Design Across Media:
Three Strategies for All Kinds of Design
Originally published in Cross-Media Communications by Drew Davidson
Over the years I have designed t-shirts, album covers, icons, logos, websites, enterprise
software, educational software, and most recently, video games. I divide my work into
three categories: graphic design, user interface design, and game design. And while these
may sound like very different types of design, they are more alike than different. I have
found some design strategies to be universal across all media, and I believe you can apply
them to any project – from a birthday card to a best-selling videogame.
The first and most important strategy I use for a new design project is to have a very
clear goal in mind. I make sure I know what I am trying to accomplish with the work.
I ask a series of questions: What am I trying to communicate? What am I trying to get
the audience to do? How am I trying to make the audience feel? For commercial design
projects the goal is often to get the audience to buy a product. For user interface design,
the goal is to make a device easy to use. And in games, the goal is almost always to make
the audience have fun.
At the end of a day, you want to have a t-shirt people want to wear, a logo people want to
put on a business card, or a piece of software people want to use. Some designers discount
the emotional goals of a project, but I find it is extremely useful to know and own these
goals as early as possible. Once I know my goal, I make it my mantra. I write it in huge
letters on a whiteboard. I make it my email signature. I put it on a t-shirt. I make sure
everyone I am working with knows what the goal is and buys into that goal.
Knowing your goal well ahead of time will keep you focused and help you make the
thousands of small design decisions that come up during the project. Having the goal to
scare your audience will lead to very different results than the goal to make them laugh.
Your goal will help you choose everything from the color palette to the background music
– as every element in your work should help get you and your audience closer to the
goal.
The second strategy I use is to clearly define the audience for the work. You have to know
who will be using your work. The audience will decide whether you reach your goal,
so it is critical to keep them in mind at all times. While my projects have often had an
extremely broad audience, there is usually a narrow wedge that is the core audience – the
group on whom the work will have the greatest impact and who will ultimately get the
most out of the work.
You need to know your core-audience in a much more personal way than looking at
demographics or focus-group feedback. You need to know where they are coming from
and what their life experiences are. All of this information is going to make a design more
direct and meaningful to them. The audience might understand a common language (be
it jargon, slang, acronyms or even a visual language), and if you speak to them in this
language, you have immediately cut through the noise and made it that much easier to
accomplish your goals.
By knowing what experiences your audience does not have, you can decide to either avoid
those topics or endeavor to teach about them. If you set out to educate your audience, it
is even more important to be aware of what they already know. You can use that common
reference as a starting point for teaching about a new topic, building on what exists instead
of laying a brand new foundation.
The third strategy I use when approaching a new design project is to really understand
my medium. I have had the opportunity to work in a wide range of media, but that also
means that I have not spent twenty years perfecting my technique in just one of them. As
such I am always aware that there are people who have done more work in that field than I
have. I try to learn as much as possible about what has been done already – what has been
attempted and what has not, what worked and what did not.
When an advertising agency lands a new client, one of the first things they do is go out
and collect every piece of media they can find related to that company and its competition.
The information is sorted and studied so the agency can understand as much as possible
about what’s being done in the client’s medium and market. The cream rises to the top,
and the agency can start making designs and recommendations that leverage that good,
while avoiding the bad.
When I began working professionally in games, I had twenty years of experience playing
videogames behind me. I had probably played several hundred games and spent a good
deal of my childhood dreaming about creating my own. But that did not mean I knew
anything about the process of making games or why the games that I enjoyed so much
really worked. I set out to give myself a crash course in game design and game-making.
I replayed my favorite games with a critical eye to see why they were fun. I played
games that were not designed with me in mind, just to see how other game designers
were communicating with their audiences. I read every article and book on the subject
of game design that I could get my hands on, and I made sure to meet people who made
games. Even though I never found a single source that spelled out the secrets to great
game making, by absorbing as much as possible I was able to start formulating my own
ideas and put them into practice in my own designs.
It certainly helps to be a little obsessed with your work. Being passionate about your
goals, about your audience, and your medium will ultimately push you to create better
designs. As a designer you have to be an advocate not only for yourself and for your goals,
but also for your audience and your medium. Your audience is not going to be able to sit
in on design meetings, so you must always keep them in mind as you make decisions.
If you feel your design straying away from your goals or audience, jump to action. Refocus
your work or redefine your goals. A wishy-washy designer never accomplished anything
great. Be awesome. Stay focused. Aim for a bulls-eye, and if the target gets up and
moves five feet to the right, then change your aim to make sure you hit it.