Web Design Archive

The pattern of building tension and then releasing that tension is one of the most ingrained patterns on all human beings. Tension and release is at the heart of music, story, art, and pretty much all creative endeavors.
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Adding a sense of depth to a design can make that design seem more realistic and increase visual interest. Building out the 3rd dimension pulls the viewer into the design and can help you set up entry points and control flow throughout your design.
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A couple of weeks ago via Scrivs, I came across this post by Jessica Hische on inspiration vs imitation. Why I wasn’t already subscribed to Jessica’s blog is another story, but the subject of the post struck me because I’ve been dealing with the exact issue.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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