Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign

Redesigners vs. Realigners

By now it’s apparent that I’ve split us, the creatives, into two camps—and equally apparent that I prefer to wear Realigner team colors. Allow me to indulge in team bias by comparing the two.

The “redesigners”

The Redesigners often rely on emotional responses to aesthetics in justifying a redesign. You’ll typically hear statements like these:

It’s been 2 years since our last redesign.
ur current stuff just looks old.
A redesign would bring new traffic to the site.

Too often, look and feel, color scheme, layout, and identity are presented as solutions to problems discussed in these conversations long before regard is given to other less-aesthetic issues that may very well be the root of the problem. The old warning against treating symptom rather than cause comes to mind.

The “realigners”

In direct contrast to the Redesigners, the Realigners cite strategic objectives and user needs as reasons to consider a site overhaul:

Market trends have shifted. Should our website be adjusted accordingly?
Our users’ needs have changed. Do we need to adapt?
We’ve added 3 new sections and a slew of new content to the site over the last 12 months. Are we presenting content as effectively as we can?
Our current website does little to convey the strength of our product offering.
Does our online presence enhance or devalue our overall brand perception?

Thus, the differences between Redesigners and Realigners might be summarized as follows: The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven. One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh. (Note that by “reposition,” I mean strategy and not physical location or dimensions.)

Don’t get me wrong—I too have played the role of typical Redesigner at times. We’re all entitled to throw caution to the wind and redesign as a means of staying on top of one’s game (e.g. redesign contests and portfolio sites). And besides, we can’t bear the full brunt of the blame—we’re creatives first, strategists (and info architects and project managers and coders and everything else under the sun) second. But I worry persistent redesigning with little cause often serves to promote only proprietary creativity, doing much to educate one in the hows of redesigning but little in the whys of realigning.