How To Choose Your Website colors

How To Choose Your Website Colors

By Jason OConnor 2005

Color is often overlooked in the business of optimizing websites for better returns on investments. Website salës can be greatly affected by simply changing its colors. Ever come across a website that uses some funky combination of print and background colors? If you ever want to experience an eye-twisting headache, try reading yellow print on a blue background. The reason you see black type on a white background so much is that it is the best color combination for reading, both on and offline.
And since it is even harder to read text on a monitor than it is on paper, we must all be especially careful with the colors we choose for our websites, or suffer less-than-optimal site traffïc and repeat visitors.
Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. It's important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things in each society. For instance, green often times is associated with freshness or monëy, which is fairly obvious if you think about it. But every color does this, and some of the emotions and concepts are more subtle. For example, white means pure, easy, or goodness and purple can be associated with royalty or sophistication. What's more, each color carries with it both positive and negative ideas. The emotions and concepts that you associate with specific colors may differ from other people's associations, but there are themes that run throughout each color. Hëre are some:
Red:Positive: Sense of power, strength, action, passion, sexualityNegative: Anger, forcefulness, impulsiveness, impatience, intimidation, conquest, violence and revenge
Yellow:Positive: Caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring timeNegative: Criticism, laziness, or cynicism
Blue:Positive: Tranquility, love, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and securityNegative: Fear, coldness, passivity and depression
Orange:Positive: Steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, and cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energyNegative: Ignorance, inferiority, sluggishness and superiority
Purple:Positive: Royalty, sophistication, religionNegative: Bruised or foreboding
Green:Positive: Monëy, health, food, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsivenessNegative: Envy, greed, constriction, guilt, jealousy and disorder
Black:Positive: Dramatic, classy, committed, seriousNegative: Evil, death, ignorance, coldness
White:Positive: Pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodnessNegative: Blind, winter, cold, distant
A major goal of marketers is to invoke emotion in their audience. We know that if we can cause some kind of an emotional reaction in the people we are marketing to and communicating with, we have a better chance of compelling them to buy from us. The battle between logic and emotion that rages in each of is usually won by emotion most of the time. By choosing the colors of our websites and online media with deliberate care, we are purposefully trying to invoke a specific emotional response that will increase salës. So pick your colors carefully.
Not only do colors evoke emotions, but they can communicate messages or concepts too. For example, look at ClickItTicket.com to see how color is used to communicate the new affiliation between Oak Web Works, LLC and ClickitTicket.com. The blues of Oak Web Works's logo swirl into the reds of ClickitTicket.com's logo. This can be interpreted as a melding of the two organizations, which is what the words underneath say, "in affiliation with". Also, the red of OakWebWorks.com indicates action and passion, two essentials for people who want to attend theater, sporting events or concerts.
Another online ticket website, BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com, has a different color approach. Its main colors are blue and purple, giving the site a comforting, secure and sophisticated feel. The main header on each page has all the colors in the rainbow in it, a collage of images, with the word `Tickets' in large, white font. Much of the site is white too, which gives it a clean feel.
As a general rule of thumb, when Oak Web Works designs websites, one primary color and one secondary or complimentary color will be chosen. These colors are based on the specific audience and market of our client and the messages the client wants to communicate to the rest of the world. If more than two or three colors are used, things tend to look a little messy, and the power of any one color is diluted too much, so we most often stick with two colors.
When I am not sure exactly which colors or combinations to use, I often start trying different things, then take a step back and ask myself what my chosen colors are conveying to me. After designing many websites over the years I have realized that going with my gut has often worked when I'm in doubt. You would be surprised at how creative and accurate your intuition can be.
However, if the client already has an established brand, we will always make sure to match the colors of the website with the original colors of the company. It is not wise to have print collateral material one color and the website a totally unrelated color. All marketing channels need to remain consistent, with one face only.
Since website visitors all have different platforms, different monitors, and different settings for their screen resolutions, the colors you choose for your website may not always be rendered the exact same way on your site visitors' monitors. That's why there are "Web Safe" colors that have a much higher likelihood of looking the exact same regardless of the user's computer, monitor or settings. Many graphics programs, including Adobe Photoshop, have a feature that allows you to choose "Web Safe" colors only.
Keep in mind however, that the sophistication of technology today allows for Web designers to be able to stray from the "Web Safe" colors more and more. So don't be overly concerned if you choose to use "un-safe' Web colors, chances are that most of your audience has the computers necessary to view your site the exact way you intended.
Whether you are designing sites for clients or designing your own business website, your color choice is vital. Be sure to try different colors, different shades, and different combinations before you decide. It's a lot of fun playing with colors but every choice you make comes with a set of pre-defined societal meanings and emotions, so choose with deliberate care.
About The AuthorJason OConnor owns and operates Oak Web Works, LLC - The synthesis of Web marketing, design, and technology. Jason is an expert at Web design, programming, e-strategy, and e-marketing. Call or email today for a frëe site consultation.

