Last week I released my current design and wanted to come up with something new. Unlike previous occurrences, I made the design available while I was still using it.
Normally I make folks sweat it out and wait a few weeks once I unveil a new look, but for whatever reason this time around I changed things up. So this past weekend I spent a number of hours working up a new design for my personal site.
I started with the Modern Portfolio theme that we are releasing today, and ran with it into a direction that I thought I really liked.
Expect the Unexpected
Sometimes in life you need to keep yourself in check. The past couple of themes/designs that I’ve come up with, in my eyes, have been really good. It seems like Metro and Modern Portfolio were well received, so I assumed I could keep the ball rolling.
After about 12 hours of diligently crafting pixels, I launched and activated my new design on Sunday morning. Five minutes later I re-activated the theme you see here on my site and put the new one onto the cutting room floor.
I can’t pinpoint what it was, but something about it didn’t work. Something made me think “this isn’t really awesome or innovative.”
I’ve Lost That Loving Feeling
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not an arrogant person, but I have confidence when it comes to developing new themes on the Genesis Framework.
With that confidence comes opportunity to face failure when things don’t go as planned.
Most freelancers will tell you they are their own worst client, and many make jokes about firing themselves. This weekend was one of those times, where I finally 86ed myself.
Once in a while you need to walk away, before things get worse. For me this was one of those times, as I was too close to the design, and needed some time before I started over.
I’m ok with that, as I do believe in mulligans.
Be Awesome With What You’re Good At
…and not what you aren’t.
I’ve gotten lucky with my last two theme designs, but deep down I can admit that I’m not a brilliant designer. While I can hold my own at times, I’m just not awesome at it.
In today’s world, efficiency and time management are vital for success. This past weekend reminded me I need to let awesome people do things that I’m not awesome at.
I’m an idea guy and like to paint pictures in my head that quite frequently I’m incapable of pulling off. This tells me that I should spend more time on the uncreative side of the creative process, and let those who are awesome at design, well design.
Even though I’ve been knocked down, I know I’ll get back up. I’m like the scrappy little puppy who won’t back down from the fight.
Another design awaits. Let’s just see which one of us wins the battle.
Insightful post Brian. I look to see what you do with your designs as it often points to the direction of what’s possible on Genesis.
The fact that you wouldn’t publish what you believed to be your best stuff speaks volumes about how you view the world.
Looking forward to the next one. Cheers
Thanks Greg. Like I said, something didn’t sit well with me on this one, as I feel it didn’t push the limits. For me, it was simply a restyled version of what I was using, and I want more than that.
I recently had to do that to myself. My writing had been taking a dive and I was tired of creating content in an hour and hoping it would propel me to the top in some form or fashion. I decided to take a stand against mediocre content and plan out my writing better to be more in depth.
Sometimes we get caught up listening to what others say is the best thing to do when we should be paying more attention to what we feel is best for us to do. Your little story here perfectly illustrates that it’s important to ship things but that it’s also okay to pull back and recognize that we aren’t as awesome as we would sometimes like to think.
Lessons in humility are hard but glad to see you’ve kept yours and 86ed yourself. If only more people would 86 their own work.
Thanks for sharing!
A lot of theme design is you’ll know it when you use it. It’s hard to get to a place where you look at a theme and feel satisfied, but once you do, that driving fire to tweak and change vanishes. Two of my sites feel that way for me right now. I look at them and see minor tweaks, but for the most part, I love them
But getting the, finding the one that matches how I use the site (and yes, it’s got to work for me first and you second) isn’t easy. Which is why there are themes for everyone.
Please tell me that this http://365.briangardner.com/threaded-comments/ isn’t on the cutting room floor.
My fingers are crossed that you “bring back that loving feeling” and apply it to what you have cooking on http://365.briangardner.com/threaded-comments/. If not, maybe you could dump what you have on Github?
Heh, that is *still* a playground, and I’ve updated what I put on the cutting room floor. What you see on that link you dropped was me playing around with minimalism, because I was frustrated with my (in)ability to design at the time.
I just happened by while it was live. I looked it over, liked the headline font you’d tweeted about earlier, then thought to myself how much I’ve warmed up recently to warmer colors (I’ve been abusing blue for years, and the blue-black combo is getting played out). By the time I’d come back for a closer look, it was gone.
It gonna be tough for you to follow Metro — it’s a great theme that will stand up to all sorts of tweaking. But you’ll come up with something.
While I can totally understand and empathise with the sentiment (I’ve tossed out designs that have taken quite a bit to create without even showing them to the client because when I stepped back and looked, I did not feel they reflected my best work), I feel sad at losing what you’d created there.
