Design relapse: does this ever happen to you guys?

[autumn_whispers2me]

WHY am I having so much trouble thinking "out of the box" lately?? I 'know' what I want as far as a design goes, have it pretty clear in my head, know I want something relatively small, 'short and sweet' so to speak. But when it comes down to the wire I end up relapsing into crappy design choices!!!!

Am I the only one this happens to?

I realize this may be a stupid question, but I'm serious.

[Rob]

No... I think it happens to SirKent too!!!

LMAO!!

jk.

[autumn_whispers2me]

ROFLMAO!

But we still love you, man! lol

[Webforumz Staff]

It definetly happens to me - way too often. I have a good idea of a concept in my head, but actually making it is sometimes very, very difficult and requires a lot of patience.

Since I've taken more of an interest in programming, I've found myself having less and less time to do any design... so I'm not as good as I used to be. Now it's even harder to design something the way I want it - so I'm effectively giving up on design and only focusing on the programming.

Although occasionally I can still design something half-good, like the Webforumz logo you see above.

[autumn_whispers2me]

Well, at least it's not just me then. I tried really hard NOT to fall into the old trap of crappy design concepts, but danged if it doesn't keep happening over and over again anyway.

I played with a couple of ideas... one of them I'll post in a minute on another thread---but maybe crappy design is okay when the theme is humorous, huh? lol

[joshcxa]

happens to be a lot too. i'll open up PS and start designing...then i'll close PS without saving my work cos its just not coming out as i want

[autumn_whispers2me]

Dang. It's crazy because most (though not all) the time I know exactly what I'm going for, but then it all ends up on a larger scale, which irritates the heck out of me.

A lot of the time I get frustrated because I want to do a certain effect, but I've no idea 'how.' So, thinking I could learn I go looking for a tutorial. I'll even get so far as half way through the tutorial... then discover there are steps I can't do because my version of PS is different than what the tutorial's for. What that usually translates into is my building something not even remotely like what I started out to build.

ugh!

[Webforumz Staff]

Sometimes tutorials are actually incorrect/innacurate or simply ask you do to things and assume you know what they mean... which also complicates things! I've had tutorials made for Photoshop 7 (which I use) and have been unable to complete them because the steps stop making sense...

[autumn_whispers2me]

Yeah, that could also be the problem---and probably is because I notice that even on the ones where I follow directions EXACTLY the image doesn't look at all like the ones in the tutorials. Like the glass button tutorials---mine, following the directions exactly, end up looking like dull plastic instead of glass.

I wonder sometimes if the authors of those tutorials do that on purpose. lol