“All that said, as I grew in my practice and started to become more efficient as a kitchen denizen, there were a few tools and gadgets that became indispensable to me. Not because they helped me develop my creativity necessarily, but because they cut down on time, frustration, and mistakes.” “I was in a foreign city baking for a client and had to pick up ingredients that were not my usual brand for the gig. The sugar I bought came in a cardboard milk carton-type of package with a spout for pouring. I had never seen anything like that before and after easily pouring out precisely the amount of sugar I needed directly from the carton without spilling a grain, and then simply sealing it up with no bag clip or elastics or fumbling mess needed, I was gob-smacked,” she opened up to us. “Why isn’t every edible powder ingredient sold in a milk carton? It’s wonderful! And such a simple concept to make pouring and sealing your ingredients simple. Now I can’t open a bag of flour or a jar of baking soda without wistfully thinking about that strange and wonderful ‘sugar in a milk carton’ packaging.” If you’re interested in learning about baking, you can take a peek at Jessica’s book ‘Pies Are Awesome’ and her online baking courses at ‘PieSavvy.’ In the meantime, check out her latest pie art posts on Instagram! What are their wants and needs? Their hopes and dreams? Their potential pain–points while using your competitors’ products? When you start identifying what makes your customers tick, you can avoid some (though probably not all) potential design pitfalls. You can conduct focus groups and show people various iterations of your product to see what they (dis)like and prefer. You can ask your colleagues, family, and friends for their input. And then sift through all the advice to see what’s actually good criticism and what’s just a matter of taste. However, that requires a measure of humility. It’s one thing to be confident in your skills and vision. It’s another thing entirely to be so arrogant as to assume that you can make no mistakes. When your customers get their hands on a product that is miles better than anything else on the market, they’re more likely to be loyal to your brand. If you make their lives better, why shouldn’t they return for more quality products and services? You basically risk alienating your customer base if you lean too much into either function or form. On the one hand, if what you’re offering isn’t at all practical or ergonomic but just a monument to your artistic vision, many people likely won’t buy your product. If the needs of your customers aren’t met, you’ve failed as a designer (even if you might succeed as an artist). Sure, iterating your designs to be more appealing can be costly. But if you save too much at the cost of appearances, the awesome functionality of your product might never get the chance to be used in the end. “Be it web-based or not, if the design is good, then post it,” the moderator team running the subreddit urges everyone. Everything and anything you end up posting on the group should, in some way, be related to high-quality designs. If you go off-topic too much, you might end up getting banned. Sometimes, even permanently. It makes sense: it’s a design-focused community, after all. In the meantime, all the members are encouraged to put in a bit more effort and post more or less original content. If you end up reposting images that were shared within the last month, they’ll be removed. Furthermore, you shouldn’t repost pics that are in r/GoodDesigins’s Top 100 of All Time. One of the moderators helping keep the community functioning properly, u/KingDrude, previously opened up to Bored Panda about his experience. He told us that he’d been following the group for a while before applying as a mod. On top of enjoying the design-related content, he primarily loves working as a moderator in general, no matter the community. What, to you personally, are the hallmarks of truly great design, dear Pandas? Let us know what you think in the comments. Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
