A Daunting Proposition

Note: This post is over a year and a half old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information.

FrustrationI’m sure you’ve all faced the task. You’ve been looking around you, seeing web sites you drool over, television commercials that leave you in a state of awe, product packaging that you want more than the product it contains… America, and perhaps the world, is becoming more designed all the time. So you decide to do something of a higher caliber than anything you’ve ever done before, and something more original than anything you’ve ever come up with before. And you sit down to work on it and…

Nothing happens. You hold your head in your hands, you rub your eyes with your palms and refocus. Nope, it’s still not there. You’ve built up expectations so high, and shunned all other sources of knowledge and inspiration in your quest for the “new idea”. I’ve got something to share with you. There is nothing new under the sun. Randy tells me that there are only 12 stories in the world, and every story you hear is a variation on one of these 12 themes. It seems to me there are even fewer modern websites.

So I’m faced with this task of redesigning my website and my blog. I’ve scrapped so many designs I can’t count them anymore. I want to do something that I can be proud of in any circle, but I’ve learned I can’t make everyone happy. I know that the structure of both is going to change, especially the Circle Six website. It’s been a LONG time since I rethought the structure of the site and I don’t think it lends itself to doing anything new or creative. Time to tear down and rebuild.

And I think that’s a big part of facing this dilemma, letting go of preconceived notions and just letting yourself build from scratch. When I see an image I like, or an inspiration for a layout, I get so bogged down trying to figure out the CSS in my head that I can’t just elaborate on the creative idea. That’s the dilemma of the coder/designer. The two tend to pull each other down. So I’m advising myself to just be a designer first, and then worry about coding. We’ll see if I listen.

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  1. Ross Johnson 10.26.06 / 10pm

    I couldn’t identify with you any more. When I redesigned my company site last month (for the third time this year…) I built it around a color scheme I found to be pretty unique, and a design element that I liked the look of.

    Two weeks later I started reworking that design, coming up with something based on the same design elements but smoothed out and reworked.

    On Monday I was fed up with certain aspects that just didn’t work for me, and realigning it again started to occur.

    Will this one actually become live? I doubt it. Even with beneficial deadlines like making CSSreboot on Nov. 1st, I doubt I will be satisfied enough for my taste.

    I think designers tend to look at a design for too long, and get bored with the vision before it even get’s live. The hardest but most important skill might simply be knowing when to stop even if you think you COULD do better?