Marc Edwards

Marc Edwards

Designer at Bjango

Founder and designer at @bjango. Currently building @skala.

11 action items

Know when a design is complete

    • I try to focus less on what the best solution is, and more on what the possibilities are. Quickly working out many variants without prematurely judging them lets the ideas flow. Once you’ve exhausted the possibilities, you can step back and critique, mix-and-match, and work towards some final solutions that can be tested. You’re done when you can’t think of alternative good solutions. It’s right when the tests give good results.

    • Define the goals clearly at the start. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you can never hit it.

    • Check the results against the initial goals.

    • Work out as many potential solutions as possible. Don’t judge anything too harshly at this point. Stop when you can’t think of any more solutions (make sure you really push yourself at this point though).

    • Step back, critique, mix-and-match, and work towards some final solutions that can be tested.

    • Test, iterate, evolve, test again.

Maintain the quality of design work as your team grows

    • Bigger teams and more complex products require a more thoughtful and systematic approach. That can mean many things, but having a base set of colors, components, a grid system, and typographic styles well defined is a good start. There also needs to be be a process for updating and expanding those base elements.

    • Break designs down into groups of common parts.

    • Where possible, consolidate similar elements to make them identical.

    • Create a centralised repository for all the common elements, so new layouts can reuse those elements. This means designers can work faster, but it also helps maintain consistency.

    • When researching this topic, searching for “design system”, “sticker sheet”, and “style guide” might provide some good answers.

    • If things seem like they are getting out of hand, try to step back and take a more systematic approach.

    • The centralised repository should have a process for updating, maintaining and expanding.