Destroying Your Design Darlings
One of the biggest enemies I face as a creator is the laziness to revisit my work after the initial attempt. It becomes easy to settle on a design and piece of content that is “good enough.”
But the issue with settling is that your work never gets to a better place – or, reaches the level that it should be at. In other words, we end up with mediocre results that don’t deliver.
So, as a designer, I’ve found a way to use this old piece of writing advice and translate it to the design process: killing your darlings.
According to Savannah Cordova for Reedsyblog, “The phrase ‘kill your darlings’ means eliminating any part of your writing — characters, scenes, sentences, side plots — that, while you might love them, don’t serve your story. It’s often attributed to William Faulkner, though the earliest use comes from Arthur Quiller-Couch’s 1916 book, On the Art of Writing.”
Now, I personally am not a fan of the word “kill,” so for the sake of this blog post, I’ll use the word “destroy” instead. Because let’s face it – sometimes, you need to destroy elements of your work in order to create better work.
There have been many times where I’ve designed something and have been very proud at the initial attempt. And as painful as it is to admit, the first attempt, bias aside, is typically not good. There are design elements that need to be tweaked and improved. But our love for our creation blinds us to the reality that some things in the design aren’t working – but we love it, so we keep it.
Joshua Porter and Josh Brewer wrote in their Tumblr blog, “52 Weeks of UX,” that “the elements of your design that you really love cause you to have what I call ‘design blindness.’ You lose the ability to be objective about your work. You lose the ability to critique honestly and without bias. This often means they may not be quite as “perfect” as you think they are.” When we develop this blindness, we fail to see how the parts of a design we love are actually the things we need to improve or disregard entirely. As designers, we need to remind ourselves that we aren’t designing for ourselves – we need to put aside our own personal preferences, even if it means getting rid of things we think are awesome.
According to Rania Bailey for UX Collective, “Only a strong rationale can save a design element from elimination when you kill your darlings. Under this constraint, the only elements remaining will be the valuable ones.” In other words, unless you have a strong reason to keep something in your design, you need to kill it off, in the same way authors disregard anything that does not serve their story’s purpose. By doing this, we can eliminate the unnecessary clutter that makes our designs less effective.
When determining whether to keep words in or take them out, writers have to ask themselves whether it contributed to the main story – and if not, the phrases are destroyed. In the same way, designers should ask whether the design element contributes or detracts from the effectiveness of the design. Designers must also consider their client, and their needs. As summarized by designer Mike Aleo in a LinkedIn article on killing your darlings, “ It’s important to understand what business goals the client is trying to achieve. Become the user’s advocate, rather than your design’s advocate.”
Here are some questions to guide you in reviewing your work for darlings to be destroyed:
Does the element contribute towards the main goal of this design?
Would the design still work without this element?
Is this distracting attention away from what’s actually important in this design?
Is it adding clutter or unnecessary noise?
Is this element… well, relevant?
Could I simplify this and still achieve the same result?
Would I lose anything if I got rid of this?
And most importantly… is this here because of a purpose, or just because I personally like it?
Getting rid of stuff you love isn’t easy – I sure know this myself as a designer. But “good enough” is mediocre – and when working with actual clients, we must create work that delivers the best results possible. Destroying your darlings, as hurtful as it is, results in better work.
Who knows? You’ll most likely will love the new and improved design better.