Do people designing for the web need any special skills beyond a knowledge of Photoshop? The question comes up every once and a while. Here's what CSS Guru Eric Meyer has to say:
Designers need to know mark-up. They need to know HTML5. They need to be able to write CSS and understand web layout. And they need to have at least a decent grasp of what JavaScript does. I don't necessarily insist that everyone who ever touches the web be able to write their own web app by hand, but designers should understand how JavaScript works.
There are a lot of people who call themselves web designers who are really just designers who put their designs on the web. And there's nothing wrong with being just a designer. But they're not necessarily web designers. They're visual designers. There's a difference.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Mon, 04/12/2010 - 5:51pm.
Web Designer extraordinaire, Jeffery Zeldman (half-seriously) reveals the secret of successful project management:
The trick to great projects, I have found, is (a.) landing clients with whom you are sympatico, and who understand language, time, and money the same way you do, and (b.) assembling teams you don’t have to lead, because everyone instinctively knows what to do.
One can only wonder what prompted the comment.
Courtesy of Jeffrey Zeldman:
Announcing the second annual Blue Beanie Day! Show your support for Web Standards and Accessibility. Please join us on Friday, November 28, 2008 in celebrating Blue Beanie Day.
Friday, November 28, 2008 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.
It's easy to show your support for web design done right. Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 28, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bluebeanieday2008/ .
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 3:11pm.
I had a very pleasurable time at the Garfield Park Conservatory on Chicago's West Side several weeks ago. Finding it however included a mishap due in part to this extremely poorly constructed map which I found while wandering around looking for directions.
You can see a larger version of the entire billboard here -- plus a close-up of the map itself.
I was at the "Gold Dome Fieldhouse", looking for the main Conservatory building. Can anyone guess why I started heading (incorrectly it turned out) west?
Time's up: You can make a map in a thousand different ways (just look at mass transit maps from various cities), but one of the few conventions is that the top generally points north, the bottom south, the left west and the right east. That's how maps are laid out.
Unfortunately, the person who designed this one, decided to ignore the convention and turned the thing 90 degrees counter-clockwise. This way, it may have been easier to fit in with the rest of the information on the board -- that's probably why they did it -- but it's really going for convenience of composition at the expense of comprehension.
Nobody looking at this is going to instinctively tilt their heads sideways to figure it out. Instead they'll do what I did and head off in the wrong direction.
I was saved by friends who, lucky for me, drove over and picked me up. Others might not be so fortunate. The whole point however is that bad design happens when it doesn't take user assumptions into consideration. The result can be not simply making things harder to find but causing users to make incorrect and possibly disastrous decisions. Just ask the person who designed the "Butterfly Ballots" in Florida.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 11:07pm.
Carole Guevin's NetDiver, a portfolio site for aspiring web designers, is celebrating its 10 year on the web. You can get the "Official" poster here...
Carole Guevin was a voice of (cutting edge) sanity during the early days of the web and it's great to see her site still going strong. She even has a Facebook Group...
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 11:05am.
I really think the US Mint (coins) and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (dollar bills) have lost the art of designing money. The fine detail and overall sense of composition that used to distinguish our currency is now no more.
Case in point is the new $5 dollar bill with that big ugly purple '5'. It looks like they just got out a huge rubber stamp and banged away.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing praises this as "Safer, Smarter, More Secure". Apparently 'visually impressive' so it conveys -- who knows? -- the idea of actually being worth something is no longer a requirement.
Meanwhile someone has created a website called "Get Helvetica Off Our Money."
I mean, they're not even trying:
http://tigger.uic.edu/announce/
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 10:15am.
Don Norman's at it again! Here's his wonderful description of the balance that designers need to observe between complexity and simplicity:
The mark of the great designer is the ability to provide what people need without excessive complexity, without feature bloat. Simplicity should never be the goal. Follow the famous Einstein quote: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Complex things will require complexity. It is the job of the designer to manage that complexity with skill and grace.
He says this unfortunately in the context of a completely gratuitous squabble with Chicago-based developers, 37signals (here's their response). Nevertheless, it's an approach I find quite appealing -- certainly more than his earlier attempt which led to this post.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 03/11/2008 - 12:05am.
We're all familiar with usability. Basically it's a way of assessing the success rate of any one task. Successfully finding a book or journal article starting from the home page would be a typical task to measure.
I'm wondering if it might also be helpful to think of task completion in the way marketers do, namely as "conversion rates".
MARKETING 101 FOR LIBRARIES
When librarians use the work "marketing", usually they mean 'getting the word out'. Marketers go one step farther: marketing for them means actually selling a product.
This notion of a complete transaction can be useful.
We all have user populations. When these users come to our site, they represent potential "sales" of our products and services.
This is where conversion rates come in.
(more after the jump...)
This isn't a post trashing Second Life. (For that, go here...)
Rather it's about allocating resources in the face of constantly changing technology. It's about which pony to bet on in the race for relevance. We can't bet on all the ponies so what should we look for when choosing a favorite?
(more after the jump...)
