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Redesigning Personal Projects – A Critical Analysis

We’ve all experienced the occasional (and sometimes rather persistent) itch to redesign and rebrand our existing portfolios or blog homepages. As designers, it has become part of an instinctual response to search for new ways to reconceptualise our online presence and identity for an ever evolving audience with rising expectations. Redesigning is very much like an anticipated sugar rush; it engulfs your mind with positive ambition, drive and inspiration (serves as a nice pick-me-up) but it can also be the source of many impending headaches. This article explores the 3 noteworthy dilemmas involved in redesigning a personal project and how to overcome them. 

Problem 1: How Personal Should I Get? 

Redesigning a personal project presents a greater challenge than commercial/freelance work. In the latter, designers are expected to work within the confines of the stipulated requirements provided by the client while in the former, the designer is faced with the mammoth task of expressing his/her own voice from scratch, without an external, presiding voice. Being your own client is the hardest of all ventures – it can in fact be a nightmarish experience. Why? Well, read on.

Designers are trained (either through formal education or experience) to express their unique styles in a myriad of ways, a trait which is deliberately suppressed in the commercial/corporate world of design work where marketability and function precedes individual stylistic essence. A personal project, at least in theory, represents a licence/opportunity to expand ones creative insights and adopt a more creative personality. This usually translates into a design which captures the designer’s own aspirations and dreams, minus the rigours of ludicrous client-specific demands.

While this usually works out fine, things begin to turn sour, when one realises, rather ironically, that there is nothing “personal” about redesigning a personal website. In fact, on the contrary, a personal website is a landing board for prospective clients and as such, it should also be designed to meet general interests rather than fulfil personal ambitions. This ultimately leaves ‘you’ out of the equation. There is also the question of how to sustain a visual balance between personal style and marketable design.

Solution: Find an Identity and Keep them Guessing

Instead of embarking on a quest to find that perfect balance between a personal and professional identity, designers should look at the redesign process as a chance to merge both identities together in a fun, quirky and engaging manner. The trick is to not only find an identity that best reflects your own self as a professional individual but one that also subtly reveals an alternate, mysterious side of your persona which demands to be looked at only because of its subtlety. 

A portfolio emblazoned with a heavily personalised signature style can potentially irritate viewers who much rather see a personality shine through design rather than explicitly show itself. People generally are more interested in areas of a design that not explicitly decipherable upon initial viewing and provoke further investigation.

Impart certain personal touches on your website redesign (e.g. illustrations which hint to the viewer in a candid way, what you are all about) and leave the rest to imagination. Representing your personal identity (not professional identity) with a certain acceptable degree of mystery is perhaps the best way to stage a well-rounded online presence, in your next redesign.

Problem 2: Should I Redesign or Realign? 

During the course of working on the redesign for Tripping Words, I often pondered, if there should be a complete overhaul in the visual essence of the site (new colour, new graphics and new everything) or should I instead opt for a more calculated and potentially less risky realignment of the website (reworking certain presentational styles but keeping the major visual indicators largely unchanged). 

Realignments are hugely popular amongst commercial websites these days and some of the major online global brands, such as Facebook, Google and even Smashing Magazine, have chosen this trendy and elegant route. At the other end of the design spectrum, there are situations when a completely fresh look can reinvigorate a brand and launch it out from the abyss of dullness and a new makeover will, if you have the right connections, generate considerable hype and targeted traffic. But which option should you choose?

Solution: If it Ain’t Broke, Realign!

Most designers simply wish to redesign because their current design seems to have wilted through the test of time (it has “aged”) while others want to accommodate their website’s growing content/information architecture into a more manageable layout. The objective behind a redesign is perhaps the most crucial element in the entire redesign process. Without a clearly established goal, a redesign will end in tragedy, in the same vein as a horribly scripted B-Grade horror movie. Drawing up a list of objectives is a great way to kick-start the redesign campaign. It is also quite possible to ascertain whether a redesign would unnecessarily complicate matters rather than solve existing problems. 

While many would be familiar with the age-old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, my maxim however reads as, “if it ain’t broke, realign”. Realigning a website with a more clearly conceived and functional layout will usually solve any niggling problems, unless of course the previous design possessed major faults that required intensive restructuring. 

Realignment, in my own definition, refers to the task of reconceptualising the design environment of a website, not in terms of its aesthetic qualities, but how various sections interrelate and how the on-site information is communicated to readers in a purposeful and functional manner. Realignment is perhaps a more graceful alternative to redesign, as it examines in totality how a website operates and then addresses specific problems within an existing design, without attempting to drastically change the overall feel of a website.

Statistics have proven that readers tend to struggle in “adapting” to major redesigns as opposed to more gradual and subtle realignments that organize information and refine function rather than impose change. All personal websites should maintain a consistent personality throughout all its various iterations (past and present), as it forms the basis of how a website is remembered and hence identified.   

Problem 3: Should I Change the Content to Complement the New Design?

With a redesign on the cards (or realignment), it is common for designers to actively consider adopting new content strategies, to take advantage of this freshness in identity. The problem arises however, when the new design seems to necessitate a radical departure from the usual nature of content on the site (be it articles or lists posts). Over the past few years, during my regular browsing escapades through the design community, I’ve on occasion, noticed an almost immediate change in the nature of content for newly redesigned websites. For example, certain article-based blogs have evolved into purely resource driven community portals replete with list posts and compilations, precisely because the redesign has unintentionally altered the primary objectives of the website. As a result, the website in question upholds a different set of unproven and untested ambitions, disrupting any sense of continuity.

Solution: A Redesign Should Never “Dictate” Your Content Strategy

If your redesign compels a change in the nature of your website’s primary content, then the redesign process has effectively proven to be intrusive rather than constructive. The rationale behind a good redesign stems from knowing exactly how to design FOR your content and subsequently increase its appeal to readers.

Concluding Questions

What are your thoughts on the redesign process? How clearly should the line be drawn between professional and personal identity in design, or are they indistinguishable from each other and thus one and the same thing? Would love to hear your views!