Joining a blogathon means committing yourself to a month of daily blogging—not an easy task. For this year’s WordCount Blogathon, one blogger approached the challenge with an experiment in web design.
Ron Doyle—freelance writer, web designer, and author of Blog Salad—let his readers vote on different elements of his blog’s design.
Yes, I know, my blog looks like it was created in 1994. Here’s why: For the next 31 days, you will decide the fate of my blog’s design. I’ll walk you through the stages of development and you’ll vote. I will make changes daily based on the results of my polls.
Everything, from layout and navigation to fonts and colors, was crowdsourced. Now, “design by committee” is a phrase that has come to represent the negative result of too many people having a say in a design project. It was even spoofed in “The Process“, a video that shows what the stop sign would look like if it had been designed by committee.
I admit that when I first read about Ron’s experiment, I saw it as a huge risk. I know my personal concerns would run along the lines of, “What if they choose a color I hate?” Or, “What if they insist on using Comic Sans in the logo because it’s ‘fun’?”
But while having too many opinions from people who aren’t knowledgeable about design has the potential to lead to disaster, isn’t it the job of the designer to incorporate requests, translate technical jargon for the client, and ultimately produce a design that is—while perhaps not what you would have done alone—still cohesive and professional? In his decision to hand over creative control to the internet, Ron turned a month of blogging into a month of learning how to be a better designer.
Breaking down the process this way makes me realize how complicated my job as a designer really is. For every decision that you made, I had to make three more to execute it. And there are at least 31 more things that need to be done. It’s an endless to-do list of those little details that only matter when someone stumbles upon them.
And it’s why [...] I’m more proud today of what I do for a living than I was 31 days ago. So, sincerely, thank you for helping me confirm my professional purpose.
What do you think? Good idea, or bad idea? Take a look at the transformation of Blog Salad over 31 days, condensed into 33 seconds.
Tags: web design
I think that Ron guy is a nut.
You’re absolutely right—as designers, we must resist the temptation to turn every client into a clip for our portfolios. We are vehicles, not oracles; collaborators, not tyrants; filters, not firehoses.
The challenge is finding a balance point between selfless service and sharing your expertise…