Tag: design
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The Principles of Edward Tufte
The problem: “presenting large amounts of information in a way that is compact, accurate, adequate for the purpose, and easy to understand”. The solution: Edward Tufte (actually, the solution is “to develop a consistent approach to the display of graphics which enhances its dissemination, accuracy, and ease of comprehension”… but that’s not as catchy). Yes,…
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Making Graphs That Work
Seth Godin offers some advice on creating quality, legible, graphs. Short and sweet. Don’t let popular spreadsheets be in charge of the way you look. Tell a story. The only 4 stories permissible: Things are going great, look! Things are a disaster, help! Nothing much is happening. We need to work together to figure out…
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Developing a Web App on a Shoestring Budget
As the title suggests—and the tips prove—this brief guide to getting a web app up-and-running on a small budget requires, well, a budget (as opposed to no budget and doing it all yourself). The steps: Create a clear wireframe model Outsource the development Use an open source content management system Start a design contest Leverage…
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On Passwords (Usability and Security)
Passwords have barely evolved since the early days of computing and are taken for granted in our daily online-lives. It’s time for change, says usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who believes password masking goes against basic usability principles and should be stopped (via Kottke). Providing feedback and visualizing the system’s status have always been among the…
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Iconic Logo Designers
Last year logo designer David Airey launched Iconic Logo Designers. As he describes it from his post announcing the launch: On the iconic logo designers website, you’ll find biographical info and resources on more than 35 of the world’s most outstanding creatives. Seeing this I was reminded of how much I love the elegant simplicity…
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Art Direction for David Foster Wallace’s Books
Marie Mundaca on her art direction for a number of David Foster Wallace’s books: It’s a little odd to design interiors for fiction and literary non-fiction. It’s just text—what is there to do? There are the obvious things, like leaving enough space at the margins. Basically, the designer’s job is to pick a font that…
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Crowdsourcing and Creative Deflation
Monday Note uses the case study of LG eliciting designs for future mobile phones to show how crowdsourcing is changing how design is done… and how it’s starting to change advertising, too. Altogether, LG is going to spend $75,000, to be distributed among 43 awards. […] Let’s face it: for a company such as LG, seventy-five grand for…
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GOOD’s Infographic Collection
GOOD Magazine (“for people who give a damn”) have put their ‘Transparencies’ infographics on Flickr. I spent some time going through the set attempting to find a few favourites to share with you specifically. I failed—they’re all great. via Kottke
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Advice for Design and Life, from Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser, the designer best known for creating the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo, offers ten pieces of advice from a life in design: You can only work for people that you like: “all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client”. If you have…
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A Primer in Type Terminology
David’s lead encapsulates my thoughts on typography perfectly: “I’m fascinated by typography even though I don’t understand a thing about it”. Hopefully this won’t be the case for much longer, as Paul Dean has written a five-part “type terminology tour de force”. From the excellently illustrated Anatomy of a Letterform (part two): They speak the arm (of,…