VP #3 - Pers. Dev. & Self-help
BE OPEN-MINDED / RELINQUISH CONTROL
Let Your Design Concept Guide You In Unexpected Directions By Exercising Mental Flexibility
BE OPEN-MINDED / RELINQUISH CONTROL
Let Your Design Concept Guide You In Unexpected Directions By Exercising Mental Flexibility
Let's conduct a thought experiment. You've been assigned a graphic-heavy UI/UX project. At first, you tell yourself you're fine sticking to Figma even for your visual artwork. But as time progresses, you realize something: the posterchild of immaculate UI/UX design known as Figma might be more than enough to design your mockups, wireframes, & flow, but isn't gonna cut the mustard in developing some more intricate visual. What do you do?
Assuming you haven't completely lost your marbles, the easy answer should be this: You utilize Illustrator/Photoshop in order to make your client's vision, however ghastly, more achievable. The only problem - and isn't exactly a minor one - is that while this greatly enables you to make your vision a reality, it doesn't solve an even more fundamental, and probably more frequent, problem, namely coming up with what to design in the first place. Luckily, there's a trick you - at least in the early, conceptual stage - can make great use of. Allow me to demonstrate.
The picture above shows each evolutionary stage of a video game character design, from its basic shape, to its intermediate form, to its completed version. Now, be honest with me.
If you centered your eyes squarely on the first illustration (left), where would you image anticipate that the round-shaped, yellow design is going? A ball? A sun? A combination of the two? Think again.
Although it's tempting to follow the beaten path of well-established graphic design orthodoxy, what if you did the absolute opposite? For example, what if you decided to mold the circular object initially conveived not into an inanimate entity such as a ball or sun, but as far away as you can get from that original idea?
In the age-old American comic strip known as Calvin and Hobbes (assuming that a cartoon from the 80s and 90s qualify as such), Calvin invents a rule-based game with one convenient caveat: the rules are different every time the game is played. Because of how well this principle translates to a vast range of human endeavors, and how immensely applicable it is, (comic fan) academics have coined a term for it: The Calvinball Effect.
The point of this is neither to discuss comic strips, or even - actually - to ponder cartoony illustration. Instead, it's simply to underscore that, once the moment of the graphic designer equivalent of writer's block sets in - and, arguably, even before the stage of hopeless malaise is reached - try something different. And you know what? Sometimes, DIFFERENT may consist of doing the straight OPPOSITE of what others, or you yourself, expect.
Now, back to the design in question.
Since the yellow, circular blob dotted up (left) is inanimate, we are going to transform it into a living, breathing being. But how? Well, think of something - fictional or alive - that fits the bill. In this case, I decided to use my imagination to come up with a "living" entity that could, at least hypothetically, pass for round and yellow, since few real-life human beings or animals will. The result?
A cute, plush-like toy with stubby hands and feet, big, adorable eyes and a lively mouth (center). So we're done, right?
Nope!
One of the best things about employing the CALVINBALL EFFECT towards our designs is that we can often make use of it multiple times.
So far, we have taken the inanimate, yellow ball-shaped object (left) and made it into a (however non-existent) cute plushy (center). Now, how can we take the most conspicuous feature of that illustration and turn that creation and subvert expectations once again?
Since we've already gone the route of making something inanimate (left), we can't capitalize on that particular quality when we consider what to do with our cute, living creature. So instead, let's exploit the fact that the character is CUTE, and gravitate as far as we can as we jot up the third and final version of our character (right).
That right - we're making our (supposedly) innocent character into a violent warrior. In fact, let's be even more specific and morph the plush-like toy into a cold-blooded viking, axe and all!
Slap a descriptive, unique and memorable title above its head, and BOOM! We've got ourselves a video game title screen that - if I'm shameless enough to congratulate myself - looks pretty darn fine.
In a classic episode of the 90s sitcom Seinfeld (does it even need an explanation?), the neurotic and insecure George Costanza discovers that he can pick up most every woman he wants while brutally honest about the fact that he's unemployed and lives at home with his mother - you know, the straight opposite of what he would usually do. How so?
By exuding confidence in his delivery.
Although I wouldn't recommend approaching your greatest crush with an endless barrage of self-depricating remarks, the truth contained in the basic message of this counterintuitive method conduct still stands: if you believe in yourself, others will too.
If you can combine unshakable self-confidence with an unwavering willingness to exercise conceptual flexibility throughout every stage of development as your visual design progresses, then...
You aren't just golden. You're absolutely unstoppable.