Design, gotta let it marinate.

All around us there is a sense of urgency and the need for objects, answers, and ideas Right. Now.

Again, Faster!

How do you spell “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” Give me 10 seconds I’ll type that into Google and Google will tell me it found about 13,960,000,000 results in 0.18 seconds.

How long is the drive from Miami to San Francisco? Whoa, let’s hook up the GPS and drive the 3,110.3 mi (I googled that) now!

I need 500 flyers for this awesome show in 2 days!  Let’s google an online printer and have those in ONE day.

Slow. It. Down.

Ok, so what does the idea of “Gotta let it marinate” have to do with any of this? Well, life has become so “urgent,” we’re losing the idea of craftsmanship.

Awesome web design requires craftsmanship.

Here at Papercut, we build friendly, custom projects for our clients. We take the time and effort to get to know your business, do the research to build a strong, conceptual foundation, decide what tools we can bring together that will allow your site to please your users, and craft an experience you and your customers will love.

Skill, artistry, and time combine to create beautiful, functional websites.

Superb design is a product of great ideas. Great ideas are a product of exploration. Exploration is a product of a starting point. A starting point is like a light bulb – it’s there ready to be turned on with the flick of a switch but how bright it’s going to be and how long it will last depends on how it was built.

The Artistic Process (a.k.a. Marinating)

To create a project that visually succeeds I like to be involved from the beginning of a project to listen to ideas, talk with stakeholders, gather inspiration, and yes, let everything begin to marinate.

As a designer you never really let go of what you are working on. You could be grocery shopping or doing laundry and that creative roadblock you have been facing suddenly disappears. Sometimes a solution presents itself quickly, other times you wrestle with a problem for days. Either way the “aha” moment is always sweet.

Allowing “thinking” and “crafting” time in a website production schedule is so important. It yields a better product. We work in a fast industry, but whenever possible I try to slow things down. We want to make sure the appropriate design time and love are put into all of Papercut’s projects.