Design block
I’m an idiot designer. There, I’ve said it. I’ve been completely unable to think of anything new and unique lately. I’ve spent hours and hours in front of Photoshop and drawn lines and rounded boxes without making any coherent, good-looking website designs.
I call myself a designer, and everything I seem to be able to do, is the same thing over and over in different colour schemes. What is wrong?!
This post is fueled by rage, and rage alone, because I’m mad at myself. Mad doesn’t quite get it. I’m stuck with a rage I seem to be unable to vent, and the fact that none of the ideas I get are satisfactory to me doesn’t help either.
Lasse Havelund on March 9th, 2007
Tags: block, colour, design, designer, Miscellaneous, personal, rant
Meli responded on March 10th, 2007 at 5:54 am | permalink
I just stumbled across here (boredom inspired link clicking) and IMMEDIATELY sympathized with this post. I’m having the exact same problem (and I’ve got a new website to theme!).
A tip that someone gave me recently that helped a little was: open up Photoshop and design something killer that you don’t plan to code. I tried it and it worked. I mean, I still don’t have a layout for my site, but it eased some design-block frustration. I was free to just out-and-out design, putting together a layout that looked really good without thinking “now, if I layer this div inside of this div…” or “I’ll center align this part and put a box on the paragraph underneath” or … well, I’m sure you get the point.
Haha, I don’t even know who you are, this is the only post of yours I’ve seen, but you’ve got a really nice layout in the wordpress theme viewer (where I am ashamed to report that I was looking for inspiration myself!!), and so it’s nice to meet you. :)
Lasse Havelund responded on March 10th, 2007 at 2:09 pm | permalink
I used to do a design like this at least once a day ( that was when I was still a horrible coder), which means I have one or two decent layouts lying around, but I /need/ to do something new and original.
Thanks! I think that’s what lured you (and about 80 others each day) to my site :)
Likewise :D
Jerem responded on March 10th, 2007 at 4:53 pm | permalink
Try having a break, doing something different. Your inspiration will come back by itself :)
Ranjani responded on March 10th, 2007 at 11:53 pm | permalink
Definitely go for a break. When I’m lost, I look at palettes, or I piece words together - little things that can begin a site from nothing.
But the break is the best suggestion so far. Your creativity’s been exhausted; give it a chance to return.
fangel responded on March 12th, 2007 at 7:18 pm | permalink
My solution: Code. I don’t design, hence I don’t suffer from designers block ;)
Ohh wait. I never designed, so it wasn’t really like I have tried to solution out for myself. Ohh well.
Coders of the world. Unite. (or was it Hackers?)
-fangel