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As a designer, I've never found arrogance a good strategy to get people to agree with the reasons for my design. Design, contrary to popular belief, is not tha

As a designer, I've never found arrogance a good strategy to get people to agree with the reasons for my design. Design, contrary to popular belief, is not that subjective - there are reasons and explanations for design decisions. Presenting them with arrogance without regard for another person's opinion is not a good way to get consensus. If you are talking to a business person, it is the designer's job to frame the decisions in a context that makes sense to them. Same with an engineer. Defend your decisions, but also know when you're wrong. Apple wins because they hire great designers. The designers do 10 pixel perfect mock ups, then narrow it down to 3, and then defend and refine the best one. Do you really think the iPhone design was pushed forward by one arrogant designer who had no regard for the opinions of others on the team? It took years to get it to where it is today. Is Dustin talented? Sure. But I know dozens of designers who could have produced the AA.com comp he did - it's easy to design without constraints.

rantfoil 17y ago
It goes deeper than the pixel. In fact, I could care less about visual design. I think that's an over-emphasized aspect of design. It goes to philosophy. Anyone can make pretty things, but it takes a damn intransigent defiance to do whatever it takes to make great experiences. I mean experience design. And experience design isn't about making everyone happy. It's about firing people when they get in your way, and breaking down fiefdoms that make products crap. A thousand people all compromising will result in a product or service that dies the death of a thousand paper cuts. This is starting to sound Ayn Randian, but sadly this may be an important aspect to the creation of great things. There's a reason why it takes a single auteur to craft a masterpiece, whether a movie, a website, or the experience of flying. Too many cooks DO spoil the broth. And it takes a person with the authority to cut things to one's vision to make great consumer experiences a reality. What people call Dustin's hubris and arrogance is merely his gall to point out the things that someone in control should do. It's something that is not exercised enough, and I think rather than cut down someone who aspires to the best, perhaps we should look to see what really sucks in our lives and focus on ways to make it better.
- unalone 17y ago
  Please don't talk about what you know nothing about. I'm in college in part for film. It takes hundreds of people to make a good movie. I'm not just talking about technique: Citizen Kane wouldn't have been Citizen Kane if Welles hadn't had a dozen brilliant minds helping him and influencing his style. Similarly: The best web sites on the Internet are designed by multiple people. It does sound Randian. Like Rand, you're ignoring the sheer enormity of what it takes to make a masterpiece.
  - rantfoil 17y ago
    Fair enough -- look, the counter point to this is that films constantly get absolutely destroyed by producers. And those are the decisions that matter -- how the movie ends, what gets cut and what stays, etc. I think again you're getting hung up on the little things -- I'm not talking about how you need great grips and cinematographers and editors, and I'm not talking about how you need pixel perfect comps by 10 visual designers. All of that is micro. An auteur has final cut, and if even one of those 100 people screw up, then the auteur says fix it or its not ready.
    - unalone 17y ago
      But you're conflating two different roles. Actually, the point you're making works perfectly to disprove what Dustin wrote. The producer is not an artistic role, he's a business one. Most producers are a lot smarter than you'd give them credit for, but they ignore their artistic sensibilities and focus on the bottom line. Before you get to them, you have lots of brilliant collaboration: Directors and writers and cinematographers and directors of photography and sound editors and actors, of course actors, all dance together and form really incredible things in tandem. Very rarely is a single voice dictating. Even in the case of the great auteurs there's collaboration: See how David Lynch works in tandem with Angelo Badalamenti on most of his projects. So that all works perfectly, right till you hit the business people. Dustin's writing from the assumption that making a web site is all about the design. He's treating web sites like you're treating film. And, like you, he's assuming that the reason AA's web site sucks is that the artists are terrible at their jobs, and he's railing blindly at them, when in fact the people in charge aren't tasteless so much as they don't care about taste as much as the artists do. I actually wrote an off-the-cuff post about this a little while ago regarding the music industry, how problems in perception start because we don't realize just how much more important business is than art for most companies/people: http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/200996589/talentless http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/200996589/talentless

rantfoil 17y ago

It goes deeper than the pixel. In fact, I could care less about visual design. I think that's an over-emphasized aspect of design. It goes to philosophy. Anyone can make pretty things, but it takes a damn intransigent defiance to do whatever it takes to make great experiences. I mean experience design. And experience design isn't about making everyone happy. It's about firing people when they get in your way, and breaking down fiefdoms that make products crap. A thousand people all compromising will result in a product or service that dies the death of a thousand paper cuts. This is starting to sound Ayn Randian, but sadly this may be an important aspect to the creation of great things. There's a reason why it takes a single auteur to craft a masterpiece, whether a movie, a website, or the experience of flying. Too many cooks DO spoil the broth. And it takes a person with the authority to cut things to one's vision to make great consumer experiences a reality. What people call Dustin's hubris and arrogance is merely his gall to point out the things that someone in control should do. It's something that is not exercised enough, and I think rather than cut down someone who aspires to the best, perhaps we should look to see what really sucks in our lives and focus on ways to make it better.

unalone 17y ago
Please don't talk about what you know nothing about. I'm in college in part for film. It takes hundreds of people to make a good movie. I'm not just talking about technique: Citizen Kane wouldn't have been Citizen Kane if Welles hadn't had a dozen brilliant minds helping him and influencing his style. Similarly: The best web sites on the Internet are designed by multiple people. It does sound Randian. Like Rand, you're ignoring the sheer enormity of what it takes to make a masterpiece.
- rantfoil 17y ago
  Fair enough -- look, the counter point to this is that films constantly get absolutely destroyed by producers. And those are the decisions that matter -- how the movie ends, what gets cut and what stays, etc. I think again you're getting hung up on the little things -- I'm not talking about how you need great grips and cinematographers and editors, and I'm not talking about how you need pixel perfect comps by 10 visual designers. All of that is micro. An auteur has final cut, and if even one of those 100 people screw up, then the auteur says fix it or its not ready.
  - unalone 17y ago
    But you're conflating two different roles. Actually, the point you're making works perfectly to disprove what Dustin wrote. The producer is not an artistic role, he's a business one. Most producers are a lot smarter than you'd give them credit for, but they ignore their artistic sensibilities and focus on the bottom line. Before you get to them, you have lots of brilliant collaboration: Directors and writers and cinematographers and directors of photography and sound editors and actors, of course actors, all dance together and form really incredible things in tandem. Very rarely is a single voice dictating. Even in the case of the great auteurs there's collaboration: See how David Lynch works in tandem with Angelo Badalamenti on most of his projects. So that all works perfectly, right till you hit the business people. Dustin's writing from the assumption that making a web site is all about the design. He's treating web sites like you're treating film. And, like you, he's assuming that the reason AA's web site sucks is that the artists are terrible at their jobs, and he's railing blindly at them, when in fact the people in charge aren't tasteless so much as they don't care about taste as much as the artists do. I actually wrote an off-the-cuff post about this a little while ago regarding the music industry, how problems in perception start because we don't realize just how much more important business is than art for most companies/people: http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/200996589/talentless http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/200996589/talentless