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The Risk of Being Unique – The Logic of Design Styles

Every designer has a signature style interwoven into the fabric his/her work – it may be an intentional feature of a design project but it can also be deliberately suppressed in the case of commercially driven corporate work, where functionality and purpose supersedes personalised creativity (for most part). Uniqueness is a facet of aesthetic style, but it involves the courage to be creatively different from standardized design conventions. What is the risk (if any) of being unique in an industry/community which embraces creative ambition but also prefers to preserve certain aesthetic traditions?

Website Interoperability – Myth or Truism?

In an ideal world, designs for the web should be accessible and functional to a wide range of users, regardless of browser type and other technical configurations. In reality however, the notion of interoperability, the ability for websites to function optimally on various browser/screen configurations, is much harder to address. Designs which deviate significantly from mainstream aesthetic/functional conventions (designs that are somehow unique in both form and function), face a challenge to ensure cross-browser/screen/-whatever-you-can-think-of compatibility. The point is, uniqueness comes at a price. While I am not making the generalised claim that all unique-designs are not interoperable, it must be asserted that being adventurous with form and function, can at times, upset the balance between accessibility and style.

Personally, I value uniqueness; it is the one central point of differentiation that sets you apart from the millions of other website designers/blog owners. Blogs and other personal design projects (apart from commercial work where fulfilling client requests are of paramount importance) should be platforms which allow designers to inject as much creativity and artistic freedom possible; whilst of course observing the basic tenets of web usability – website content has to be “readable” at the very least.

The Murder of “Design Theory” – Guilty as Charged

As discussed in previous articles, creativity pushes the boundaries of the laws governing design theory. Typographic principles (liberal mixing of sans serif and serifs is a cardinal sin, a principle which as you can see from this website that I’ve “overlooked”), layout styles and other design elements are sometimes breached for a more adventurous aesthetic perspective.

When the laws of design are murdered, other designers will smell the “blood”. I speak on the basis of personal experience, from running this blog and a sports gaming website. I’ve noticed that there is a general tendency for certain designers to take great offence (yes you read right) when a designer or a person who claims to be well versed with design, disregards its sacred laws.

I’ll have to make certain clarifications here. There are certain contexts/situations when a design has to follow strictly to the central aesthetic principles because of the nature of its content and purpose. You wouldn’t expect A List Apart to feature vibrant, colourful, funky illustrations and outgoing typography, because it serves as a ‘serious’ intellectual resource for web industry professionals.

At the other end of the spectrum, personal projects (primarily blog websites) should never be solely constrained by design laws – experimentation is a crucial facet of blogging. Read on. 

A Design Blog Needs Soul and Personality

The “blog” has in the contemporary web world emerged as a commercial entity – every company has a “blog”, and as such people are now running blogs purely for commercial reasons, to fulfil corporate institutional requirements (effective public relations maybe?). 

We must however never lose focus of the original meaning of the blog as defined by the ever reliable Dictionary.com (note the slight tinge of sarcasm) – “an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page”. The blog is a diary-like (except that it’s public!) space on the web to share constructive opinions. What the definition doesn’t capture is that a blog is also about establishing your own personal identity and aesthetic flavour. From a purely personal viewpoint, running a personal blog provides the opportunity to exert your online presence in a highly memorable way that evokes interest and provokes questions. If you have set up your design portfolio in conjunction with a blog, then it is all the more important that the blog section of your website encapsulates certain personal and emotive traits about yourself, be it visual, functional or content based elements.

As the classical Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, proclaimed during the political uncertainties of a war-ravaged Russia, an era where most art works reflected propagandistic motives and politically charged sentiments; “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced”.

Why run a design blog that looks, feels and functions like a million other design blogs out there? Being inventive with the kind of emotions you wish to convey through design, is a key aspect of uniqueness.

Design with Your Heart and not Your Head

I think a key component of any personal design project is thoughtful reflection. How do we intend to construct an identity that truly speaks for who we are as a creative personality? The design process actually starts through inward questioning – understanding your own emotional configuration and the type of identity you wish to convey. A “soulless” blog is bland and it usually (but not always) provides an uneventful experience for the reader. Designing should start with the heart first before it is analysed under the structured paradigm of aesthetic science (also known as design theory).

Style is the ability to get in touch significantly with one’s own identity and express it in a meaningful and impressionistic manner and that itself connotes an artistic sense of being unique and different.

But one question remains unanswered; do you dare to be different?

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