Navision_Financial Management

Frees You to Focus on Your Business
In 1494, the Italian monk Luca Pacioli wrote the world’s first book on accounting in order to “give the trader, without delay, information as to his assets and liabilities.” Five hundred years later, fast and easy access to bottom-line information is still what you need to run your business.
Today, however, the increased pace of business has intensified the need for efficient financial management even more. Therefore, the last thing you need is a business solution that slows down operations by placing new demands on your organization.
Far from inhibiting work, Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision adapts and evolves to match the way in which your business operates. It helps you discover opportunities and motivates users to do more and to learn more.
Free to Grow
When change is required in your organization, Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision makes the transition smoother. It adapts and evolves to match the way your business operates.
You can customize the design within minutes by changing the appearance of forms, adding additional fields and tables, and creating user-specific menus.
You can automate many of your financial practices and procedures according to your needs. You define the level of control that you want by setting up business rules. For example, you can specify payment terms and discounts for individual customers and vendors.
Furthermore, you can handle the full range of legal requirements and currency issues inherent in international trade, including euro business. You can operate and report to authorities in the currencies of your choice.
Free to Discover
Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision makes it easy to access the financial information you need to spot trends and gain insight into your business activities. You capitalize on your knowledge of how your business works by discovering opportunities, which otherwise might have been difficult to identify.
You can examine individual transactions and information about particular events quickly and easily. You can drill down on the fly to investigate a specific amount, or you can use highly specific filtering criteria to find exactly the information you need.
See All the Angles
The Dimensions feature enables you to view information in a more sophisticated way. You tag general ledger and budget entries with company-specific dimensions, which help you get more out of your data. You can use dimensions to:

• Monitor performance


• Investigate relationships


• Take advantage of trends

Dimensions help you get the most out of your information. The possibilities are endless because it’s easy to add new dimensions, and there’s no limit to how many you can add.
Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision also takes the complications out of foreign trade and opens your eyes to the opportunities available in new markets. Each customer or vendor gets the level of service you want to offer. You can receive and make payments in any currency (regardless of the currency normally used for a particular customer or vendor).
Free to Do More
Microsoft Business Solutions–Navision offers you much more than just accounting tools. It helps you understand what figures represent, and it makes it easy for you to see the activities from which the numbers originated. Microsoft Navision stimulates your curiosity and makes your work more inspiring.
You delve deeper into your work because the information you want is at your disposal and access to it is straightforward. You can drill down to information quickly and set filters easily. Microsoft Navision encourages you to look further than account balances.
Account schedules allow you to use the data in your general ledger to help drive your business. You can use a range of predefined reports or your own customized company-specific reports. The financial information generated in this way can then be presented on a Web browser or distributed by e-mail, so that managers and employees, network partners, and investors can stay informed about your company’s activities.
Ask Your Partner
To learn more about Microsoft Business Solutions Financial Management–Navision, contact your local Microsoft Certified Business Solutions Partner. They have the expertise necessary to design a solution that fits your specific business needs. Or, visit our website at:http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions.
About Microsoft Business Solutions
Microsoft Business Solutions, a division of Microsoft, offers a wide range of integrated, end-to-end business applications and services designed to help small, midmarket, and corporate businesses become more connected with customers, employees, partners, and suppliers. Microsoft Business Solutions' applications optimize strategic business processes across financial management, analytics, human resources management, project management, customer relationship management, field service management, supply chain management, e-commerce, manufacturing, and retail management. The applications are designed to provide insight to help customers achieve business success. More information about Microsoft Business Solutions can be found at www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions.
Address:
Microsoft Business Solutions Frydenlunds Allé 6 2950 Vedbaek Denmark Tel +45 45 67 80 00 Fax +45 45 67 80 01 http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions

