The power comes from a principle I learned at Jump Associates which is, when you're still getting going, replicate then innovate. It's fine to innovate once you're a master of your craft, but until you can master the fundamentals it's usually best to stick with replicating from those who have trodden the ground before you, figuring it out as they went along. Before Picasso went cubist, he was first an extremely accomplished traditional artist.
I think templates are worth the time and energy to create well. Here's why it might be worth spending a little time to set up a template you hadn't considered:
- It saves time in the future (for yourself or others)
- It creates a consistent brand image
- You can worry about great information design once and have the joy of reusing good designs again and again
- It helps get everybody on the same page
- Templates are a kind of institutional memory - connecting people with, and allowing people to build on, good work from the past
- Templates are easily shared
- The template does the replication, freeing people to innovate
Because you can always choose to ignore a template, or build and modify from them, it's hard for me to find too many drawbacks to them. Worth carving out a little time to make or, perhaps better, go find one someone's already made. More templates please!
1 comments:
There have been many attempts to create tools to let folks share templates (we even built one into NudgeCam). But the problem is usually that the incentives do not seem to be enough to encourage people to submit templates they create. I think a clear articulation of the benefits, which you outline above, would help. But what about going further to create a general clearinghouse for templates that embeds social and/or monetary incentives? Actually, I'm surprised one does not already exist.
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