What to do when you're stuck ?

19 Oct, 2019

	 	 
What to do when you're stuck ?
As a designer there are days where your work flows in a magical way. Days where you might work for hours without eating or going to the bathroom without you even realizing that. But those days aren’t most of our days as designers. 
If you're having thoughts such as: 
“It doesn’t look clean enough”
“It doesn’t reflect the brand”
“It doesn’t look modern enough”
“How do I make this right?”
“Mmmh… Why doesn’t it look good? What is it?”
...Chances are that you're stuck. However, this might be the opportunity to improve, to look after better solutions. But what to do when you’re in that situation? Here are some tips that can help you in the process of designing.
1. Go back to simple
When your design looks like a mess it’s time to go back to simple. Get rid of colors, get rid of graphics for the moment. It’s you and the content, black text over a white background. Start from there. Try to make it look good without adding anything else, just the minimum elements needed. Play with sizes, with white space, with different layout possibilities, columns, relationships and proportions. Care for your typography, the font size, the line height, the letter spacing, the capitalization. Once you’re done, ask yourself these questions: – Does it need anything else? – Will some other element help me tell what I’m trying to tell? – Will some other element help me better convey the brand personality? If the answer to one of these is yes, then add whatever you need. But don’t go crazy now, remember you’ve already had a mess before. Try adding one color, try adding images, try adding graphics. But just one thing at a time while asking yourself the same questions every time you’ve done adding something.
2. Look for inspiration 
Not just design inspiration, but any visual manifestation can inspire you. Enter Google Images, look for words that relate to the world of what you’re designing. For example, search for results related to your brand, e.g: artisan, handmade, industrial, urban, modern, fashion, tools, etc. Each one of these words can open a whole visual universe. You then collect the images that feel related to your brand and they’re always there when you need to come back to the brand core visual idea. We have blog post dedicated to finding inspiration which you can access anytime at: https://www.utdpixels.com/article?id=7
3. Ask for someone else’s opinion
And try what they say, even if you don’t like it. Listening to what others have to say about your design can be harsh. It can easily feel like criticism. Criticism make us start defending ourselves as if someone was attacking us. And it really shouldn’t. Listening to others’ opinions can help you enormously. Even if you think that what they say sounds silly or totally wrong, their words can actually light ideas in your brain. If you don’t have someone to ask there’s always the online community. There’re many Facebook groups for designers where you can share your designs and ask for feedback. 
4. Go to sleep, leave it for tomorrow
If none of these works, leave the task. Go do something else. If it’s night, go to sleep. Your brain will continue the work while you sleep and things will probably look different tomorrow. New ideas will come up and you won’t believe how you didn’t see them earlier.
 
Humolli Drin, Editor