© 2004 Microsoft Business Solutions ApS, Denmark. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Great Plains, Navision, Visual Studio, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Great Plains Software, Inc., FRx Software Corporation, or Microsoft Business Solutions ApS or their affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.  Great Plains Software, Inc., FRx Software Corporation, and Microsoft Business Solutions ApS are subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, or event is intended or should be inferred.

Online Advertisement Essentials

Online Ad Design
With the days passing by, advertisement specially, urge for reaching to mass through different available mediums are increasing day by day, it could be a ‘concept’ or a ‘physical form’, we just want to SELL it. During different design exercises, I have come across a few ‘essentials’on online advertisement design, I also found some articles on net on the same. Today evening, I jotted down all the ideas and writing this blog.
Readers are welcome to post their messages to me.

Essential #1: Curves and Organic Shapes
In writing this article, I looked at, analyzed and considered several hundred online ads. In nearly three-quarters (and possibly even more) of those ads, some form of curves or other organic shapes featured. Big name companies such as TISSOT or even TITAN Raga collections, use organic shapes -- arcs, circles, and rounded edges, for example -- to appeal to target audiences. The recent proliferation of these particular shapes is a sharp contrast to the hard-edged, square styles favored previously. In an effort to appear more comforting, approachable and appealing to their target audiences, companies have used the current economy to shed their "hard" styles in favor of these "softer" images.
Essential #2: Colors
Anyone who has spent any time online in the past few years will have noticed the vast usage (and in some cases, success) of the color combination of orange and blue. Recently, these colors have come to be associated with tech and computer firms. And in online ads, these colors seem to be just as popular as their layout-based counterparts. Through my research, several shades of blue and orange showed up, but they maintained the combination, usually with only the addition of neutrals (black and white).
Essential  #3: Imagery
Many popular ads have moved from the extensive-copy-and-image format to heavy usage of stock photography that shows their "customers." An ad may show happy children playing, a satisfied mother, or a productive looking office -- any combination of upbeat images that showcases the intended customer reaction to their product.
In this example image, T-Mobile shows customers that instead of spending too much time inside (in corporate cubicle hell), that they should be doing things that they truly enjoy.
Essential  #4: Deals and Copy
Online ad copy is currently focused on a tradition that marketers have followed for years. The copy in most ads I ripped apart focused on these "Big Three" principals:

1. Get something for free


2. Save money


3. Make life easier

Big computer companies, including Dell and its competitors, offer traditional seasonal sales, including back-to-school events, and advertise their substantial savings in banner ads. Other companies, including many popular newspapers, offer discounts to readers who switch from traditional paper-based formats to their online counterparts.
Essential  #5: Interactivity
Ever since animated GIFs gained support in mainstream browsers, people have made "interactive" banner ads. These range from the Punch-the-Monkey ads to more complex formats that feature simulated form fields. The main drive of animated ads is to gain clickthroughs.
With the invention and mainstream acceptance of Macromedia Flash.A new class of ads popped up. Hewlett-Packard was one of the first companies to jump on the bandwagon, enticing customers to check out its music software via an ad that featured a piano layout that allowed you to create your own tunes. The company continues this tradition today with audio-driven ads that explain and teach potential customers about HP's fotoimaging technology, and basically function as mini-presentations.
Along the same lines, more and more companies have thrown their hats into the ring with Flash overlay ads. These ads (usually of gargantuan file size) overlay the text of Web pages and entice customers to view much more than can typically fit into a banner ad. Currently, these behemoth ads are only available in Internet Explorer, but other browsers are now building in support for these overlays. However, even though many users find them annoying at best (confusing at worst), these overlay ads are reported to achieve clickthough rates up to a 50 times better than traditional banner ads.
Essential  #6: Sizes And Layouts
Still the most common and most-used ad size, the banner ad is measured at 468x60 pixels. This ad size has become so popular that it's a preset in recent versions of Adobe Photoshop. Also popular are "skyscraper" banners, which weigh in at 120x600 pixels. Lots of ads don't fit a pre-defined size, such as all the Flash pop-over ads which have become more popular in recent months.
Many banner and skyscrapers ads follow a "thirds" formula. Two-thirds of the ad contains a picture and the main advertising points; the remaining third is devoted to minimal copy and clickable buttons.
In the examples provided here, both Carnation and Microsoft use similar layouts for vastly different products and markets.
Essential  #7: Fonts And Their Usage
It seems as if the growing shift from serif fonts to sans-serif fonts online is now projecting itself into online advertising. Nearly all the ads I examined used sans-serif fonts, often in addition to the company's "signature" font.
If you're new to font selection, and are used to using any old thing that happens to be in your font list, here's a quick overview. Serif fonts, pictured in the upper-half of the example above, have "tails" that are used as decorative touches to the letter. Times New Roman and Garamond are two common examples of serif fonts. Sans-serif fonts, pictured in the lower half of the example above, are absent of the "tails," and frequently have much cleaner lines. Verdana and Arial are examples of common sans-serif fonts.
What NOT to Do
If you're tired of reading the same standard marketing fare and technical how-tos, and are looking for a refreshing perspective on online advertising, check out BrandSuicide. This blog is subtitled "Ads that Suck" and features some of the most annoying, confusing and poorly put-together ads online. Akin to Vincent Flanders' book Web Pages That Suck, this site is a how-not-to guide to online advertising.
For a more in-depth look at the acceptance by Web users of various online ad formats.

DESIGN IN WEB MEDIA AND COPY

DESIGN IN WEB MEDIA AND COPY


We are going to discuss with the issues related to copy and design as individual entities as well as a strong medium together. I would like to receive comments on the same from readers of my webblog.
Pablo Picasso, the first living artist to be featured in the Louvre, influenced the artistic world in a uniquely original way. So why is he known for saying “Good artists copy, great artists steal”?It’s true. Picasso really said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Or at least, since his death in 1973, everyone believes he said that.
But why? Why would someone as original as Picasso say something as ironic as that? And what did he mean? Google Picasso’s quote, and you’ll find plenty of opinions and interpretations as to what he really meant.
My intent here, then, is to uncover one possible interpretation. This interpretation involves three levels of design, each of which:

1. involves some aspect of copying or stealing,


2. shows increasing design maturity, and


3. adapts Picasso’s quote to modern graphic design.

Three Levels of Design
To help you understand my reasoning, I’ve segmented this interpretation into three levels. Are these the only three levels of design? Of course not. They’re only a guide to help improve your design maturity as related to copying and stealing.
I’ve included short case studies to effectively demonstrate the primary concept at each level -- at least, that’s the intent. You be the judge as to whether or not they’re effective examples.
Level 1: Copy, Don’t Create
I'm all for being as original as possible, but a beginning Web designer (or any designer, for that matter) should start out by copying other well-created designs.
Gerry McGovern, Web copywriting guru, makes the same argument for writers:
One of the simplest tricks that professional writers learn can greatly ease the process of getting ready to write: look for a model of the kind of article you need to do, then dissect it, analyze it—and copy it. . . . Novice writers often make two mistakes: they think they need to be entirely original, and they think they need to wait for “inspiration.” Take it from the pros: for most kinds of writing, originality and inspiration are overrated.
Replace the instances of “writers” and “writing” in Gerry’s quote with “designers” and “Web design” and the message is the same: copy, don’t create.
Surprisingly, there’s a positive side effect to copying: conventionality. Building on the same foundation as other sites -- specifically, layout and information architecture -- often leads to intuitiveness and familiarity for the end user. By no mistake do BarnesAndNoble.com and Amazon.com have similar navigation structures.
Additionally, if your career is anything like mine, you hardly ever enjoy the luxury Michelangelo relished as he expended four long years completing the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Often, we have only four months -- more likely, four weeks. So, in a commercial art environment such as Web design, copying is almost mandatory, given the time constraints and budget limitations we face.

