Ha! Yes. I hear that. It's really hard to do your own stuff. I'll paste an ELATED Extra article I wrote a year ago below where I talk how hard it is to redesign your own site!
As far as your brochure goes, try thinking about what your real message or USP is, eg:
"designer in Portugal"
"Web & print design - one stop shop"
"design for academia"
Or whatever. In advertising they call this the "proposition". Once you know what that is you can come up with a visual hook to represent it. The good news is that for a brochure you only need one simple idea that you can represent visually!
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That article:
This year, Matt and I will hopefully be making some big changes to the
ELATED site. Currently, the site feels cluttered, and at odds with
prevailing design wisdom, which is a bit annoying. It also doesn't
really let us do what we want to do do in terms of the writing of more
op-ed pieces. So yes, we'll probably be moving towards a more "bloggy"
format for the front page, though the site will continue to have all
the actual content you all know and love.
But here's the rub. we have to design the thing. I could wireframe
what we want in about ten minutes, but at the point of aesthetics I
draw a bit of a blank. You see, I hate designing my own site, and so
do a lot of other web designers I know. It seems to be harder for me
to design my own site than to design anyone else's, but why that
should be entirely eludes me. It should be a great opportunity, since
I have:
- No client
- A blank slate to start from
- A decent idea of what I like in terms of current web design
- A good idea of the desired functionality and content
So yes, it should be simple. So why is it that I'm sitting here with a
full folder of ideas called "New ELATED Inspiration", and a bunch of
Photoshop files that I've already binned without coming up with anything?
I think that it's the very expanse of possibility that's causing me
problems, with no client, no budgetary constraints and a creative free
hand I've seized up. My commercial designer brain simply can't take
the possibilities. So, I've decided to start small, and not in
Photoshop. I've started on the text formatting. Since a lot of what
will be displayed is articles of varying lengths, I've started with
the basics; what a P tag should look like, what font headings should
be set in, and so on.
This is actually making life much easier, though I still don't know
what colours anything should be, and they're currently set in varying
shades of grey. Wish me luck.
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Simon
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ELATED : )
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