I will freely admit to having spent part of my weekend refreshing http://365.briangardner.com/ and seeing how the design was evolving, and there was a point halfway through where I looked at it and was giddy with the anticipation of getting my hands on that particular design.
It’s funny in that it establishes a parallel for me, though – now I know what it’s like to be on the other end of the aforementioned tossing.
Don’t worry about losing the design. While it didn’t sit right for me on my personal blog, it’s actually being used in concept for a theme I’m working on which will be available on StudioPress.
And now I’m giddy once more!
I’ve actually learned to be excited about the total bombs. It usually means a breakthrough is right around the corner. That’s not *just* optimism talking, it’s something that’s been proven to me quite a lot recently. It means you’re headed in a different direction, and you’re about to do something totally great. It’s kind of like running–those first 3 miles kill me, but I feel like I could go for days at mile 6-20. If you keep the momentum, keep making 86′s, your next best seller will just appear.
Thanks for the encouragement Megan, as a designer I’m sure you’ve felt this at least once (if not 100 times) before.
I’ll keep trucking, because you’re right — something great is right around the corner!
Yes, that happens to me about every 36 hours or so. It’s really annoying. But I am starting to like my current design a bit more. (until tomorrow, that is)
Hemingway said it best: “Develop a built-in BS detector.” Of course he didn’t say “BS.”
I thought of this story by Chuck Palahniuk after reading your post.
Keep putting up the colors, Brian. Keep putting up the colors!
Another Christmas window story. Almost every morning, I eat breakfast in the same diner, and this morning a man was painting the windows with Christmas designs. Snowmen. Snowflakes. Bells. Santa Claus. He stood outside on the sidewalk, painting in the freezing cold, his breath steaming, alternating brushes and rollers with different colors of paint. Inside the diner, the customers and servers watched as he layered red and white and blue paint on the outside of the big windows. Behind him the rain changed to snow, falling sideways in the wind.
The painter’s hair was all different colors of gray, and his face was slack and wrinkled as the empty ass of his jeans. Between colors, he’d stop to drink something out of a paper cup.
Watching him from inside, eating eggs and toast, somebody said it was sad. This customer said the man was probably a failed artist. It was probably whiskey in the cup. He probably had a studio full of failed paintings and now made his living decorating cheesy restaurant and grocery store windows. Just sad, sad, sad.
This painter guy kept putting up the colors. All the white “snow,” first. Then some fields of red and green. Then some black outlines that made the color shapes into Xmas stockings and trees.
A server walked around, pouring coffee for people, and said, “That’s so neat. I wish I could do that…”
And whether we envied or pitied this guy in the cold, he kept painting. Adding details and layers of color. And I’m not sure when it happened, but at some moment he wasn’t there. The pictures themselves were so rich, they filled the windows so well, the colors so bright, that the painter had left. Whether he was a failure or a hero. He’d disappeared, gone off to wherever, and all we were seeing was his work.
Great story Rick, thanks so much for sharing!
“That’s so neat. I wish I could do that…” — these are words that resonate with me so much when it comes to design.
“After about 12 hours of diligently crafting pixels”……
“I can’t pinpoint what it was, but something about it didn’t work”
whew, it’s not just me then. There are times when I’m looking at inspiring sites
and am not sure why it works. I agree with Meagan, a great one will just come.
Thanks Bill. I’m probably going to take the “unfair advantage” route with the next design.
Heh. That’s why sometimes when I make or write something, I would often just leave it and go hours or days, depending, until I return to it and see it with fresh eyes… I would see so many mistakes to fix or new directions I could take with it… Sometimes this is the best part of the whole thing.
whoa whoa whoa Brian!
You have an excellent eye for design! I mean look at the metro theme, its awesome!!! Design is a funny thing, you could look at something you have created a 100 times and the 101′th time it looks different somehow. When this happens to me i get some outside perspective to spawn some new ideas!
I’m confident you’ll win the next battle!
Love your blog sir. Have been using genesis since i started blogging. I don’t do much tweaking, I use them as it is. But when I do, I just refer to your directions. Keep up the good work!
Me too, I’ve been using studiopress Lifestyle and news themes for years now and are great themes, so dont be so hard on yourself, saying you not a great designer
Keep the great designs coming
This design just blown my mind. Is this coming to Studiopress ? Or is that thing going to happen again like metro theme you have added through github ?
More than likely it’ll be both places, likely in the same order as it was with Metro.
Can’t wait to get hands on.