Gerard Unger typeface designer of Swift (1985), Amerigo (1986), Flora (1984), and Gulliver (1993) (the typeface used in USA Today) has produced a Web site that is a wealth of information on type design in general and his own designs in particular.
From an interview at Artyears.com:
“Type design serves the reader not only in good legibility but also in recognising certain objects. Typefaces offer orientation and identification. When you see information spread around the globe it becomes almost a world in itself. You have to find your way in the information world and typefaces give identity to objects, books, magazines, record covers. It helps people orient themselves if books look like books.
Typography has thrived since the introduction of typesetting technologies. It has evolved with the changing times and adapted to newer technologies. There are many type designers who have made a significant impact in the field of design and graphic activities. Gerard Unger is one such luminary from the world of typography.”
Link: Gerard Unger
Monthly Archives: February 2004
Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis (Adaptive Path article)
From Adaptive Path comes another fine article “Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis”.
“I spend a lot of time helping clients conduct task analysis to form mental-model diagrams. When teams first start analyzing the interview transcripts they
Useful Neilson slogans
I like these old words. I also like how we tend to forget to dig deeper and apply these or others with absolute faith like the words came from God herself. It’s always easy for over paid consultants to tell you not to design for the vice president as they only see her/him over the course of a limited engagement. Try doing that with an uncooperative v.p that you have to work with day to day and your position starts to soften.
- Your Best Guess is Not Good Enough
- The User is Always Right
- The User is Not Always Right
- Users are Not Designers
- Designers are Not (Representative) Users
- Vice Presidents are Not (Representative) Users
- Less Is More (KISS Consistently!)
- Help Doesn
Mark Hurst: The Page Paradigm
Mark Hurst’s has repeated (republished) in his newsletter his “Page Paradigm” to describe the near-constant pattern in the way that users navigate web sites. It’s amazing how despite constant growth and change has occurred simple truism such as these hold true. Of course it’s easy to take these slogans too literally. There is nothing wrong (and its been proven effective) of course with putting a large amount of effort into creating “beautiful” web sites but it’s no substitute for focusing on exactly on what people are trying to do there.
Mark’s slogan:
On any given Web page, users will either…
- click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment of their goal,
- or click the Back button on their Web browser.
A few of his notes:
“Users don’t much care “where they are” in the website. So-called “breadcrumb links,” which show the user the exact hierarchy of the website as they click further down, are a nice but mostly irrelevant technology. It’s not that users don’t understand the links; it’s that they don’t care. … Users don’t care where they are in a web site.”
“NOTE 4. … Users only come to the website when they have a goal – usually finding a specific piece of information, or conducting a specific transaction. The Goal is very specific, and it’s the defining motivator of that user’s experience on the website. Fulfill the Goal quickly and easily, and it’s a good experience; otherwise, users will try to avoid the site in the future.”
“… partner promos, silly “branding”, overdesigned navigation, graphic advertising, and the rest – that have nothing to do with the Goal? From the user’s perspective, they are pointless at *best* – at worst, an active motivator to tell their friends not to go to your website.”
“NOTE 5. Consistency is NOT necessary. What matters on the Web is whether, on each individual page, the user can quickly and easily advance the next step in the process.”