Why We Should Stick To Lincoln Logs
8 Feb
Remember those Lincoln Logs you had when you were a kid? They came in all different sizes and sometimes they gave you a splinter, but most of the time they gave you a nice little log home for your G.I. Joes or Ninja Turtles. Now, it probably took you 15-20 minutes to get the log home just the way you wanted. How bad would it have been if you had to actually carve out blocks of wood yourself to create that little log home? It would have taken a long time and, frankly, would have caused a lot of frustration.
So, why would a designer always create everything from scratch? It’s only going to take more time and cause more frustration. Frustration is when we start to not think straight, make mistakes, and leave out details. We should stick to our equivalent of Lincoln Logs.
Like Baskin Robbins, our “lincoln logs” come in many different flavors.
Icons
There are so many icons out there it’s impossible to count them. They can be used for everything from personalizing your desktop to playing key functions in your designs. Now, there’s certainly a time to create your own icons, but there are also many times when you just need to grab one somebody has already put together. There’s so many good icon designers that for the majority of icon needs there’s something you can use without having to spend the time to create it yourself.
Some good icon resources I’ve found include:
Fonts
I don’t need custom fonts that often, but when I do I find them to be quite helpful (like the ‘XenoAbe Design’ writing above). Fonts that you have to buy can be quite expensive. Personally, a custom font is not worth $250 to me. I’m not the biggest typography buff, although I do enjoy it, so it’s not essential to my designs. However, it can certainly add to a design in some cases. I would suggest that you don’t go overboard with this nor use extremely outlandish fonts (unless the design truly calls for it).
Dafont.com is a resource I’ve found incredibly useful. It is a repository of many custom fonts that are 100% free. This has fit every font need I’ve ever had. It also has very good organization and allows you to even few the fonts with a custom bit of text. Excellent for any designer that needs a font for a specific need but isn’t necessarily an expert typographer either.
Stencils
I call these Stencils because that’s what the program I use (Omnigraffle) calls them. However, I think these come in several different flavors. For Photoshop and Illustrator, they can come in the form of brushes or symbols. These are usually small pieces of pre-made designs. They can help liven up your design to fit the look and feel that you are going for and make it much easier than trying to create the design yourself.
I use a combination of stencils like the ones shown above (by Konigi) to build my designs without have to build these individual elements myself. Another technique I use is that for each project a set of stencils is built that reflects the style used for that project so that when these elements are duplicated in other areas of the project I can just grab these pre-built elements for reuse. These are invaluable time savers.
Don’t waste time trying to prove you can build something simple when you can spend that time on improving interaction and user experience!
Using these elements that other people have already put together saves you time on the trivial aspects of design and lets you focus on the user experience. Now, as a bit of warning, these are not typically for visual designers. Visual Designers are usually hired to create a unique visual product or quality. However, for designers that are focusing on interaction and user experience or are just creating a prototype then these types of items are ideal.
What other “Lincoln Logs” do you use? How do you use them?
