Design here ends up inside someone else's build

Design at GoDesign is not a deliverable that gets signed off and filed. It is the input to a build that a developer on the same team has to implement, and then to a site the client's own staff will edit for years afterwards. That changes what a good file looks like.

From screens to systems

Most designers arrive able to produce a convincing page. The jump is producing a set of components with names, states and rules that someone else can build from without asking a question every hour. Naming things well turns out to be most of the job.

The work spans UI and UX for web and ecommerce, brand and identity, and the design system that keeps a site consistent once the handover has happened. Builds land on WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify and Next.js, so a design that assumes total control of the markup is a design that will be argued with.

The part that is hard

Client feedback rarely arrives as a design critique. It arrives as a preference, a comparison to a competitor, or a reaction from someone who was not in the original conversation. Translating that into a change worth making, and pushing back on the ones that are not, is the skill that takes longest to build.

The other hard part is revision under a date. Client work has deadlines attached, and some weeks are heavier than others. We would rather say that than sell a version of the job that does not exist.

What helps

• Sit in the call where the brief is set, rather than receiving it second hand.
• Design the empty state, the error state and the long-text case before the hero section.
• Hand over with the developer in the room, not over a comment thread.