Brand designers, must read

Interview by David WomackElsie Maio is the founder and president of Maio and Company, Inc. She began her career on Wall Street in equities research and was a senior editor at Institutional Investor before joining McKinsey & Company. Inspired by the potential for disciplined strategic communications to move business forward, she became a senior partner at several world-class identity firms. In 1994, she founded Maio and Company to focus on helping clients achieve hard business results through the soft science of brand and identity management. Her opinions appear in The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, Brandweek, Brand Marketing and American Banker, as well as in leading European business publications. She also provides marketing commentary for National Public Radio's “Marketplace News.”

GAIN: Although many of the issues you champion are often lumped together under "sustainability," you are resistant to the term. Why?
MAIO:The term "sustainability" can be misleading. When a company talks about its commitment to sustainability, what do they really mean? Self-preservation? Environmental sensitivity? Or do they mean a broad social contract with humanity? That ambiguity is confusing. And the last thing business wants to do these days is confuse already skeptical stakeholders. At worst, the term suggests that "endurance" or the status quo are worthy corporate goals. But our research points to growing pressure for a new paradigm. For the engine of business to turn its momentum toward enhancing life on earth in a profitable, moral manner that focuses its extraordinary ingenuity and passion for profitable growth on inventing the next generation of win/win solutions. Yes, "sustainability" is necessary but it is just not enough.
GAIN: Why is the need for this change particularly acute today?
MAIO: Historically, the seeds of this larger role have sprung up in the face of tragedy and moral outrage. For instance, the Triangle factory fire of 1911 led to new regulations that made businesses responsible for the safety of employees. Now, with our recent scandals, there is again a call for greater ethics in business. What we see in our institutions is a process of decay and of systemic breakdown. Corporations have been granted the privileges of personhood under the law of the U.S. but they haven't been given the responsibilities. We, as a society, are beginning to hold them responsible. As businesses become larger parts of our lives they are going to have to address larger questions. This is not just a social or environmental necessity. Recent scandals have shown that businesses that are not ethically sound are not financially stable.
GAIN: Why does it seem that businesses are now more vulnerable to scandals?
MAIO: Stakeholders can see the intent of the company more readily now. It used to be that the messages of advertising or PR would dictate impressions of a company. Today, the pattern of its actions shows the corporation's main premise. How? The internet has empowered consumers to observe corporate behavior much more closely. Communities of interest now have a way to connect instantaneously to companies and to each other, regardless of how many shares they hold or where they are located geographically. This is a new ability for consumers and small shareholders, who in the past may have felt powerless to understand business, much less effect change. Technology has made business more transparent, visible and vulnerable. There's no place for businesses to hide.

GAIN: Can you give us an example of the effects of this new transparency?
MAIO: Take Monsanto. Monsanto had a visionary CEO and extraordinary people inside managing that branding practice. They had excellent professional design support and they had a fabulous creative team. It was inspiring. I was impressed with what they did but the world wasn't. Monsanto failed to take in to account how visible their products had become and how strongly certain consumers felt about having genetically modified organisms in the agricultural system. As a result when they went into Europe they were shouted down time and again. The backlash for Monsanto basically dismantled the company. So I say that, from a creative, brand design perspective, the brand operation was a total success, but that patient died. The old branding process forgot key stakeholders. This was a sad because that company’s intent, I believe, was truly to provide "food, health, and hope" to the world’s populations.
SM SoulBrand, SoulBranding are service marks of Maio and Company, Inc. 1997-2003. All rights to this term and associated exhibits and visual images are reserved.

