“I don’t see it”, I muttered in frustration. “How can you not see it? It’s right here: 12…”, my schoolmate claimed comfortably. “I don’t see a 12, I see a 17…”, I replied in a growing frustration.
Category: Blog
Humane typography in the digital age
The machines of the industrial world finally took over the handicrafts. The typography of this industrial age was no longer handcrafted. Mass production and profit became more important. Quantity mattered more than the quality. The books and printed works in general lost a part of its humanity. The typefaces were not produced by craftsmen anymore. It was the machines printing and tying the books together now. The craftsmen had to let go of their craft and became a cog in the process. An extension of the industrial machine.
Kebab shop UX
The owner of the shop is very friendly. He speaks a dozen of languages but always greets me in English as soon as I walk in (he already knows that I don’t speak either French or German — both used in Luxembourg). He offered to shake my hand as he always does and asked how I was doing. I replied with my usual: “I’m OK”, and smiled. At this moment he noticed my book. He must have read the title because he asked me what is it that I do.
Creating products that users love
We were invited to this event because Wondermags is a Luxembourgish startup and we put a lot of effort in user experience. I must admit, it feels good to have such reputation. Anyway, I was asked to present our approach to creating products that users love. Here’s what I presented.
A designer’s Sublime Text setup
I truly believe in and appreciate simplicity. I like simple tools that allow customisation for power users. On a Windows PC, Notepad++ somehow provided that. To be honest, I wasn’t even a power user back then, so customisation wasn’t a priority. I just needed a very simple text editor.
A user in total control is a designer’s nightmare
We designers have always had a problem of handing over creative control to the general population — the basic users. There are two reasons for this. The first is obvious: We are the ones who are supposed to know the principles of design and usability. Some of us were born with this feeling of what feels and looks right, while other designers have learned it — at least good designers eventually have.
(Re)Adopting the design-in-browser approach
I got so used to designing (drawing) websites in Adobe Photoshop that I didn’t know where to start. Then I realized that I had already done it in the past with far worse tools then the ones we use now. Web design is not graphic design. It may consist of some of the elements of graphic design but it’s not the same.
Geometry in UI design
Aligning interface elements in Photoshop is pretty easy as it comes with the pre-defined aligning options. And for the 95% those are all you really need. What can you do in those 5% examples when you can’t use these options? Well, it actually depends a lot on what you’re working on. Let’s see a specific example.