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I started a topic “What is a design” few days ago, on one of my actively participated online community and designer friends and asked them to input their 2 cents. See many faces of design below:-

 ”design is visual shape of an idea.” – Gaurav.

” design!vast!part evrythin n part nothing!!” – Sristhi

” Design is the way you see and feel the world and life.” – Tati

“in my openion, design is the way of creating best possible solution for the end target user of any project. form, fuction, ergonomics, material study, availability of tools, material and skills, innovation and experimentations, user and market study etc are interrelated issues….all time a designer have to alert about it.” – Santosh

“design is a pain in the ass!” – G.A. (damn…lol)

” Design is creating by intent. It can be creating anything….. Objects, Spaces, or even lives.”

” Well folks,Design basically is a creation of a space,object,theme,which requires a certain level of intellact.
It obviously is not a pain in the ass.Our friend seems frustrated,agitated,petrified,by design.” – Bittu

” design is creation or recreation” – Balakumar

” Shapes, colours and textures are no more than the expression of a hidden story, an idea or a concept.” – Felipe

” Design is a need.(outcome of function and asthetics and hidden feelings).” – Pramod

” heyyyy now listen layman’s words…design is Somthing that feels better, strikes harder…hehehehe” – Simply

” Design is everything that enhances a user’s/users experience(s)….not by accident but by intent….” – Nano

” Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.” – Yasi

“DESIGN is the interpretation of wat u r and wat runs in ur mind in a very innovative manner..ur designs reflects ur thinking!” – Nimisha

” design is bringing art to funcionality.” – Nikhil

” An opposite presence to remove the gesture of negative existence!” – Ovais

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Now please Rate your choice as 1st best, 2nd best, 3rd best. Ratings Start Now.

(To rate, simply comment..)

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Found an awesome project management software application for designers, ConceptShare©.

If you are facing problem sharing your ideas regularly with entire team or feeling lack of well managed client communication, ConceptShare© can make your life easy. You can manage your designs, updated versions, your inhouse designers, remote teams and even clients very effectively, in a very user friendly and easy to use environment.

So get a quick solution to your frustrations of communicating changes to creative work with clients and adopt the ConceptShare© right away.

Great Luck.

and yes i would love to know, does it really appeal to you too or not? please review and get back to me on this post. i am waiting…

Every industry has an age. Get born, get young, get more productive and then get mature. By increasing age of any industry, it keeps lowering down the business profits too and so with designing too.

When Internet was invented and people come to know about its usability, they were just wanted to have a business presence on internet. So having a business profile online was more then enough (child born)

Later on the time came, when people started talking about having beautifully designed website. A good mixture of graphics and text started attracting people. (Stepped into teenage)

Then a time came when people desired more from their internet presence and wanted to look stand away from crowd, so they started getting attracts towards animated website and the flash was on boom. (Spending time on facial, to look cool.. He’s young now)

And finally the business aspect launched. People started taking Internet as a medium to earn profitable business results. As a medium to get their business globally without opening any physical office anywhere. (Time to get a job.. lol)

So I believe this web 2.0 concept was launched to boost or juice the business results more and more from Internet. Take it as an enhancement guideline to online business practices.

Making website and its font scalable

(Because they were loosing business from those people who were unable to read the small or sleek text pattern over a computer monitor)

Easy to use website interface

(For hassle free browsing experience to boost buying decision)

Quick & Easy availability of product information within lesser clicks

(Customers spend less time on website then in a physical store. The faster the have sufficient details, they faster they would buy)

Using AJAX to for database interaction

(Giving a feel of fast processing, because customer hates delay)

And the list is endless…

Though I agree that web 2.0 is a very vast concept and you must not rely ONLY on what I said but it’s my personal belief that boosting online business and juicing more profits from website was the basic need behind the invention of web 2.0 concept. Remember?? “Necessity is the mother of invention”

I don’t know when this child will get mature but I guess we are yet to see much more in this age of web design.

So next time designing a web 2.0 web design, I hope you won’t be thinking of designing round corners, big fonts and light colors only.

