Reply To: Critique and Advice

[Alen]

RE Copying @James

I strongly disagree with this premise. If you copy, you will:

• Be limited to what your frame of reference is: the thing you’re trying to copy
• You will never like it, and most likely will change design gazillion times and will never be satisfied.
• Our brains solve problems by identifying previous patterns we encountered and if you enforce this behavior, you will never improve or come up with something original. Every time you try to come up with new idea, you’ll be frustrated and will default to copying.
• You’ll learn the pattern and adopt it, you will never break out of. It will be you’re comfort zone.
• You will always be behind the ball!

Copying! to be able to learn and experiment. Sure.
Copying! for the sake of copying. Don’t.

One thing I’ll agree with @James is to draw inspiration from other fields. Basically ignore all the noise from Web Design/Development world and try to understand design in isolation, then try to draw parallels between what you’ve learned and what the project is about.

Design === Communication. It’s that simple.

…“Flat” trending…issue in terms of accessibility for the end user

Not sure how two are related.