Everyone's a designer now

Whether you like it or not, you’re a graphic designer. In Why aren’t you (really) good at graphic design?, Seth Godin reminds us that this is a new truth in business. Every day people people in all walks of life throw bad clip art into their PowerPoint slides. They write memos using only 14 pt comic sans. Their email signatures contain an image of their favorite Disney character.

Please stop.

If you read Seth’s post, he provides a link to some great resources to learn the very basic graphic design skills that will keep you from embarrassing yourself and your company. Learn to design, it is now a basic business skill.

Somewhat related: ever notice that most people who say “I’m a visual person” can’t draw a lick. I think this is code for “I can’t articulate what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it. However, I will not pay for the dozens of revisions I’ll ask you to do.” I think that’s a topic for another time.

Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices (Smashing Magazine)

I’m mostly posting this for myself. The more content people have, the faster they ask for dropdown menus. Here’s a list of best practices and examples for using dropdown menus from the good people at Smashing Magazine. Dropdown menus add complexity and potential confusion for users. These tips can help you make the call or draw the line.

Web site design overview

Web Design From Scratch offers a great high level view of designing a site. Here’s the skinny:

1. Know what you’re doing
2. Know what the site needs to do
3. Know what the site’s visitors want
4. Get a good picture of the personality and style of the web site
5. Sketch out highly successful scenarios
6. Organise views into a site map
7. Sketch the essential features & look
8. Map your visitors’ attention
9. Arrange the visual elements to work together

I encourage everyone to re-read this article before every project (myself included).

Designing using information patterns

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of 37signals‘ approach to application and Web design. There’s something about their approach that is exceptionally clear and easy to use.

Not too long ago, I found a blog post on their site that reveals the secret: patterns.

I encourage you to give the article a read and refer to it the next time you need to bring clarity to a collection of seemingly disparate information.

Four Sites Deconstructed

Jakob Nielsen analyzes four sites for usability in his April 14 column Four Bad Designs.

“Bad content, bad links, bad navigation, bad category pages… which is worst for business? In these examples, bad content takes the prize for costing the company the most money.”

Ouch.

Let me know what you think. Nielsen is a polarizing figure for Web designers, so I hope we can have some good discussion.

When HTML Email Goes Horribly Wrong

I get a lot of questions about how to make email newsletters visually appealing. While I understand the desire for adding some sizzle to your communications, This entry from design standards champion, Jeffrey Zeldman, outlines the pitfalls that await the HTML emailer.

The article, When is e-mail like a bad website?, deconstructs an HTML email sent from a major cell phone manufacturer, presumably with plenty of resources to perform usability testing (Be sure to look at the screenshots to see how mangled the messge gets). Read the rest of this entry »

What’s precise vs. what’s helpful

Take a look at the following collection of New York City subway maps.

The maps on the left are very precise. They are geographically pure. This would be great if they were intended for geographers or anyone else who needs a precise map.

However, these are graphics to inform people who ride the subway. They could care less about the surrounding landscape. They just need to find the right transfer, to get in the right tube. The information and clarity of the subway lines themselves is what’s most important.

The maps on the right are redesigned with the user in mind. They clarify the relationship of the subway lines to one another. Geographical purity is sacrificed, but the result (in theory) is a happier and more civil subway commuter.

Who is your audience? Do they need every tiny detail? What can you remove to provide more clarity to the message.

Remember, design and communication is the practice of subtraction.

Are you(r images) superfluous?

Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design is a fascinating article. The first two case studies in the article offer strong scientific evidence that a picture is not always worth a thousand words. The third case study has some disturbing insight into the male psyche.

People read faster and retain more if copy is formatted in a manner that is easily scanned, easy to read from top to bottom. That means subheads, bullets and good use of whitespace. This approach allows readers to answer the questions “where am I?”, “what am I reading?” and “do I want to be here?”

The bottom line is that good, clean text formatting is far more important than a random pretty picture. So be sure to ask yourself if the images you’re using are vital to the page you’re publishing.

Remember: good design is the practice of subtraction, not addition.

Electronic Newsletters Best Practices

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but this topic has drawn me out from underneath my teetering inbox: electronic newsletters. Everybody’s doing them, or wants to. Why? We’re getting lean and mean. High-gloss print pieces are expensive and require longer lead times. Often we don’t have time to think past the next cup of coffee that will sustain us through the next sprint to the end of the next project.

So, are we spinning our wheels? What are the best practices? Are people even reading these things?

Well, because your Webmaster loves you, I went to great lengths to type “e-newsletter best practice” into Google. I found this gem: It’s time to raise the bar on e-newsletter best practices.

The best advice is item #1: Content is King. Seriously folks, this is 80% of the battle. Content trumps fancy design every time. If you’re pressed for time, groom the content. Get an editor to look at it. See if you can take out words. Make it punchy. Make it lean. Design is the art of subtraction and good writing is the art of reducing the number of words and making each word carry its weight.

This article is rich with good advice and required reading whether you’re thinking about doing a newsletter or want to improve your current newsletter.

The ‘Broken Window’ principle and Web design

I haven’t posted in awhile, and in the spirit of today’s link, I’m just going to post on something.

Here’s a interesting 37signals article on building and maintaining momentum on your Web site (amongst other things). Sometimes, when you don’t know what to do, work on the things that are easy to fix. Clean up the dusty corners of your site. Go ahead and fix that weird line break. Find out why that photo looks a tad wonky.

Now, whether or not you think that this approach is what helped clean up New York City is a whole other discussion. Bottom line, make it look like someone cares.