N ine skills that separate good and great designers

~ 29 September 2006 ~

Last Friday I had the pleasure of presenting “Essential Web Skills” at Webmaster Jam Session in Dallas, Texas. It was a veritable blast, and the conference organizers were certainly a pleasure to work with. I won’t delve into a lengthy play-by-play coverage of the proceedings; Andy Budd seems to have done so nicely.

Without blatant disregard to humility, I’d like to think I delivered the most effective presentation I’ve given to date, but one never knows for sure just how well a topic resonates with the audience.

On that note, available for your perusal (and judgement) are audio/slide files from the presentation. NOTE: There’s a lot of silence on the audio, like 10 mins worth, at the beginning.

The crux of the session were comparisons of good and great designers, structured along the lines of previous articles I’ve written: Good designers (blank), Great designers (blank). Following is a recap of the 9 skills presented.

Good designers:

Decorate

Believe “less” is more

Fix problems

Are inspired within a genre

Macrodesign

Treat text as content

Use good typefaces

Code for one instance

Redesign

Great designers:

Communicate

Believe “less” and “more” co-exist

Prevent problems

Are inspired by their total environment

Microdesign

Treat text as UI

Use good typography

Code for many instances

Realign

Download the audio and slide deck if you’d like to learn more.

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