'Cause To Me Everyday Is Halloween
It's that special time of year, when we begin thinking about pumpkin spiced everything, the changing colors of the leaves, wearing hoodies all day every day, and scaring the daylights out of friends and family.
This past September 15th Software giant Adobe made headlines when it acquired web application Figma for 20 billion dollars. This scared many in the design community because they feared that Adobe would disrupt or even destroy this future thinking and excellent program. I wasn’t surprised and even understood the negative and worried reaction by many in the UX design community. Figma is a fantastic tool, it has revolutionized how designers create interfaces, with its ground-breaking ability to allow designers to collaborate, share, and prototype. This sudden merger seemed like a slap in the face to many because Figma was everything Adobe wasn’t. The perception of many is that Adobe will ruin Figma, condemning them to use an inferior or polluted software now. Despite these valid concerns, it worries me that some designers are suggesting that by making Figma bad will result in inferior designs and designers. I would hope that this is not the case, because in my opinion tools don’t make you a designer, your process does.
So, the next time we are tasked with a new project, instead of looking for a niche tool that may work, let's instead think about and rely on the basics of design fundamentals and problem solving.
These design fundamentals are the same ones that have been taught for generations, they include:
· Hierarchy - Influences how we view the components of a design from beginning to end. Size, color, and placement determine a design's hierarchy.
· Color andContrast – The juxtaposition of two or more graphic elements with opposing qualities.
· Pattern andRepetition - Use of graphic elements in a design more than once, regardless of font, shape, color, weight, or texture.
· Balance - Visual weight distribution of graphic elements in a design layout.
· Alignment - How graphic elements are positioned in relation to each other in a design.
· Proximity - The relationship between the graphic elements in a design.
As designers, we need to always remember it was our creativity, imagination, curiosity, and ability to think outside the box that made us what we are. True, tools come and go, but good design principles endure forever. To become great designers, we must constantly learn, develop, and refine these principles since they will enable us to address and solve any problem.
In our role as designers and creators of content at USANA, we have the incredible opportunity to make a difference in the lives of our users, and all of us possess the knowledge and ability to do so.
The title of this post is named after the The Ministry 1987 song “Every Day is Halloween”
JVD