How to work with a designer
when you know little to didly squat about design
Mehdeeka is all about one person wearing many hats, and there’s always one hat we could all do to learn more about - design. This week I was introduced to George Hatzis, who has an interesting marketing>design career change, as well as a lot of just cool side projects (which he goes into in his answers below!)
George is currently at Wisr as a product designer, which is obviously one niche of design. Keep in mind that there’s different designers for different things; you wouldn’t ask a graphic designer to design a product and vice versa. My partner is a web designer, and I’ve definitely learned a lot about design from him, but even now I’m still constantly learning new terminology, training my eye for good/could be better design, and now now as I’m going into a new job, I’ll be re-learning workflows and communication preferences with new designers.
Because of my own position and personal interests, I asked George questions around these themes, but I really encourage you to chat to your design mates or colleagues and ask similar questions! There’s no such thing as “too good at working together”
Kayla: Communication is one of the areas that is most difficult between designers (of any variety) and non-designer clients (whether that be an in-house team, agency, etc). What are a few examples of common vocabulary or terminology that non-designers don't know, but if they knew it, it would make communication that much easier?
George: It's common for a client to want something to look or feel more important, aka "make it pop". But quite often this spirals into making a number of things "pop", and suddenly, the overall experience is too noisy to use. What's needed here is a better understanding of hierarchy.
If a non-designer understands there are trade-offs, rather than continuous amplifications, it'll force them to consider suggestions before sharing them. Yes, we can make 'x' bigger and brighter', but 'y' and 'z' will be less noticeable because of it.
For terminology, affordance is a great one. Affordances are elements intentionally included to make an experience interactive. For example, a hamburger icon is a classic affordance that indicates a menu is available to select and show. Affordances have impact, and are not a luxury item. Seeing them as such can help non-designers factor in what's important on a screen.
This one is especially for UI/UX - understanding colour as a status! A client may ask to add a yellow button, or a red box, and they're completely arbitrary choices. If they understand concepts like what the primary button is, what the error state is, then their suggestions are led with purpose, not just aesthetic.
K: What advice would you give to a non-designer marketer who is in charge of giving design feedback, or evaluating the design work of a freelancer/agency?
G: Pair your feedback with action. In my experience, it's common for a non-designer to say the work "doesn't feel right", or "misses the mark". It's fine to know the mark is missed, but how much did I miss it by? Am I centimetres away, or am I kilometres off? Is it to the left, to the right, or behind me? Giving actionable feedback provides more insight, and is more collaborative. It's better than a back and forth of isolated work, where the designer runs away and creates, comes back, misses the mark, and then runs away and creates again.
This also may be an obvious one, but it's a favourite of mine: criticise the work, not the person.
Don't say to the designer "why did you make the text blue and so small? It looks awful". Go with "The blue text is hard to read, I think white would be more accessible. Increasing the size by one level would make it easier to read too".
Help the designer by being honest, straightforward, and specific about what is wrong, not who got it wrong.
K: What resources would you recommend to marketers to brush up/learn about design?
G: I can't help but suggest my own personal project, Checklist Design. Since I launched it in 2019, several marketers have reached out and mentioned how it's helped them! It uncovers every piece of UI/UX to consider for standard user experiences, like what elements to include on a login page, or what steps to consider when designing a payments flow. If they want to dive further, I share examples and resources on each page too. It's a great way to understand all the moving pieces of an interface, and what the best practices are when designing them.
I consider Nielsen Norman Group's work to be a bible for me, honestly. Their content is so well researched and explained, with a definitive take away message in every article.
Growth Design shares entertaining, digestible walkthroughs of real products. I think it's such an engaging way to learn about design. Examining the pros and cons of a real user experience has a longer lasting effect than dabbling in hypotheticals.
K: You have some really interesting personal projects, such as visu.info, what role do you think personal projects play in the wider scope of your career?
G: That itself is a really interesting question, because my personal projects are design-related. So naturally, they're going to factor into what kind of designer I appear as.
visu.info is my love letter to the movies and TV shows I watch. From a career perspective, I'd say it's my way of showing how much I enjoy digging into the finer details of a piece of work, and pulling out a simplified experience that satisfies the user's needs. Not too far from how you would describe a UX designer, right?
checklist.design is a more straightforward expression of how I work. It embraces the fact that no designer is perfect — there'll be days of feeling overloaded and forgetting small touches. Whenever that happens, you have Checklist Design as a resource to back you up. It means you can save your brain for creative problem solving, instead of trying to have the best memory.
In my career so far, they've naturally come up as talking points. I don't think I'll make a career out of either, and it helps to confidently know that. I see them as nice ways to show the world what kind of creative I can be, build projects I truly own, and express my values and passions beyond whatever workplace I'm in.
I want to wrap up with an important point: personal projects are nice to haves, but shouldn't be necessities to advance careers.
Ultimately, they're about doing something you're passionate about outside your 9-5, because that time is so important for taking care of yourself. Not everyone needs a side business, or a "hustle", and that's perfectly fine. Sometimes I take a month or two off from working on my personal projects, because that's what I need at the time. So yeah, don't force yourself to start something because others have - just do what you love.
K: Going back to Checklist, what is your go-to checklist for editing or checking your own work?
G: As I've been building out Wisr's design system on Figma, I've been referring to the whole "Elements" checklists category. I've found it's helped ensure my documentation is crystal clear when collaborating with engineers. I can know the properties (width, border radius, colour), but the checklist reminds me to actually write out those properties so when a developer or non-designer looks at it, they know what the values are and where they're derived from.
Side notes
I’ve got two side notes to George’s interview. The first is that my first question to him (about design terminology) was really inspired by the fact that even though I work pretty closely with designers week-to-week (and date one), I am constantly learning new things and it always reminds me how little I actually know.
A couple of favourite recent terms are text widows/orphans. It’s basically when a paragraph starts or finishes with a line that only has a single word on it.
Next up, George’s comment on side projects being ‘nice to haves’ really strikes a note with me, and I’ll be honest I was really hoping he would bring it up because it’s a super important note. You might have noticed I myself have side projects (such as this newsletter), but I really don’t try to turn them into a job.
For anyone feeling like they need to start a side project, here are a few of my tips
You won’t last long if you’re not genuinely interested or passionate about it, so take a long time to pick what you want to do.
Make it as low impact and low commitment as possible. I try to make this newsletter as easy to put together as possible, my usual routine is find speaker 1-2 weeks in advance, send them the questions with a 3-5 day turnaround period, put it together over the weekend, send a test to the interviewee on Monday and publish on Wednesday. I add links to blank doc as I find them and put them in when I finalise the newsletter.
Try it out a few times without announcing it first. You might do it once and hate it.
5 great design-related links
I definitely default to free Google Fonts when I need one, but if you’ve got the time/budget/buy-in, I would highly encourage you to look into a custom made font. This one is not custom made, but still beautiful.
A tool I recommend often, I’ve used this to pick a colour palette more times than I can count!
This is another source I often link out to, It’s Nice That is a design/illustration/fine art publication that interviews artists, hosts talks, and really digs up some incredible artists I’ve become a fan of.
The design of this is just so smart, I literally said “wow” out loud when I saw it. Paper fast foot bags are crumpled in just the right way to reveal hidden Pepsi logos. I found this because I follow the paper artist who folded/found the logos on Instagram! She usually does really tiny, beautiful paper flowers.
I was never really fussed about furniture but I find it’s really similar to art and museums - the more you know about it the more you start to like it. Sitting Pretty is a short and sweet newsletter dedicated to good furniture design and the stories/history behind certain pieces. One of my favourite issues is about this chair:
