Redesigning, Realigning

A year and a half ago, designer Cameron Moll wrote an interesting article entitled Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign which struck me as somewhat odd but definitely “stuck.” It talks about the benefits of there being a purpose to a redesign.  Rather than just a visual update, designers should aim to realign to rather update a design with clear purpose changing what needs to be changed without throwing everything out and starting anew.

Thus, the differences between Redesigners and Realigners might be summarized as follows: The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven. One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh. (Note that by “reposition,” I mean strategy and not physical location or dimensions.)

Don’t get me wrong—I too have played the role of typical Redesigner at times. We’re all entitled to throw caution to the wind and redesign as a means of staying on top of one’s game (e.g. redesign contests and portfolio sites). And besides, we can’t bear the full brunt of the blame—we’re creatives first, strategists (and info architects and project managers and coders and everything else under the sun) second. But I worry persistent redesigning with little cause often serves to promote only proprietary creativity, doing much to educate one in the hows of redesigning but little in the whys of realigning.

Application

I recently loaded up echofaith.com in IE6 on a friend’s computer and it completely grossed me out. I swear that I had done extensive IE6 testing when I created the website… but apparently in the little tweaks here and there somewhere I checked the “gross in IE” button and left it checked. I decided simply fixing that wasn’t going to satisfy me and I should just work on a new redesign. Recently I read a great post by Garrett Dimon, Designing for Content which greatly inspired me to rethink how to redesign (or realign).

There is too much of my current website that I like for me to just throw it away, so I’ve opted for a realigning of echofaith.com. Rather than the traditional design restart I’m going to more towards change with a clear purpose of encouraging my future content and styling the website in a way that encourages my posts to be more dynamic and interesting.

I’ve done a lot of sketching and a little bit of code but I’m hoping to have launched my newly aligned echofath.com in the next couple weeks or so.

Updates

In the move for repurposing echofaith.com I recently updated my Portfolio to more accurately portray my recent work. Please check it out and let me know what you think… and if you know of any freelance opportunities I might be interested in don’t hesitate to use my contact form and let me know.