Traces of Inspiration

SXSWi: Design Workflows at Work: How Top Designers Work Their Magic

• March 11th, 2007
• Filed Under: Design, SXSW

This is a panel with some rock star designers. I saw Bryan Veloso at Webvisions—now he’s on a much bigger stage. Seems to have been a big year for him. I see his name everywhere.

Panelists:

• Bryan Veloso, Avalonstar
• Jeff Croft, World Online
• Veerle Pieters, Duoh!
• Kelsey Ruger, The Moleskin

Notes:

Anatomy of a Web Designer

• Gotta have fun at what you do
• Gotta have a hobby outside of what you do
• Kelsey: Play poker
• Bryan: Dancer (DDR)
• Jeff: Sharks, TV, movies, snowboard, sports

What’s a typical day like?

• Jeff: The World Company (Kansas), work in news room with editors, reporter, photographers
• Workspace is open and collaborative
• Kelsey up at 5 AM every day, others late sleepers
• Jeff checks email & feeds at home, gets in around 10:30
• Works on hardcore CSS & programming at work (no music)
• Design (Photoshop) is for evenings when being creative
• Veerle: Creative work, need music
• CSS work: Need complete silence
• Bryan: Can’t understand complete silence
• Feels like he’s dead if it is silent
• Thought he was the only one that NEEDED distractions until he met Kelsey
• Need IM, cats jumping on desk
• Jeff: Disruptive items
• Feeds, twitter, IM
• But these people still use them
• Kelsey: Twitter & IM a lot to get through the day
• Jeff: Goes invisible when needs to
• When someone IMs, feels he has to answer right now
• If Adium keeps bouncing, he’ll go crazy

What influences the way you work?

• Veerle: Started as print designer
• Web was a complete turnaround
• Bryan: Was a business guy, design was a hobby
• Can deal with clients
• Kelsey: Inspired by ADD, was trying everything
• Art, computers, etc.
• Jeff’s mom found out what was wrong with him: She said it was ADD.
• But he got tested and didn’t. Mom was so disappointed.
• Kelsey: Into <abbr title=”Getting Things Done”>GTD</abbr>
• GTD = System for productivity
• Bryan: Uses pink post-it notes (gray desk)
• You can’t not see the pink against the gray
• Jeff: Tied to the computer
• Ideas tend to be in Photoshop and Illustrator
• Bryan: The shower helps
• Veerle: Basecamp helpful for managing projects
• Customers get feedback on milestones
• Sketch books, too
• Jeff: From being a music major learned:
• How to relax
• Used to being on stage
• Used to improv (jazz)
• Kelsey is more “planny”, others more spontaneous
• Kelsey can’t focus on creativity with so many things bouncing around in head
• Bryan: Pulls himself out, goes and plays Final Fantasy
• Working from home:
• Veerle: Sometimes works in pajamas
• Bryan: No comment on how he gets ready for work
• International difference for Veerle:
• Way people communicate and give feedback
• Americans are warmer, giving good feedback
• What people influence you:
  • Jeff: daughter, girlfriend, co-workers
• When working with others, name Photoshop layers
  • Jeff: “I hate ‘copy’, don’t ever send me a document with ‘copy’ in it”
  • Veerle: Working with a web site, tries to group them (header, footer, etc.)
• Kelsey: So meticulous with getting things done
  • Has a 4 year old, 5 year old, and newborn. No work happens when he gets home
• Jeff: No distincition between work life and professional life
  • No separation of personal and work in GTD stuff
• Bryan: If you get an idea, implement it.
  • Don’t let it disappear. Some days you won’t do client work.
• Jeff: For those that work for “the man”, it’s important to have a boss that understands design is lifestyle and schedules need to be flexible
  • Some days you may not get anything done, may not have any ideas
  • Next day you may have five

Tools in your workflow

• Veerle: Illustrator, Photoshop
  • Communiation: Skype, MSN, iChat
  • Running business: ibis? (time tracker/invoicing), FileMaker Pro for invoicing
  • CSS: CSSEdit, Dreamweaver for HTML (code view)
  • CMS: Expression Engine
• Kelsey: If you use a tool, make sure you really know how to use it
• Jeff:
  • Design: Photoshop, Illustrator
  • Backend systems influence what he does: Django
    • Data modeling up front (”content inventory”)
• Kelsey: Bascamp for management
  • Jeff has Brussels clock for Dashboard
• Kelsey: Always have something to take notes
  • Tape recorder, so he doesn’t Twitter while driving
  • 30 second voice memo for phones
• Veerle: if almost falling asleep, that’s when she gets the most ideas
  • But never does it, tries to remember the next morning
• Jeff: Not especially creative in the morning (or even afternoon)
  • Tends to be creative late at night
  • Important to have a boss that is cool with that
• Kelsey’s music
  • trance/techno = design
  • rock/rap = coding
• If hiring designers, know what your competition does.
  • Have fun.

Question: How do you deal with “How long is this going to take?”

• Jeff: Tell people more hours than you really think it will take
• Bryan: Take what it would take to do a personal job and double it
• Veerle: If you look at it as one project, it is easier.
  • But if you are working on five projects, it is trickier
• Kelsey: People want to do a good job and they want to do it quickly, tend to underestimate

Question: When presenting comps to a client when you’re not face to face, how do you do it?

• Bryan: By email or dev domain
  • Never had a client that micromanaged and needed much explanation
  • 3-line blurb was enough

Best practices for workflow

• Kelsey: Kelly Goto’s book
  • Uses SugarCRM

Creative briefs or jump right in?

• Jeff, usually has either long term site designs or small one day things
  • Short term, dive right in
  • Long term, more planning
    • Black box layouts (Veerle too)
  • Jumping into HTML/CSS and skipping Photoshop was putting to many constraints
    • Designs ended up being imageless
• Veerle gets wireframes from customer, very helpful
• Work freelance: Define what you’re doing up front

Dealing with infomania breaking workflow

• Jeff: Doesn’t listen to music, but will sometimes have headphones on

Broad talents vs. Specialized folks

• Kelsey: Get better work from people that understand both design and CSS
• Jeff: Happy Cog - they all know about everything
• Bryan: Sidebar creative
  • Two are designers that understand programming
  • Two are programmers that understand design

Minisite URL: designworkflows.com

What makes somebody able to work independently than in an office

• Kelsey: You have to like what you’re doing
  • Internal responsibility
  • Takes diligence, pretend you’re in an office
• Good designer does not mean business owner

Time tracking is the bane of existence

• Bryan: Tick
• Veerle: ibis
• Kelsey: Basecamp has time tracking too. (Doesn’t archive)
• Jeff: Working on multiple projects influences time spent on other projects

Update: Some notes @ SWSWDiary.

Update: Design Workflows is the companion site. Can’t wait to dig deeper into those interviews.