should be critical, yes. But if you know the market, you know that things like usability or ux are used 90% of times as buzzwords from sellers. I'm afraid I can't disclose some of my experiences with top design agencies in both the US and Italy, but trust me, I've got a truckload of horror stories :)

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#18

Post by [deleted] »

rglover wrote: post #8
blankenship wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration" It is?

I think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). As a budding designer, Dribbble is definitely helpful in allowing you to see "the bar" and improve how you approach certain projects. However, it is most definitely NOT easy to "pick up [visual design] by cruising Dribbble."

[deleted]

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#19

Post by alabut »

rglover wrote: post #8
blankenship wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration" It is?

I think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). As a budding designer, Dribbble is definitely helpful in allowing you to see "the bar" and improve how you approach certain projects. However, it is most definitely NOT easy to "pick up [visual design] by cruising Dribbble."

"I think what's being said here is that it's easy to pick up the ideas of visual design, not the actual skill (I hope). "

No, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm a bit more seasoned as a designer (my public folio is super outdated so you'll have to trust me) but I leveled up in visual design by zooming in to a design I liked and recreating it pixel by pixel in Fireworks. Eventually you'll find that certain things become second nature (using gradients, textures and shadows to distinguish content areas) and the types of things you're trying to recreate get harder and more complex. That's cool, it's called progress.

Zooming in and recreating as a way to learn is the single most helpful tip I got from a creative director about halfway through my career, right in the middle of a shift from developer to designer, and it served me well.

And if you're interested in how to do it without being a ripoff artist and completely copying someone else's layout (which is not what I'm advocating), the trick is to only copy elements of a several different designs and layer them into a seamless whole, as first advocated back in 2004 by Cameron Moll:

http://cameronmoll.com/archives/000016.html

Re: Skills a Designer Must Have when Working for a Startup

#20

Post by alabut »

blankenship wrote: post #7
alabut wrote: post #5

Completely leaves out visual design. Maybe because polish is harder to encapsulate with a single book or because it's so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration, but it's still worth mentioning. Otherwise you get the average startup designer that's more of a developer in disguise.

"because [visual design is] so easy to pick up by cruising Dribbble for inspiration" It is?

Yeah, it is. See my response to rglover below and feel free to ping me offline if you need more tips.
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