Design Spotlight: Drew Melton of The Phraselology Project

(Photo: Ryan Pavlovich)

Drew Melton is a graphic designer based out of Grand Rapids, MI. He specializes in print design and is constantly fiddling (and failing) with letters. He started a company called justlucky that collaborates with clients and designers all over the country. In addition to justlucky, Drew also runs The Phraseology Project which turns common phrases into gorgeous prints.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your background in design and about The Phraseology Project. When did you start designing?

 I started designing when I was 15 years old. I had picked up a book from the library on building your own websites with HTML. Quite quickly I discovered that it might be nice to have some graphic elements in my websites and since I was the only graphic designer I knew, I picked up a copy of Photoshop and started playing.

From there I picked up an internship at a local web design company in Holland, MI, designing and coding websites. That heavily impacted my decision to take my design career further by going to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI. The experience was great for me but I quickly became bored with the class regiment which often lacked real life experience that I was getting at another internship. So in my Junior year of college, with no money or real resources I dropped out and started justlucky because that’s exactly how I felt, just lucky.

Since then justlucky has been my only source of income and I haven’t looked back. It has given me the freedom to fail (a lot) and collaborate with a whole variety of talent. Some days are really hard of course but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

2. Everyone involved in the Phraseology Project is based in Grand Rapids, MI. Is there a design community up there? What kind of work is coming out of the northern midwest?

The community up here is extremely supportive. Grand Rapids is a fairly small city of around 200,000 people so the cost of living is low and it isn’t hard to become a part of the community quickly which has been great for myself and many of the young designers who are itching to make their mark. 

3. You do some incredible lettering, take me through your design process when you sketch things that will later become your prints.

Haha, oh boy. Well, my process is kind of like this…Make a lot of work and something good will happen. A lot of times I end up cherry picking a phrase from the submission database (currently holding over 16,000 submissions!) because I have a fun idea or because I love the phrase or something. Then I start sketching it pretty quick. Sometimes I’ll go through my small library of type books but otherwise I have found that I make the most progress by really sinking my teeth into the phrase pretty quickly. You learn a lot by just trying to draw something over and over. Things just start to pop out and details that you weren’t paying attention to before become pretty clear.

I am big on getting a really detailed sketch together before I even touch a computer but once I am happy with the sketch. I scan it into the computer and layout my illustrator file right over top of it and get to work. I take the file straight from illustrator to the site as soon as possible in order to keep my work moving. Otherwise I get stuck thinking about a piece and nit-picking it to pieces.

4. You have 10 prints up right now in the store of The Phraseology Project, most are done in pretty limited batches. Do you have any plans to add more prints and phrases?

Well, funny you should ask. I am working with a new printer (soon to be revealed) to get some additional prints together by the end of August as well as a t-shirt design that will help support a local, after school art program for high-schoolers. It should be pretty exciting in the near future!

5. What’s one thing you’d want someone who has never seen your work before to know about you?

That I’m totally not a “natural” talent in my own opinion. I am very opinionated and I work my ass off on just about every piece that you see on my sites. It’s not magic I just work hard. Anyone could do what I do if they really wanted and I hope people use my work to do better work in the future. I feel like I got a little off topic there, haha.

Find Drew on Dribbble and on Twitter too.

• September 7, 2011
• #Drew Melton
• #The Phraseology Project
• #design
• #michigan
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How to Design the Perfect Product

Think of a product you use regularly that’s perfect - or as close as you can get to perfect. It does exactly what you expect it will. The way you interface with it is designed in such a way that you don’t even notice it.

How did they design that product? How do I design something that perfect? That’s what I hope you’re asking yourself.

Last weekend I got to take part in an hour and a half session put on by the Stanford Design School (commonly called the d.school). In the session each pair of participants designed the ideal wallet for the person sitting across from them. After a series of interviews where we learned more about our partner’s values, lifestyle, habits, etc., we began to prototype and redesign the wallet that was sitting in their back pocket or in their purse.

Our goal was to translate stories and feedback into a functional prototype for the other person, to gather more information and eventually construct the perfect product.

This cheat sheet will give you an overview on how to build the perfect product, as tought by the Stanford Design School. While our design seminar focused on wallets, there’s no reason that these tips don’t apply to software design.

Interview your customer

• Encourage them to tell stories
• Don’t say “usually” or “normally” when interviewing someone about their habits
• Limit questions to <10 words
• No binary questions (yes/no)
• Ask “Why?” a lot
• Gain empathy from your interviewee
• Look for inconsistencies in what they tell you
• Explore non-verbal communication and body language
• Don’t suggest answers
• Use silence to your advantage; makes people uncomfortable

As you interview, think about the product you’re designing for the customer and how they would use it. Does it solve a problem in their life?

This is a multi-step process. Short interviews are beneficial, capture the data, make guesses, draw conclusions and interview again.

Reframe their problem

• Define (using verbs) what they’re trying to do with the thing you’re designing
• Draw insights from their feelings and from their non-verbal communication 
• Figure out what they need, not what they want

Put their problem in words that they haven’t used to see if you can draw more information out of them. Align your thoughts and their response to see if your ideas are on the right path.

Create and define a Problem Statement

This will guide you in prototyping as you design the features of the product to fit the needs of the eventual user.

Example: {Name} is a {Descriptor(s) about the person}, who needs a way to {need} because {insight}.

Mine from last week: ”Max, a fast-moving New Yorker, needs a way to move faster because he feels rushed, embarrassed, like a packhorse.” (Max’s lifestyle was fast-paced and his bulky wallet often left him fumbling with money while other people gave him grief for moving slowly).

Generate alternatives

Choose new radical ways to solve the person’s problem and glean insights from their feedback. These new options should be outlandish, creative and possible unfeasible. Go crazy. Get feedback from these new options for the product. Be open.

Reflect

Think back to the beginning. Does the idea that you’ve generated from all of the insight still make sense? Does the user understand it and its use cases? 

Prototype it

Take some materials and make the thing. Put it in the user’s hands and get feedback. Iterate and repeat.

Nothing that you use, nothing that you love was generated without thoughtful feedback from its intended user base. Product design takes time; it takes iteration; it takes brutal attention to detail.

• April 17, 2011
• 11 notes
• #Stanford
• #Design
• #dschool
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