But one thing I am still unaware of, what was the need of inventing W3C standards? Increasing hassle of designers? lol….

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You know why all bosses fits a water cooler in cafeteria? guess.. guess..

So that you can keep yourself cool and could work more. How mean these bosses are. Grrrr …

lol .. i am kidding.. but this is a fact that keeping yourself cool in the warmest office environment is the top of checklist every morning for all of us. It is one of the biggest challenge for a designer in today’s business scenario, because your neither your job is to keep gluing envelopes nor keep ordering others….. (snoozing might be lol…)

A designer has is supposed to come up with new, new and again new in every job he undertakes. He works for hours and hours experimenting with colors, layout, designs, content placement and then very happily present that design to client and get a reply: “Try something else”

This builds up useless pressure, which make the work harder.

let me take and very ideal case, almost everyone faces. A very prospective buyer with big bucks in hand come to you and ask for something extra ordinary with very tight deadline more than his belt. What you are going to do?

definitely big bucks attracts and you say yes. and start cooking the pressure for yourself.

Don’t worry you haven’t made any wrong decision, now the only need is, you try to make yourself free from feeling pressure because YOU HAVE TO DESIGN. got my point? you have to bring and idea, you have to conceptualize a picture in mind, you have to experiment lot and lot.

so my 2 cents for this discussion are what i usually do in my daily life to keep myself calm :-

• Drinking Water. Cool Water. common don’t laugh. try it once. really it works.
• Leave this beautiful lady (computer) for few minutes.
• Do you have camera? I do have in my mobile :) so if you have it too, take it and take a snap of your colleague, wife or mom or the most naughty kid you have in surrounding. (only 1 pic man, you have to get back to work too lol..)
• Don’t hang around lady colleague at all, instead go and wash your face. (remember?? the water’s magic? lol.. )
• Leave the work for 2 min and don’t see the tick tick your wrist watch. close your eyes, get back & relax for a while.

I am not any stress management expert or whatever. Here i only tried to share all of those silly tricks which i usually do daily and trust me, it works for me. It will work for you too until otherwise you are in alien.

See as a designer our job relates with creativity, experiments and thinking more and more, so though we can’t remove the pressure from our life (so sad..) but yes we can try to reduce it’s effect on productivity. After all keeping the mind relax is more important for us to lead the next design innovation

and yes, Please if you are reading this post, please don’t go without adding one more cool, silly, chinki pinki trick to reduce pressure/ stress. I need it. Please please please…

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I was chatting with one of my good friends Rajni (a Beautiful Communication Designer from Hyderabad, India) over What is Creativity?

And she replied “Creativity is about hiding your source.” The statement was enough to stun me, because my entire job relates with this so called creativity and coming up with new ideas, each time for each client.

Later on I tried searching some information over best practices to keep the innovation original, but nothing satisfactory.

It could sound very stupid but yes this statement forced me to upgrade my word from innovation to “Original Innovation”.

What you think, innovation is? How can you define it?

I believe a sense of innovation born when a client comes to you with a unique business problem. You work hard over his business problem and understand it well. Then automatically this unique business problem drives you to find a unique solution. And this is what I guess must be called “innovation” actually.

Reason is, because once you have a unique solution for unique business problem, now your only job is to design a graphic, which could present your innovative solution goodly and if by doing so, your design does get match to someone else’s, you are not in fault. Yuuuu Huu. Wow now that’s the smile of a designer…

And trust me your “communication design” job will never get divorce with business profits. You have to keep business in mind all the time, whether you are designing websites, advertisements, brochures, business cards etc. whatever.

Well now, if you are going to ask me “then what should be called as innovation in design exactly?”

Then I guess design innovations must be seen from an eye of designer’s dedication to detail, the excellent use of colors and one of most important factor “breaking the convictions and rules”.

Trust me; try using those 2 colors together today, which you have never paired. (I won’t be discussing this new topic in this post, but will write soon over it too.)

So what all I am saying is, you have fixed pixels of browser to display your message to your audience. So instead of try sketching those pixels unique in entire globe, try painting them to earn profitable business results. This is where you can call yourself “Innovative Designer”.

