The Design Process: Understand Your Content
Lesson 5 from: FAST CLASS: Think Like a Visual DesignerSarah Doody
The Design Process: Understand Your Content
Lesson 5 from: FAST CLASS: Think Like a Visual DesignerSarah Doody
Lesson Info
5. The Design Process: Understand Your Content
Lessons
Why Design Matters
05:50 2Design Vs. Aesthetic
06:27 3Impact Of Design
07:01 4The Design Process: Understand Your Audience
09:17 5The Design Process: Understand Your Content
05:21 6Design Principle: Alignment, Grids, And Spacing
05:47 7Design Principles: Contrast
02:55 8Design Principles: Repetition
03:20Design Principle: Hierarchy & Proximity
05:37 10Principle Scale And Balance
02:48 11Design Principles: Typography
04:29 12Design Principles: White Space
01:11 13Design Principles: Color
06:09 14Design Principles: Graphics, Icons, And Photos
02:51 15Design Principles: Layouts And Focal Points
01:53 16Design Principles: Color-Blind Accessibility In Design
01:41Lesson Info
The Design Process: Understand Your Content
I dunno where this quote came from, I think many people have claimed it's theirs, but content is king, now it's mine. So content is king, and it's true, in anything you design, what the message is, that matters the most. There's many ways to present that message, but if the core message is off, then all the design is really not going to help it. Think about things that maybe you have designed in your own life. Have you ever maybe started to work on a presentation or started to work on a resume or something, and maybe, I like Keynote, have you ever opened up Keynote, and maybe you choose a template or something, and then you're in a like this, and you start writing a headline, maybe you add a few more slides, and then you go back and delete some slides, and you're kind of, I just say, messing around in Keynote, and next thing you know, you're tinkering, and an hour goes by, two hours go by, and you delete the whole thing and you start over. And why is that? It's because you didn't have ...
the content. You didn't know what you were really designing, so you're just playing, and you didn't have the content, which is like a lighthouse, kind of. It's your starting point, and you need that to be able to go design something. So most of the time, you just delete it, and you start over. And I've used this analogy before in other classes I teach, but I always say, you don't start writing an essay without a thesis. You don't start writing an essay without an outline. So we don't start designing things until we know the content and outline, even for a business card, you would be amazed, but I think a lot of times, business cards have way too much information, 'cause we've not considered the person, we've not considered the content, and which content is really relevant to a business card. I have some family that's in the movie business and they don't start filming the movie until there's a script, right? That would be ridiculous. So in the same way, we don't design anything unless we understand our content. So content, this is a great quote, content really precedes design, because design in the absence of content is design. It's just decoration, so we do not want to be just designing decorations. We want to be designing things that really make our work lives better, make our personal lives better. We want our colleagues, we want to make their lives easier. We wanna be giving them documents that help them do their jobs better, we don't want to make our colleagues think. By ensuring that we're focused on content first, and not jumping into design, we can make sure that we're not just designing pretty, decorative things, and that we are making things that are gonna be really helpful to whomever we are designing for. As I said, there are a lot of great starting points for you today. And I think a lot of people don't even know about these starting points, because if they did, we would see a lot less poorly designed things in the world. And also, I think sometimes there is a stigma attached to using a template or buying a template. And I will admit, as a designer, it kind of used to really annoy me that people would go off and just use a template instead of hiring a designer. But I have come full circle and I am happy for people to use templates as starting points, because honestly, I use them in my life, as well. So I put together a list of various starting points for you to go get templates that could be for a Keynote presentation, PowerPoint presentations, business cards, resumes, social media posts, Facebook ads. What else is there? Okay, websites, websites are huge and we're not here to talk about websites today, but I know you can apply a lot of these principles to website design. So we've included a couple of website resources. One is called Wix.com. And another one is Instapage where you can make landing pages or simple little websites, but also in the beginning, it's important to just get that first version of whatever you're designing out there so you can get feedback. So whether it a homepage for your website or your resume, just get that first version done so you can test it out on friends or whomever, and get that feedback so you can make it better. And then also in the reading list, it's also kind of a watch list too, 'cause there are some really great videos related to the doors that I told you about in the beginning, there's an excellent video to watch, which you should just go watch it. And then also, the link to the video about IDEO, and you can learn more about their process, and also that whole emergency room thing they did to understand their people.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase