Designing with a Concept and How It’s Important for Good Design

Designing with a Concept and How It’s Important for Good Design

January 7, 20216 min read

Outside of typography, concepting is an excellent still to have in your arsenal. I’d like to think that as graphic designers we do more than just decorate to make something “look cool.” Everything should be visually appealing, minimum.

 

When I see designs that have random elements, I wonder about the designer’s process. Why did they use thick or thin lines? How did they come up with the color palette? These are all things that are easily solved when you have a concept. The example I’m using below isn’t a full redesign, but instead applying a concept to a design. Let’s dive in.

 

1. What Is a Concept

Simply put, a concept is an idea. Your idea can be anything. The goal is to relate the concept to the content or environment to which it lives in.
 
The mission of statement of Instagram is “bringing you closer to the people, places, and things they love.” Their concept of doing this is through photos, which the UI is influenced by.

I love my Leica Q. One of my favorite buildings is the Leica Headquarters in Weltzar, Germany. The building is designed in the shape of a camera film reel.

If you’re art directing a Halloween photo shoot with models, the concept could be Halloween Movie Night. You would shoot each model as a beautiful version of a famous Halloween movie character. Carrie White in her prom dress or Lydia from Beetlejuice are great references. They at least align with the concept.
 
For companies that promote sustainability, you should be using sustainable materials. Sustainable fabrics for fashion, a menu printed on recycled paper, or recycled take out containers.
 
For a wedding, maybe you like to travel. Boarding passes or passports would make sense for the invitations. Instead of using table numbers, you could label your tables by modes of transportation.

2. Benefits of a Concept

This is a site that I designed last year for lung cancer patients.

It’s clean, complete, and there’s some thought into the design. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with it. I achieved every aspect the client needed for the campaign. It was one of the highest performing microsites our team built.
 
If it was so successful, why change anything at all? I always look to push my designs. I had the opportunity to redesign the site and wanted to elevate the concept further. My main goal was to give the site a more human aspect to it.

3. How I Come up With Concepts

When I think about concepts, I start with the core message I’d like to communicate. The site is a resource for lung cancer patients to thrive in life. Our team wanted to keep it positive, no matter which stage of cancer you are in.
 
Let’s start with a general brainstorm. It’s very important to not edit anything at this stage. Write down everything that comes to mind.

From here, I grouped similar ideas to come up with a more succinct idea.

My final concept:

A morning routine that feels calm with a human feeling.

4. Showing Things Visually

Not everything can be shown, especially adjectives. Now that I’ve established a clearer direction, I need to develop the visual language. I pulled some references and created a moodboard.

5. Choosing Elements to Work With

Ok, time to put my creative director hat on and make some decisions! I simplified the elements created a style tile.

Some reasoning behind my decisions: I liked the gradient of the morning skies. I directly pulled from them to create the color palette. For the pattern, I liked the thin lines since they felt light and simple. I decided on the wavy lines because they reminded me of fingerprints. I also rounded the corners of tile elements to match the rounded font being used.

6. Applying the Concept

As I mentioned earlier, the site performed extremely well in the first year. For the redesign, I wanted to keep most aspects of the original and only make subtle changes. I applied the elements to the site.

It made sense to have a different color to denote each section. When I looked at the landing pages, I thought the gradient itself was too overpowering and it felt a little flat. I overlayed the fingerprint-like lines on top to soften and give some texture to them.

Conclusion

Let’s go back to the final concept: _insert concept here_
 
I think the 2.0 version of the site was successful. I maintained everything that was successful about the original site, while implementing subtle changes. The new site has a more human aspect to it now, which was my goal.
 
I have to admit that designing with a concept isn’t always possible. I’m putting giant asterisk on this. The only time I condone glazing over this step is when things need to go out with aggressive deadlines. When there are a lot of moving parts and deliverables, it’s more important to get things to the client for an umbrella of the entire campaign.
 
With that said, always design with a concept otherwise. For those of you that aren’t working as designers, there are still things you need designed that deserve a concept. How about that wedding invitation I mentioned earlier? It’s your day to celebrate. Come up with a concept to make it extra special!
 
What challenges do you encounter when concepting?
 
Keep on creating!
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