Oh yes, one more thing.. I would definitely love to see if you have created something new today. Post me.

One of my good friends vineet messaged me on Yahoo messenger to look into a newly posted topic on RWW (readwriteweb*) and really now I think we need to rethink over protecting our brand over Internet, because what happened with RWW could happen to you and me too. the only safe point we have this time is millions of people doesn’t know us today and if our website goes does down for few seconds, it won’t hurt our userbase too. lol.

But yes definitely everyone operating a website on Internet, specially the business oriented websites owners, its an alarm for you!!

i will be trying to post more details and tips & tricks over this topic soon, to help you prevent you and your brand from next disaster. gud luck till then.

Gone are the times when designing a beautiful website was enough for designers. This is a new edge and businesses are demanding much more from us.

I think, in today’s scenario a designers responsibilities has been increased and we have to think from the commercial point of view too, to keep ourselves in race. Apart from coming up with new creative & innovative design ideas, it is equally important to see our ideas from a salesman’s eyes too. Does your design sale?

Today client’s expectations are higher and they understand what a website is? And more importantly what a website could do for them? So the must for you is to make sure that your design could bring real calculable results to your clients.

I call it the “Commercial Innovations” i.e. designing something, that generates real results and this is what we do in our business too.

If you don’t want to go into deep study of user interface design and all and all… then Chee Wee (professional Internet Marketing Consultant) has the best solution for you. Follow his basic advices (“How to design your website for maximum sales”) and you are on the right path.

But I was in need of a bit more and suddenly I found Henrik Olsen’s article “Business centered design: designing web sites that sell”

Henrik says “When designing a persuasive architecture, we have to understand and account for every step in the buying process and design for effective calls to action, even if this action is simply to move on to the next step in the process.”

And that’s true. When you are designing a website keep your visitor in mind.

• Understand your target market?
• Understand your visitor’s profile
• Understand your visitors buying behavior
• Try to put a sense of “being a customer” in your visitor from landing page itself
• Overall make it easy for him, to buy from you because the list is endless…

Again in these 2 articles Michael Ogden very beautifully stated “How to design website that sell” and “How to prevent yourself by making mistakes”

The time you will start seeing your own designs from a salesman’s point of view you will start making a lots of changes into those beautiful glowing designs. After all we designers have to upgrade our practices because:-

• Our client demands so.
• Our client demands it because they want more sales.
• They want more sales because they are getting fewer sales.
• They are getting less sales because there is something wrong with the landing platform for customers (your designed website)

So ultimately this is your client’s customer whom you have to put in your mind each and every time you start designing next.

I don’t know if many of you designer’s won’t agree with me that a designer must have a salesman’s hat too but I believe if you are among of those all great designers who would still say “Designing is what all my job is and I am happy with it, .. wake up guys.

Really, it doesn’t matter if it 1999, 2002, 2005 or 2008 … even let me include if it is 2010 too, When it comes to speak with your prospective customers or to keep in communication with your existing customers, Emails are the best medium ever invented for e-edge.

Visitor forget websites and bookmarks get lost into “My Faviorate” jungle, but the very fresh meat eyes get every day is an New Email. ting tong.. People who claim they don’t rush to check their emails daily raise your hands please…. lol no one.

hmm now i come to know why email marketing is an never ending comic and serious players are the kings.

But why we call them serious players? Why their email gets more replies them mine? What are the secrets of their success? David Grainer has a great reply for you.

in this post, David Reveals the best tips and tricks one should use to get the maximum results of their efforts.

Read the entire post here

Full Credit © goes to David and really thanx to him for sharing such a wonderful piece of information with us all.

I recently had a chit chat with Subha Rajan (an MBA Student – IIPM, Chennai) over Yahoo Messenger, discussing What Indian College Youth think, How well the Tata’s Nano hit the small car segment in India? or Are we ignoring few important industry facts?

At last, it all summed as Nano’s future is still in Future’s Hand. and No one knows the future. Read the interesting conversation here..

Me: so how u seeing the nano launch? 1 lac car?

