A person never stops learning which is exactly why there is always a room for learning. Even if you think you are a great designer and have good command over creative web designs, there will always be a room for making yourself better and enhancing your creativity. As designers, you will have millions of opportunities to learn from your surroundings and even from other websites. The famous websites such as Facebook and Twitter are a great example of creativity. Despite having a good user interface, these websites are user friendly as well. There is a lot of material available on the internet to improve your website making and become a designer from a simple maker.
Learning and taking inspiration from a design is absolutely fine however; copying designs should be a big No. I would not recommend any designer to see way too many tutorials because that way you are killing your own creativity. Designers are all about creativity and any innovation can be inspired but it should be totally real. As a designer, you should never Google designs before you start working on a project. Mostly, designers are very much real and they really try hard to come up with something extra ordinary and way too creative. Your job is to provide an amazing website which is perfectly functional. Also, one should never be afraid to experiment so do not run away from bad designs because eventually making mistakes will help you in creating a master piece. Following are a few great ideas for creating innovative and unique web designs:
1. Starting from the Scratch:
You might have created a lot of rough designs that you would like to use while starting a great project as this will save a lot of your time. This idea can sound extremely comfortable to most of the designers but if you really want to come up with something exceptionally creative, you need to start from the scratch for instance, you can even start your design from a blank paper. Take a blank canvas and start drawing whatever comes to your mind. Do not bound yourself from anything and just draw freely. This is one of the greatest ways to come up with creative designs. As a designer, you need to give yourself a free hand. Starting off with a blank canvas can actually give you a lot of new and creative ideas whereas making changes in an already half incomplete design might be a little difficult. So, go for a blank canvas and you will be amazed at how creative you can be.
2. Do Not Follow the Typical Design Traditions:
If you are designing a website for a large target audience, you might have to follow some rules and regulations. You will have to follow a strict layout mechanism and in such cases, you will be bound to create a design according to the rules and regulations and this can affect your creativity a lot. While designing, you need to think out of the box and for this your clients should give you a free hand to think and then design. If you have to follow any rules and regulations, you should come up with a design first and then you can think how to make it work following the 960 pixel box rule. You can even find new rules to implement your designing, all you need to do is explore and get out of your comfort zone in order to show the best of your creativity.
3. Avoid Using Content Management Systems:
Finding tools which can increase your productivity and save your time is always a good thing. Content Management Systems is a great tool to save time and come with a beautiful design. CMS is basically used to save time as it provides an opportunity to make instant changes. Once you present your product to the client, he would require a few changes here and there and CMS can do that quickly and easily. But such software will always come with a few restrictions so if you can let go, just let it go in order to see the level of your creativity. Designers these days confine themselves from so many things that showing the best side of their creativity get impossible.
4. Online Templates/Inspirations should Be a Big NO:
Before starting a project, you should never look for an inspiration or view other designs from big designers. If you are doing anything like this, you are not beginning your project with your own creativity. When you are free, there is nothing wrong in visiting such websites because seeing work of other people will always encourage to you improve. Some clients will even provide you with inspirational links in order to explain to you what they really want. The key behind coming up with a unique design is that when you are about to start a project; do not visit these inspirational website and come with something of your own.
5. Always Try Something New in Creative Web Designs:
Creative people should always be trying something new. Following the same path as you have used before to get a project complete might be a great idea because you know it works for you and it will save your time as well. Following the same path every time can get really monotonous so you need to keep the creativity going by trying something new every now and then.
6. Ignorance is a Bliss when it comes to coding:
As a web designer, you should know coding as well. But, knowing coding means restricting yourself from a lot of things. If you will design and code too for the website, you will end up removing a lot of things from the layout just because there were some issues with the coding. If you really want to come up with something creative, ignore that fact that you know HTML, CSS or JavaScript.
7. Old is Gold:
Designers these days think that using a table while designing is indeed a bad idea. However, I think that they still hold an importance in a web designer’s life. You do not have to come up with a layout using table but you should not ignore its importance completely.
8. Learn New and Improved Things:
Your designing would also include browser testing and a lot of other stuff. If there are new things in the market related to web designing, you must learn them. As mentioned earlier, there is always a room for improvement and in the world of web designing and developing, things are constantly changing so you can learn and experiment something new with e very project.
9. Do Have Limitations:
I know, I have said earlier that you can come up with a design if you allow yourself to think freely. However, if you are struggling with this, you can constraint yourself but be unique in constraining yourself too. You can limit yourself from a few things that you have always been doing and try something absolutely new.
10. Work With Partners:
Partnering up with other people can be fun and frustrating both. However, it is indeed a great way to learn to be patient and also to learn new things. You will have your differences but more creative people can surely come up with something brilliant. Also, it can be very challenging for a creative person to work with other creative people.
About The Author
Seriously? With all due respect, there’s a lot of bad advice here.
3. “Avoid Using Content Management Systems?”
-Unless you hope to make your client happy and capable of managing their content. CMSs are gaining in popularity, flexibility and outright necessity. If you want to draw up some bloated Photoshop/Dreamweaver mess and offer it to your client as something “new and innovative” by all means, do. But don’t expect to get much more work in the 21st Century.
4. “…you should never look for an inspiration or view other designs from big designers”
-You obviously didn’t go to art school. Kidding. But seriously, this would be better if it read, “look for inspiration from other designs and designers.”
6. “Ignorance is bliss when it comes to coding.”
-Wrong again. If you ignore code or the fact that you know code, your pretty Photoshop or Fireworks layout is going to look like crap when you try to take it live or across browsers. If you need to hire a developer to write code, do so. But as someone else mentioned, ignoring the platform is wasting time.
7. Tables???
-I’m not even going to respond to this one.
If you know what u are doing, a CMS will not stop you from beeing creative. I don’t think that a CMS has anything to do with design…
I have to agree with avoid cms to be creative.
3. Avoid Using Content Management Systems – this is just wrong. Design without having in mind the platform behind the design is a waste of time. You will end up with a nice looking unusable canvas. Anyway this is just an opinion from a coder.
You do it “too originally” it will not work cross-browser, or if it does the time and effort does not justify the final goal.