Rob Goodlatte

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What does style really mean? Is it okay for a designer to have a trademark “look”?

Several weeks ago, a handful of design bloggers wrote about the elements of their design style. At the time, I dismissed it. After all, design isn’t about style—it’s about making appropriate decisions that are unique for every project. Re-using the same typeface, layout, and color scheme seems like a cop-out, right?

If that’s true, I’m certainly guilty. I looked at some recent projects of mine and noticed some commonalities…

1. Grid + Horizontal rules. As Shaun said, vertical lines are just silly with left-justified text. I love the subtle visual compartmentalization produced by grids. Horizontal rules snapped to the grid are great visual hinting of page structure.
   
2. Chalet Comprime. From the headlines of this site to the logo of Junction, I find the different weights and variants of Chalet Comprime to suit my modern typeface needs.
   
3. Clear foreground & background + centered. Keeps fixed-width sites looking great at high resolution and draws the eye right where you want it.
   
   

So why re-use this stuff again and again?

Every once in awhile you discover a design solution that solves a problem elegantly and effectively. These elements of style are my solutions to common design problems I come across that can be adapted to elegantly fit other projects.

These solutions add up and shape a designer’s style. That style shouldn’t just be an aesthetic “look”, but rather a toolkit of design solutions to common design problems.

However, there’s an important distinction between re-using elegant, common solutions and becoming dependent upon them. I certainly don’t approach projects looking for excuses to deposit my trademark style upon it. But when the tool fits the job, I use it.

Photo by Nattomi under Creative Commons

 

1. beth December 10th at 10:25 am

   That style shouldn’t just be an aesthetic “look”, but rather a toolkit of design solutions to common design problems.

   I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here, while the exact same solution doesn’t work for everything there’s a lot of common smaller problems, and with that common solutions.

2. Jeff Croft December 10th at 8:39 pm

   That style shouldn’t just be an aesthetic “look”, but rather a toolkit of design solutions to common design problems.

   Like a design framework? God, can’t we stop talking about that, already?! :)

3. December 10th at 9:08 pm

   Jeff said:

   Like a design framework? God, can’t we stop talking about that, already?! :)

   A personal design framework, sure. But as we’ve hashed out before, I don’t feel it’s appropriate for elements of style to be inherited from a public framework. It’s important that each designer build up his or her own toolkit of elegant design solutions rather than depend on someone else to solve delicate design problems.

   Regarding CSS frameworks in particular: You’ve convinced me that CSS frameworks have some use—namely for laying out a basic foundation with components like grids and resets. But anything stylistic, like typography, color choice, layout, etc shouldn’t be arbitrarily inherited from a public framework—those need to be justified decisions. Even when re-using design solutions for other projects, I still go through that problem-solving process to make sure the re-purposed element makes sense.

 

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