GAIN: How could Monsanto have prevented this reaction?
MAIO: They couldn't prevent it, but they might have anticipated this reaction and collaborated with their critics more effectively in order to mitigate it. Corporations need to sit down with their critics and really listen. They need to seek their critics out and ask, "What is our shared goal? What can we do so that we can see that we are making progress based on joint milestones?" And, as a compliment to traditional media analysis, business needs to be aware of the continuing chatter of the very smallest stakeholders. Again, this is critical for financial as well as ethical reasons.
GAIN: Do you think this hypersensitivity might make companies risk averse and so dampen innovation?
MAIO: The answer is it could, but it doesn't have to. The public is not necessarily risk averse if there is a mutual goal established that benefits both sides.
GAIN: Where does this leave the CEO and the tradition of the maverick entrepreneur?
MAIO: Well, they had better be able to articulate their core values and make sure that they permeate the entire organization. Listen, we need strong leadership now more than ever. The role of the CEO is still to provide the vision and empower the organization. But they also need to describe the role of the organization in the larger context in a manner that is respectful of every piece of the organization as well as its social and environmental context. The issue of how you maintain values across a large organization is crucial. It's a big challenge that's made bigger by the fact that it has not so far been identified as a management discipline. Jeffrey Immelt, when he first took over GE, said that what kept him up at night was the behavior of employees in the far-flung corners of the earth. Now, ironically, the breach turned out to be much closer to home. But Immelt recognized that the stability of a business is determined by the actions of average employee going about their daily routines a long way from headquarters. Decisions that affect the future of the business are being made every day in ways in which the business is least prepared for. This is why it is so crucial that a common set of values permeate the organization so that every employee, when faced with an ethical dilemma, knows how to react.
GAIN: But haven't companies been talking about values for years? And yet we continue to have scandals.
MAIO: Beginning in the '80s, it became popular for companies to have mission statements. Unfortunately, these mission statements were created by outsiders, often branding companies, endorsed by a CEO and then pushed down through the organization. But they had no connection to the spirit of the organization. Enron had an exemplary mission statement. If you read Enron's mission statement you would think, "Hey, this is a company that I want to work for." They talked values but these values did not inform the behavior. This is pretty typical. Generally speaking, it has been the head telling the body something and the body walking the other way.

Exhibits © Maio and Company, Inc. 2003
GAIN: Have branding practices contributed to the current crisis?
MAIO: When I look at the branding discipline, I see a set of behaviors and objectives that are no longer sufficient. For companies to think that they can improve their positioning simply through increasing communication is just making them more and more vulnerable. BP, for example, has redefined themselves as a company that cares about people and the environment. This repositioning has opened up broader opportunities for them. But they have also made themselves very vulnerable. Any prime mover is a target, especially in what has been termed the "greater good marketplace."
GAIN: Usually what problems do businesses bring to you?
MAIO: The businesses that come to us for help are usually in the process of expansion. They are raising their profile. As they step up into the spotlight, the leadership needs to be confident that their act is clean. Often these companies have been driven by a single personality or set of personalities and now need to institutionalize their value system. In order to step up into the spotlight, the leadership needs to have a reality check on ethical and environmental risks and a viable plan for improving current shortcomings. Others clients come seeking to gain a broader strategic value from specific ethical practices. Our clients come to recognize that the promise of their brand, no matter how creatively scintillating, is a liability unless they deliver it in the spirit of mutual benefit to their communities.

GAIN: So how do you help business create an effective value system?
MAIO: It has to happen from the inside out. Really, it is more a process of discovery than creation. The values are there. They live in the people who work for the company. What we try to do is to provide a voice and a framework for inputting these values into the decision-making process. One of the first steps is a self audit. Employees identify what their core motivating values are. They rate each aspect of the company separately, creating a kind of report card. We then ask the employees where they think the company should rate. The results vary from industry to industry and from level to level within the company. We then ask the employees what specific evidence the employees would need to be convinced that the company had actually improved. So, in the end, what management gets is a detailed report card, a set of goals and a snapshot of milestones of credibility.
GAIN: I can see why this approach might make for happy employees, but is this kind of rule-by-consensus effective for generating business value?
MAIO: Not only are we factoring in employee's inputs, but strategic external stakeholders' input too. The transparency of corporate behavior is a fact of life now. It is changing brand management from a directive to a participatory process. And the solutions are richer for it. The leverage for management is potentially huge. Of course, consensus is not the only factor in determining the direction a business should take, but it is important. More and more I see strategists coming together around the idea of participation and inclusiveness. Studies show that business leaders make better decisions when they have more inputs. This is contrary to the whole expert setup. What we're seeing in business today is, to borrow a phrase I have been hearing a lot lately, "the fall of the house of experts." Decisions that come from within are richer and more efficient than expert-driven points of view.
GAIN: We have been talking a lot about the responsibilities of business, what about the responsibilities of shareholders and consumers?
MAIO: The Dow Jones sustainability group index was started in 1999 to track companies that manage themselves in a more balanced way. How did they determine which businesses were balanced and sustainable? The first cutoff was a 10-year planning horizon. Investors have been pushing CEOs to drive up stock prices by doing what is expedient in the short term. So how can we blame the CEOs? This is what they are rewarded for. You can't run a sound, balanced, responsible business quarter to quarter. You are going to win some profit quarters and lose some. The greater good is the responsibility of each investor and consumer. We need to look at our own motivations and our own greed. Businesses, by and large, are jumping through the hoops that we set.

