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Category Archives: Design
Web site design overview
Web Design From Scratch offers a great high level view of designing a site. Here’s the skinny:
Know what you’re doing
Know what the site needs to do
Know what the site’s visitors want
Get a good picture of the personality and style of the web site
Sketch out highly successful scenarios
Organise views into a site map
Sketch the essential features [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Everyone’s a designer now