The lazy designer

So, I’m not a designer. But I design all my visuals myself. I’ve adapted a posture that I call “the posture of the lazy designer” and I thought you might be interested in it.

I think that good designers are – in a way – lazy designers. For three reasons:

1. They will not start a design until they have clarity about what to design. Who is it for? What’s the change? Why do we need that visual? Once you’re clear about what to design the how becomes much easier (and much more efficient).

2. They will let the content make as many decisions as possible. If your piece makes any sense, there will be tons of correlations among the contents. Make use of them. Things that belong together are placed close together, things that don’t are spatially separated. Things that are the same look the same. Things that are different look different (not just a bit but no-doubt-different).

3. They will make effective use of constraints. One color is enough to design almost anything. Two might be useful in many situations. Three? Depends. The same is true for almost anything: fonts, shapes, you name it. A good rule of thumb is this: Stick with the smallest selection unless you have a strong reason not to, i.e. unless you have a strong reason to add to the selection of fonts, colors, shapes etc., avoid it.