Archive for October, 2006
Oct
31
2006
at 5:05pm
IdeasOnIdeas (Eric Karjaluoto) and others have been talking about what it takes to be a great designer. Now, I must admit that the original post was made by a serious graphic designer, which I’m not, but I think the sentiment can apply to any profession. Eric’s proposition is that you can’t be great if you don’t put in extra work and that in order to be great it is necessary to make compromises in life.
This post rubbed me the wrong way a bit because I think life balance is really important. It is a very individual thing. I need to be able to enjoy other aspects of life – spending time with my husband, being outdoors, practicing yoga, doing other creative things etc. These things are important to me. But does this mean I’m less good at what I do? After all, I could be spending this time learning more about web design. Read more…
Posted in Design | 2 Comments »
Oct
26
2006
at 2:43pm
A few weeks ago I decided it was time to do something about the external links on the site I maintain at work. There are a few reasons why I felt the need to do this:
- It’s just good usability. Sending people to completely different sites unexpectedly has got to be disorienting
- The housing site has a parituclarly vague mix of internal and external links. External links often show up in unexpected places, including….
- On the navbar — this was the biggest problem I wanted to address. Some of the links from the navbar (particularly under the “residence services” section) go to external sites.
There are two problems that need to be solved here: what icon to use and how to apply them using HTML and CSS. Read more…
Posted in Design, Usability, Web Standards | 18 Comments »
Oct
18
2006
at 3:00pm
I came across Environmental Defense the other night when I was looking for lists of safe fish to eat as recommended by Marion Nesle‘s book What to Eat. But that’s besides the point. I was immediately struck by how engaging this site is. At first glance it’s nothing special – basic web site, mostly text, conservative, partially table-based layout. Nothing special, right?
Well, maybe not. Read more…
Posted in Design, Great Websites, Marketing/SEO/Monetization, Usability | 1 Comment »
Oct
12
2006
at 2:30pm
Jeff Croft has a great post on what it means to be a web designer. We come across this sort of thing all the time at TWF – people who have done a few web designs and think they are ready to start selling it. They post their portfolio sites for review – what are we supposed to say? Well, sometimes we manage to talk them out of it. Read more…
Posted in Design, Web Culture | 10 Comments »
Oct
03
2006
at 3:14pm
I’m a little late to the party but the discussion is still going on. You can read that post to find out more about the history of this topic. The basic question is this: why do badly designed sites do so well? Examples usually cited include mySpace, Craigslist, and eBay. Ok/Cancel has a good cartoon that pretty much sums it up.
I partially agree with some of the other propositions Read more…
Posted in Design | 1 Comment »
