Description

Ego is the enemy of any design project.

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Music and links from this episode

1. Why I Can't Sleep With The Door Ajar by We Is Shore Dedicated
2. Nothing (Bonus Track) by Kai Engel
3. Mutations by Small Colin

Line-by-line notes

1. If we consider the task of making a website
2. There’s several stages a project goes through
3. Most of those stages are black and white, especially actually building a website
4. But when design gets involved
5. The ego starts to get in the way
6. This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess
7. MUSIC
8. When you build something
9. Like a wall for example
10. There’s no black and white to that
11. A wall either works
12. It stays stood up for years and functions as a wall
13. Or it doesn’t
14. The wall falls down
15. It’s very clean when the wall isn’t working, or doing its job
16. There’s no emotional intricacies to deal with here
17. Design is the exact polar opposite of this
18. When you’re talking to somebody and telling them their logo will be green
19. This can elicit a whole range of responses you can’t begin to even comprehend
20. Ranging from things that make sense like
21. My customer base won’t like the colour green
22. To strange things like
23. Green reminds me of grass and the countryside, and I don’t like that
24. No matter how hard we try to stop it from being so
25. Design is an emotional thing
26. It isn’t as simple as a wall that either stands up or doesn’t
27. Or a website that either works or not
28. Design isn’t black and white, and it works on a thousand levels
29. Most of all, design is subjective
30. And that causes problems for everybody
31. With subjectivity comes a much more insidious thing: ego
32. The graveyard of failed design projects is full of gravestones that declare Ego was the problem
33. And ego comes from everywhere
34. It comes from the client thinking they know better than the professional designer they hired
35. It comes from the marketing company thinking they know better than everybody else
36. And worst of all, it comes from the designer thinking that they know better than everybody else in the world
37. A designer with an ego is a useless designer
38. That’s a fact
39. A designer who sees their work as precious pieces of art that have been perfectly crafted isn’t a real designer
40. Design is not art
41. Design can be pretty, it can affect people’s emotions and decisions, but it’s not art
42. Art is designed to affect an emotion
43. Design is to communicate a message
44. Art serves the...