Nick Campbell / Humble Pied.

Nice tip, I totally agree with!
Keep on asking you questions, keep on try things another way. Don’t let the rules guide you, invent your own!
It will keep you alive.

Ryan Bollenbach

Great video! I feel like this a lot lately. It’s cool to see that it can have a positive effect over as a designer. On my current project: http://www.mographtv.com, I feel like I’m never satisfied. I just keep tweaking and creating.

Thanks for the insight!

Youssef Sarhan

Thoughtful tip.

Humble Pied

Nick, a follow-up question for you, then. How do you know when to stop working on a project or a design, if you know it can always be better?

Nick Campbell

Great question!

Deadlines are what stop the design process. Usually the client needs it or it’s time to start a new project. Always set a deadline, even with personal projects. If you don’t they will never get finished.

Here is more on deadlines.
http://makecoolshit.com/how-to-finish-your-personal-projects-set-a-deadline/

Eric Boyer

Great stuff Nick, thanks for the tip.

In my experience with working at an ad agency, I’ve had designers on larger projects that were unable to commit to final designs. I agree with you that struggling with a design is healthy, but I feel that some designers let this take over the whole process. While this is a strength to some, its a huge weakness for others.

Even weeks into the development process, they still want to make changes to their designs, and as im sure you’re aware, its no easy task once its built out in HTML/CSS.

Working with deadlines is great, but even so, my tip to them would be to ‘close the book’ and move on to the next project. A lot of people have trouble doing that.

Humble Pied

Eric,

Thanks for chiming in, and great addition to Nick’s advice. I know for sure that I have trouble ‘closing the book.’ In fact, in developing Humble Pied, I set a personal goal to stick with one design and push it through until the end. Talk about a weekend project!

Great stuff!