Sometimes less is more
Going through my RSS feeds this morning, I came across something that I figured out a while ago and need to remind myself of occassionally:
When I started out in design I was always tempted to give the client a wide variety of options, and sometimes I was struggling to come up with good concepts after my first one or two came out well. I used to just include them as extra options anyway, confident that the client would choose one of my initial stronger designs, but they always seemed to choose the one that I liked least and had included just so I had more to show! From that I learned quickly that sometimes less is more, and if I feel like I nailed it in the first concept or two then maybe that’s enough.
These days I try to pitch one or two strong, tight website designs and put more effort into them rather than wasting time coming up with too many options that aren’t the best thing for the client. Since doing that I think I’ve come up with much better work and almost always end up implementing a design that I love as well as the client.
Strongly agree. Max I’ve put out is maybe 3 designs because after that then we all just get too confused. :P
I’ve always enjoyed your website designs, they’re much to my taste.
I am glad it isn’t just me. I have been very surprised to find how many people have clients picking the least effective design. There must be some dark force that draws certain people to bad designs.
@Camille Thanks! Yeah, I think there have been studies that show that when humans have too many choices it’s actually harder to choose.
@Bret Must be damn Murphy’s Law – if there’s a bad option available they’ll take it, so make sure there are only right options =P