Subha: great market. perfect competition for the 2 wheeler market. it will surely do well and sales of 2 wheelers will drop

Me: any specific reason you seeing behind it?

Subha: that’s because on paying an extra 50000 they get a more comfort travel but hope that nano does not have any complaints and the emi schemes is too god for nano on payment of 3500 for 3 yrs

Me: so u mean its more in competition with 2 wheeler market instead of cars segment

Subha: yup sure people who want a car they won’t go for nano but people who want a shift from 2 wheelers will definitely do so.

Me: hm

Subha: do i make sense?

Me: umm let me ask you something, which segment of 2 wheeler’s consumer arena you think will be in more competition with nano? Youth bikes (Bajaj pulsar, TVS Apache etc), or People’s bike CD100, Splendor etc. which costs around appx. Rs.30,000 bucks

Subha: youth bikes for sure because they r the highest segment bikes

Me: means?

Subha: it means cost wise, they cost around Rs.55,000 and people who go for it on putting a few thousands Rs. Extra can travel in car.

Me: ok why you think youth buy a 60K bike?

Subha: style, look, passion, girls (with a smiley icon)

Me: do you think this car could add more to their need of being a dirt biker style?

Subha: to an extend it could as at all times a car in more comfortable and it also gives a class for guys. Right? any one feels good when they say they own a car. Don’t You?

Me: if it would be for comfort n class all of the rich Indian bikers (who could afford a Rs.60,000 + bikes) who bought the costly pulsar ‘n apache bikes would have already gone for Honda CRV kinda SUV Cars.  Isn’t it so?

Subha: no, see that’s for the upper segment. i am talking abt middle class and lower segment. See sparks is doing well. Why, because the cost.

Me: yes but what makes them say so about being a car owner? Is it feel of being in luxury or sense of getting upgrade from bike?

Me: Anyway wht’s the cost of spark? I guess around Rs. 3.5 lacs. So its far away from nano’s competition. True? So Which segment nano has to compete into?

Subha: ya

Subha: no actually, now people might prefer nano to spark.as it cost lesser and indian brand and good service then Chevrolet

Me: well someone willing to spend 3.5 on car won’t go lower i guess, consumer always seek for a bit better even if he would have to add few more bucks. What you say?

Subha: they would prefer nano

Me: well neither you are wrong nor the launch of nano is lol and I guess it will actually differ from perception by perception.

Me: but you know what…

Subha: brb     (here she left me alone for 15 min. so sad..lol)

 Subha: m back. please continue

Me: I personally think that nano is something experimental launch in india and i am not sure about it but probably after a quick and higher response right after launch, nano will face some tough competition. Though i guess it will keep its sales going on but via a longer period eye. Means in longer terms, like people still buy CD100 motorcycle. People still buy Maruti800 etc.etc.

Subha: I think u r also right that nano prediction can’t be defined as we have large number of small segment cars. May be who fall between the car Vs. bike confusion will go for nano.

Me: well subha, I did read few reviews of nano ‘n u know their main target market is the second hand car buyers. So I guess that’s the beautiful catch and tht’s the only biggest consumer section which will get influence with this nano.

Subha: ya. That’s right.

Me: u know tata is predicting the 30%-35% fall in second hand car sales in India first year, they are not targeting this time anything on the biking segment or the another buyer segment for nano could be the service class people like people in govt. jobs, railways, banks, hospitals or in rural area and with annual income inbetween 1 Lac – 2.5 Lacs.

Subha: nice bit of information. Thanx.

Me: hhh J thanx to you too for giving me your time for this interview.

Subha: interview? What interview? Were you interviewing me.

Me: well yes, so can we meet tomorrow in café coffee day for another interview lady?

Subha: Sure. I will be more prepared this time.

Me: hhh Jdo have great time.

Subha: You too. bbye.

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This wasn’t any formal interview with subha rajan and winning or loosing debate isn’t what we were headed towards. This was a very casual conversation and what comeup as result is that yes Nano’s future is still in Future’s Pocket and No one knows the future. if you have anything to share with us over Nano, Please comment.

Note:  comments/views expressed this conversation are solely personal opion.