Basic design tips:

(Illustration by Jeremyville.)

I realise I'm leaving myself open to criticism of the 'Granny sucking eggs' variety, and to post about;  '50 tips for designers' might be so, like, yesterday.

But as a writer interested in design, I still find this basic stuff pretty interesting.

ComputerArts has a good article of 50 do's and don'ts for designers. (Suggested by designers themselves.)

In truth, it's stuff about the creative process that most experienced designers will already know by heart, and so, it's probably more useful for younger talent coming on stream.

However, no harm in anyone being reminded from time to time of the basics. (I wish someone had drilled the habit of Cmd+Save into my workflow technique years ago. Remember the days? When Mac's used to crash 3 times a day. How easily we forget.)

And there are a few things in the list copywriters, planners and even account men might benefit from reading.

Not least if it flags up to them that designer's don't just 'crack the brief' because they are good or have some mystical abilty to 'deliver the goods' out of thin air, but rather that the solution is often arrived at only after masses of hard graft. Where a gazillion questions have been asked, many routes/thoughts have been explored/discarded, or a some good rules/disciplines have been followed. (Rules which of course, on occasion you can break. But some good advice missing from the list is that it's probably best to only break the rules, when you know what they are.)

So, all in all, a good piece from ComputerArts and well worth a read.

And for younger, (and indeed older) designers, there's more good stuff to be found in this series of excellent video interviews Hillman Curtis shot for adobe with luminaries such as Milton Glaser, Mark Romanek, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister.