Saturday morning, 10am
Presenter: Naz Hamid – Weightshift

Although this talk was aimed at beginners, I thought it would be interesting to listen to another designer share his experiences and reveal his creative process.

Naz was nice to listen to. You could sense he had that passion for his craft which we fellow designers share. His presentation focused on details, paying close attention to those finite aspects of a project which individually aren’t much but combined together form a complete package, a strong and elegant solution to a problem. His sentiments would be later echoed in a talk I attended given by Michael Lopp from Apple.

Naz outlined 8 key factors in his design process:

1. Experiment – play around with ideas, total creative freedom
2. Make the right choices – pick the strongest ideas, choose visual rules
3. Stay consistent – keep all comps neat and structured
4. Completeness – finish all screens, leave no open questions
5. Step in, step out, step back, balance – take a break, come back to it
6. Be your own critic – you need sound explanations for your design
7. Complexity in simplicity – less is more
8. Obsession is healthy – be dedicated, obsessive

It was interesting to me because his creative approach is very similar to my own. I like to concentrate on the details even at the early stages of a concept. In his initial experiment phase he mentioned that he didn’t sketch ideas onto paper, he collected assets and went straight into Photoshop to see what works and what doesn’t. I think our generation of designers (being much more digital) tend to do this a lot. I like to use the tools I have as much as possible, because you quickly arrive at a more finished look. Have a look at Gapers Block- a site Naz has created which provides entertainment and lifestyle information for Chicago. Good stuff.