It is no doubt difficult at times to choose which 5 designs to feature in our Extreme Designs of the Week contests, and it is even harder to stand out in contests such as 99Designs when you’re competing against other freelancers, professionals, or even design companies. So what makes a great design? Here are some of the factors I take into consideration on what makes a design (whether it be webpage or logo) stand above others:

1. Simplicity - Everyone these days is all about simplicity. Why? Because it works. Simple logos, simple web pages, simple business cards, simple brochures, etc. The reason behind this psychology is because simple a) looks good and b) simple is easy to remember. In math terms, it’s easier to remember 10 + 10 rather than 4+2+1+5+7+1. In both cases the answer is the same, but if asked to repeat the equation, you’d probably remember the simpler one.
   In design terms, it works exactly the same way. We want to get the message across, not how many different effects you can stick on a 150px by 150px area. And besides, businessmen also like the idea that they can actually have a logo on their business card and still have room for their name and company information.
2. Skill – Looking at a design by someone who has only been designing for 3 months rather than someone who’s been doing it for several years, its fairly obvious who designed what.
3. Accuracy – If you’re given a task of creating an auto website, don’t go into eCommerce design. I see this with a lot of web designers that become so engrossed in their own category of design that they find it harder to adapt to another style when they’ve worked so long in one area. I find this to be an issue when you’re working for one or several clients that give you numerous projects in one category of design. Sure working like this helps you become specialized in one area very well, but I find that going out and finding clients in different aspects of web design also helps in the long run by specializing you in more areas and diversifying your portfolio.
4. Compatibility – This is something that comes with experience, but what makes a design stand out is the color compatibility. Choosing wrong color variations and styles, focusing on either the wrong primary or secondary colors (or both) often creates very incompatible and eye-burning designs that are hard to look at. I find it helpful on learning about actual colors before jumping in and designing something without knowing whether it will work or not.
5. Professionalism – You know this when you see it. Any design that stands out is one whose author took the time to make sure the all lines match up to one another. If they’re doing parallel lines ore reflective features, they actually are in perfect position. Any obscure or sharp edges are smoothed out. Slight shadows are added when needed, and so forth. Imagine looking at a design where you have lines or curves that are either a couple of pixels unfinished leaving white space, other lines go out too far, some areas of the design contain too much shadowing….would you want to even look at a design like that?
6. Uniqueness – We don’t want the same old blue colored webpage design with a Tahoma logo having a huge glass reflection and a cross-hatched web 2.0 background. Instead uniqueness shows itself when you go outside the box and add some personal touch to a site rather than create the same generic stuff.

This is how I look at a design that stands out. What factors do you consider in a design that are superb or outstanding?

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