Web Design Archive

What Elements Are Necessary In The Design Of A Blog Post?

Monday, December 12th, 2011

In the spirit of design simplicity I’ve been thinking about the essence of a blog post. What’s absolutely necessary and what’s desirable to include in the design of a typical blog post?
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How To Achieve Simplicity In Design

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication
Leonardo da Vinci

In his now classic book Art and Visual Perception, Rudolph Arnheim noted that people will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex shapes as the simplest form possible. There’s something inherent in us that prefers the simple to the complex.
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10 Principles Of Good Design: Dieter Rams

Monday, December 5th, 2011

What makes for good design? Are there general principles for what makes one design better than another that can guide us? Dieter Rams thought so.
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What Visual Impression Can You Convey In An Instant?

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

People begin forming judgements about you, your site, your business in an instant. Canadian researches at Carleton University suggested that within 50 ms (1/20th of a second) visitors to your site are making judgements about its visual appeal.

How much can you communicate in 50ms?
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How To Make Forms More Usable With HTML5

Monday, November 28th, 2011

Forms are how we interact with websites. We use forms to contact site owners, login to applications, reply to comments and so much more. Forms generally don’t inspire love. We don’t like filling them out or creating them. html5 forms want to help change that.
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26 Development (And Design) Books You Might Enjoy

Monday, November 21st, 2011

A few months ago I shared 23 design books I’ve read and enjoyed. In a comment Aman asked if I could do the same for development books. This post would suggest the answer is yes.
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Are You Solving Design Problems Or Forcing Solutions On Them?

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

If you are an artist, you can do anything you want. It’s perfectly all right. Design serves a different purpose. If in the process of solving a problem you create a problem, obviously, you didn’t design.
Massimo Vignelli

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How To Add Non-Textual Elements To A Baseline Grid

Monday, October 17th, 2011

A few weeks ago I offered some tips for setting up a baseline grid. In a comment Raul wondered why most articles about baseline grids focused on textual elements while not mentioning non-textual elements such as forms.
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22 Examples Of Different Grid Types On The Web

Monday, October 10th, 2011

A few months ago I posted about 4 different types of grids common in design — the manuscript grid, the column grid, the modular grid, and the hierarchical grid.
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Tips For Setting Up A Baseline Grid

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

When people talk about typographic grids it often revolves around the horizontal and aligning elements to columns of precise widths. The vertical gets slighted at times due to the dynamic heights of web pages.

However, we shouldn’t ignore the vertical. We should set the vertical to a baseline grid.
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