Our Single Design Philosophy

At Bronco we’ve always adopted a single design philosophy; we see this as the optimum approach to build towards the best complete website while also keeping costs low. We’re not unique in doing this; many leading web design agencies also adopt this same methodology. But this way of working does differ from other design disciplines; which the majority of people are more accustomed to working with.

This philosophy is simple. When starting to work with a new client we put all our time and energy into creating a single unique design that we feel provides the best solution for their requirements. It might seem like this restricts the choices available to the client, but creating a single design does not mean changes cannot be made.

We love it when things go right first time, but that’s not always possible. When reviewing a design with a client sometimes things have to change and in a few cases we may have to start over again. But in both cases the feedback we receive allows us to understand the client and their customers even better and this feedback informs our future choices. All this makes the final design even better.

Here’s why a single design philosophy works:

Cost

Not all companies have a bottomless pit of cash to spend and in recent years even the most affluent of companies are being stricter with their expenditure.

Imagine Bronco were asked to create 3 initial designs rather than just 1. You may think this would triple the time taken to create these initial designs but in reality it takes longer as it becomes more difficult to find three different interpretations for the single initial brief.

The increased time equals increased costs which are passed on to the client and result in a large increase in the cost of a website.

Waste

When presenting three designs only one can be chosen and developed further. Choosing one means discarding two.

The time spent creating these two unused designs is then wasted as too is the money that funded their creation. We believe there are better ways to invest money than on designs that will never see the light of day.

Frankenstein

But sometimes in an attempt to reduce the waste caused by binning two designs a client may try to merge various elements from each design to create something new. The result is known as a Frankenstein Design.

A web designer makes informed choices about how the various features and elements of that design interact with one another and work to create a balanced and effective design. To take elements from different designs and create something new devalues the work created by a designer so far and results in a design that lacks the level of effectiveness and balance that was worked into each design that came before it.

Feedback

Creating a single design and iterating that over a few versions allows a client to focus their feedback on how effectively that single design fulfils their requirements.

When providing feedback a client will look from the perspective of their customers and on how well a design achieves their requirements. If problems exist it is these that are communicated. But when looking at multiple designs it can seem easier to look to these for solutions and communicate these rather than inform a designer about the problems that exist.

When identifying problems rather than solutions a designer can use their expertise to determine the ideal solution to implement; the alternative reduces a designer to that of pixel pusher.

If you’d like to see exactly how a single design philosophy creates a more effective website then why not get in touch?