I've spoken before about the hazards and benefits to cooperative website-making. At the time, I was heavily ensconced in styling someone else's mark-up, but now it gets better: the past couple of weeks at work has been a delicate balancing act between three different designers -- one strong in the Force, one whose Design-Fu is powerful, and me. The Casey Jones of the arrangement.
What happens when you take three designers with various levels of experience, various styles, and various habits, throw them into a shaker, add lime, and shake (don't stir!) vigorously?
Let's look at the ideal. In a perfect world, we would end up with The Perfect Designtm; an amalgam of experience, aesthetics, taste, and funk. The client would be blown off his virtual socks, wowed by the grace and sublime array of design elements and useability. Our reputation would skyrocket. We would be called the Van Gogh of Web Design -- only without the whole ear and eating lead paint bit. Oh, and we'd get our fame right away, and all the various fortunes associated with being truly awesome in the studio.
Unfortunately for us, this is not Candyland.
The reality of the situation was more like playing paint ball with no padding. In the dark. Barefoot.
On cement.
With nowhere to hide.
Actually, I exaggerate for the sake of amusement. It wasn't that bad. Rather, it gave me an all-new respect for those teams that have learned how to work together to create, people who know how to let go of ideas and "creative rights" enough to blend seamlessly with each other to achieve the results so whimsically explained above. As a rational, intelligent being, I theoretically understood the difficulties involved in working with a team of accomplished designers. However, it's analogous to understanding that climbing Mt. Everest is hard, and spending frozen, bitter nights on the summit with frostbitten fingers and lots of canned spam.
In short, it's time to load up on the canned spam.
My background in design is comprised of personal interest and a very brief stint in school; sadly, I'm one of those people who didn't take well to the rampant structure and wild "work" expectation of that whole college thing. It took three tries before I learned my lesson. (Moral of the story: Kids, stay in school. "Taking a break" is a gateway excuse that will lead to "trapped in retail for fifteen years" and "forgetting how to do basic math"! Followed by a slow, degenerative spiral to "spend all my time on video games" and finally, tragically, ending in "awesome career"... Waitaminute.)
While there are some who say that a designer out of a college program lacks innovation, I say that a college graduate has learned at least one extremely valuable lesson: How to work under the expectations of others.
This is a ridiuclously important tool for a designer. We are, after all, working for clients. What's more, most clients fail to reach a middle ground between "Give me exctly what I ask for, no matter how ridiculous" and "I have no idea, so I'll just ask you to change things fifteen million times as you're going; that's cost- and time-effective, right?". Throw in a team of designers and it becomes complicated. How do you balance the client's needs with your vision with that designer's method plus the other designer's sense of style? Where does it become too many cooks and not enough stew? Or, if all of the above is the easy part, where do you give up that one thing you're absolutely hooked on in favor of another designer's (possibly better) suggestion?
Teamwork. Balance. Checking the egos at the door, so that you can hear the critiques coming at you and learn how to cope with (and eventually, without) that immediate rise of defensiveness. These are things that I probably would have learned in school, had I stuck it out. Instead, I get to learn it as part of on the job training, balancing my aesthetic with Janae's with Heather's with the client's. It's a four way dance, and I am not going to say I've got all the steps down yet. Last week, I was the awkward country girl at a hip-hop party, gingham petticoats and all, ya'll. Or, to use one of Heather's hobbies, the two-left-feet'er at the West Coast Swing dance. This week, it's a whole other story. Or, um, will be, if we can wade through this massive, massive project we're all eyeball-deep in at the moment.
Janae and I will be starting to learn how to work our talents together with a Super Secret Project. Like paired programming, we will be sharing design rights (is that a term, really?) to the project and building off of each other, with Heather's input along the way. I consider it sort of like the campfire game where one person starts a story, and then following people have to continue it, one by one, until it reaches its conclusion. If all goes well, it won't be a scary story. Between three designers and two developers, lime, and vigorous shaking, we'll come up with a product 007 himself would be proud to drink! Or, uh... Right.
This is the sound of six hands designing, two hands developing, and two hands styling. (Bang your hands against the keyboard very fast. It sounds a lot like that.)
Also, I'm really glad this isn't Candyland. I've always had a crush on Queen Frostine, and I'm fairly sure she's got a thing for Lord Licorice. I mean, sure, he's evil and all, but he used to cut quite the dapper figure...
