Archive for Design

Cufon – making the web designer’s life less font limited

// September 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Design, Ramblings

If you haven’t been informed of “Cufon – fonts for the people” yet you are missing out on big joy. Essentially Cufon is a font generator that provides an easy way for web builders and developers to utilize any TTF or OTF fonts in their web builds.

It is fast rendering in web sites, uses canvas and VML, doesn’t use flash, and uses no images. The result is beatifully rendered fonts which is entirely refreshing in web layouts and design. Anyone else sick of a web littered with the poor use of arial, verdana, or georgia?

The choice of fonts and the way they are handled is one of the most important aspects of communication design. Typefaces talk. Print designer’s have known for a long time that typology, carefully chosen and used in order to communicate a certain message is the key to successful design. (more…)

User-Centered Planning

// January 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Design, Usability

This union between applied psychology and usability is becoming more common in the corporate world, and it is the very essence of providing a user-centered product. Heuristics and error prevention are wonderful tools to use in web development, but they do not ask or answer the essential questions of human behavior.

Is your application fun to use, is it easy to figure out, does it frustrate the user, or does it aid him/her in accomplishing something desirable? How does a user feel when using this site? At ease or infuriated? Indifferent or engaged?  Further questions could run like this:

  • What is the user trying to accomplish?
  • What are the user’s objectives, needs, wants?
  • Who are the primary user’s?
  • How do they behave in normal life? 

User-Centered Design cuts costs and increases user satisfaction and productivity

Some Documents

1. Pre-Planning Questions for New Web Initiatives or Web Re-Design
2. User Experience Design Process

Even when dealing with small businesses doing pre-production planning, investigation and strategy is highly necessary for a successful web initiative. It is up to designer’s, developer’s, and team leads (even if it only a one person job) to take this responsibility with clients.

Interesting Resources

Applied Psychology to the Design of Halo 3
Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists
Product Experience Strategy and Design
King of Web Usability

web 2.0 fonts

// November 4th, 2008 // No Comments » // Design

Fonts convey design messages and create effect, and while in traditional print design there are a plethora of fonts available, fonts have been in limited supply on the web. Web designers depend on ten or so universally available fonts for their designs, and are reduced in large part to using Verdana and Arial over and over again. 

modernlifeisrubbish

Convert XML and HTML into PDF – Prince

// February 27th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Design

I came across a nifty little tool recently that converts XML and HTML into PDF.  The niftyest part of all is that it formats the pdf based on the CSS.  You can download it here: Prince. Check out some of their examples of use.

A styly webfont

// January 27th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Design

Gentium is a beautiful font with an unusually wide range of characters.  Noteable for its inclusion of all the latin characters in Unicode 4.1, one of only a few fonts that can boast this and are available for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.

Choosing Typefaces

// September 16th, 2007 // No Comments » // Design

Choosing which typefaces to use for certain projects is one of the designer’s biggest challenges. Early in my career I went to see a very successful creative director for an informational interview. The thing she stressed the most was the importance of learning the logistics of type as it separates great design from average. Although I had some fundamentals down and taken some theory I still struggled with practical application – what goes with what?

I found that experience and experimentation helped to train my eye. Utilizing universal design principals in different contexts increased my exposure to different design problems. Reading and studying books and articles on type treatment moved my understanding from unconscious to conscious. Deconstructing the “whys” of type. While making design decisions based on intuition was good so far as it went a deeper understanding was needed.

Articles and Resources

What typeface goes with that?
Authors: bamagazine.com [2005]

15 tips to choose a good text type [2006]

Vitaly Friedman put together a list of what he termed the 25 BEST FREE QUALITY FONTS.

The Anatomy of Web Fonts [2005] is great article about web typography.

How to size text using ems [2004] is a practicle article about using ems.

Screenfont.ca is a site devoted to captions, subtitles and web typography.

 

List of Good Books on Type

ABC’s of Type: A Guide to Contemporary Typefaces 
Author: Allan Haley
Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications [1990]

Elements of Typographic Style, The* (2nd Ed.) 
Author: Robert Bringhurst
Publisher: Hartley & Marks [1997]

Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works 
Authors: Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger
Publisher: Adobe Press/Hayden Books [1993]

Form of the Book, The: Essays on the Morality of Good Design. 
Authors: Jan Tschichold & Hajo Hadeler
Publisher: Hartley & Marks [1995]

Accessible Web Typography – an introduction for web designers (Html text is free)
Author: Jim Byrne [2005]

Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students 
Author: Ellen Lupton
[2004]

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