Experience Design

Experience Design
By Bob Jacobson

Bob Jacobson is an experience design consultant in Redwood City, CA, and the editor of Information Design (MIT Press, 1999).
Experience Design is an emerging paradigm, a call for inclusion: it calls for an integrative practice of design that can benefit all designers, including those who work in the new, interactive media. Unfortunately, the intense time and project pressures faced by designers in all disciplines, together with a parochialism or provincialism that is disturbingly constant among designers, prevents interdisciplinary conversations. Web designers are too busy to talk to architects, who are too busy to talk to graphic designers, who are too busy to talk to automotive designers, and so on. Not only at professional association and trade events, but also on the ’Net, we miss the opportunity to learn from and work with each other.
This month I completed a survey of practicing experience designers for the AIGA, to be published in the new online journal and print magazine for interaction designers, Gain. I interviewed via email and over the phone more than 50 leading designers from a variety of disciplines: graphic design, industrial design, architecture, interaction design, advertising and branding, environmental graphic design, web design, landscape architecture, automotive design, HCI researchers, information scientists, and even the leading expert in “captology,” the science of persuasive technology (Stanford’s B.J. Fogg).
Because Launch champions the new paradigm of experience design, my interviewees were all self-styled experience designers for whom experience is a central concern and organizing principal. Experience designers strive to create experiences that produce desired perceptions, cognition, and behavior among their clients’ “users,” “customers,” “visitors,” or “audiences.” (Different disciplines favor different nomenclatures.) Under the experience-design rubric, designers of many specializations successfully work with each other and with non-design professionals.
We spoke at length about what moves experience designers: their motivations, challenges, and rewards.
My findings were occasionally surprising. For example, designers who work in the physical world – designers of themed products and environments – have a vastly more developed theoretical base they can call on than do designers who work in the online world. While the latter have recently gotten most the ink, a lot more money and labor goes into the design of tangible objects and places intended to engender experiences. Designers in the physical world also have developed rigorous project-management and client-service skills as well as a heightened ability to work with cross-disciplinary teams. Comparable skills and methods are not prolific among online designers.
Even traditional designers, however, credit online designers with favorably shaping public opinion about design generally and drawing attention to its value.
Incorporating in design practice the knowledge provided by ethnographers, phenomenologists (scientists of “experience”), sociologists, psychologists, historians, storytellers, and other design disciplines is another challenge facing designers. Experience design is a wildly popular new paradigm that may provide a solution. Experience designers strive to create desired perceptions, cognition, and behavior among users, customers, visitors, or the audience. Experience designers of many specializations successfully work with each other and with non-design professionals. There are real synergies in cross-disciplinary design.
Several countervailing forces work against integrative design, however. Good intentions notwithstanding, designers aren’t communicating with colleagues enough to find out what else is going on in the world of design.
For one thing, their noses are to the grindstone. It was disappointing for me to learn, for example, that a leading theme-park designer responsible for the most wondrous attractions hasnt the time to learn about virtual-presentation techniques from the world of simulation. Or that a web designer with responsibility for a critical e-commerce exchange is unaware of cognate work being done by an interactive product designer and hasn’t the time to find out about it. We all need to carve out more time for staying up with developments in our field.
An interdisciplinary disconnection results also because there are few places for designers from different traditions to meet, virtually or in the physical world, on a regular basis.
Online design communities, like their offline counterparts, cater to specializations. If the inhabitants of these clubhouses actually knew how much was going on elsewhere in the profession that was new, exciting, and relevant, theyd be appalled. Our tidy online worlds are too narrow.
Most conferences do not do the trick, either. Sponsored by associations set up to intensify and extend their respective members’ skills and abilities, these focused gatherings inadvertently prevent the easy exchange of knowledge among designers. Even those that preach ecumenism are limited by the fact that no design organization can be all things to all designers. Similarly, publications and services provided by the various professional associations, while striving to be open, necessarily hone in on their dues-paying members’ most immediate concerns, and these tend to be parochial.
Two professional organizations, the American Center for Design and the AIGA Advance for Design, defy this tradition. Their programs transcend disciplinary boundaries.
The Chicago-based American Center for Design, led by the visionary and indefatigable Chris and Diana Conley, regularly pushes the disciplinary envelope. The ACD throws together practitioners from many disciplines at its well-attended workshops. Regrettably, the ACD’s reach is limited somewhat by its Midwest location. Its website is not sufficiently interactive and participatory to make up for the ACD’s remoteness from designers practicing in other regions.
The AIGA’s Advance for Design has taken a different approach to broaden the dialogue among designers. The Advance has been organized by leading interaction designers responding to the demands of their practice, which keeps getting bigger and more complex. The Advance’s mission is to expand the meaning of interaction design and integrate within it lessons learned from other design modalities. At its inaugural 1998 meeting in Nantucket and at last year’s meeting in Santa Fe, the Advance’s ranks were heavily weighted with web and high-tech system designers.
This August Advance will gather in Telluride, CO, and again take up the question, “What constitutes contemporary design and how can it be better valued?” As before, AIGA members are in the majority among the 80 registered attendees, but the Advance this year is more robust with input from other design professionals. Moreover, its leadership, whom I interviewed, is determined to be more inclusive in the future. For the sake of AIGA’s members as well as designers outside the organization, it’s a promise worth keeping. The appearance of Launch as an Advance-sponsored online resource for design ecumenism is a welcome opening.
Also, I am part of a team organizing a new website, Experience Design, whose purpose is to break down the professional silos and barriers that separate designers. We intend Experience Design to be fast and efficient, a place where designers can duck in, catch what’s going on all over the design universe, share opinions, visit a gallery of the best design efforts (in many media), and be part of the larger design community. Our small team, for whom the website currently is a labor of love, gladly welcomes others to join it.
For designers everywhere, the message of my research is clear. If our work is going to develop and get better, we need to spend more time sharing ideas and collaborating with designers whose practices may be quite different from our own. The Internet Time thing, “We’re too busy!,” is no longer a good excuse for ignorance and seat-of-the-pants design thinking, if ever it was.

WHAT IS ART DIRECTION

WHAT IS ART DIRECTION?
That’s a hard question to answer. In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism. Some art directors do little more than dream up these ideas and present them to clients, while some oversee almost all aspects of the design and production process. Surprisingly, art direction is seldom taught in schools and there is very little formal information on the subject; it is often learned in practice.
Still sounds vague, doesn’t it? One might argue that art direction can’t be explained. But you can get the feel of it by studying it. Zeldman has posted a wonderful example, and he accurately describes the difference between art direction and design. Try checking out the covers of news magazines (in my opinion, covers of The Economist are a showcase of consistently effective art direction), the features section of many newspapers, and all types of print advertising. Watch television commercials, and ask yourself what devices or elements make some commercials work, while others don’t.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO THE WEB?
Suppose a toothpaste company asks you to come up with a site that will be aimed at all age groups. Someone purely concerned with design might create a proposal which uses very nice type, blue as a background color because it’s “fresh,” and some stock photos of generic mouth and teeth or laughing model families. They’ll spend time tinkering with lines and shadows, wondering if they’ll use a two-column or three-column layout. They might even have a tube of toothpaste being squeezed on to the screen and use the straight line of squeezed toothpaste as a navigation bar. It might look nice, but that’ll be the end of it.
An art director would perhaps come up with a concept which communicates the importance of the smile. What does a smile communicate? Power? Confidence? Happiness? Amusement? All of the above? The art director might choose to delve into the smile as a symbol of healthy teeth and gums. She might even choose to categorize types of smiles and relate these to types of toothpaste, exaggerating the images used to portray the toothpaste types:

1. Cool Minty Fresh: the smile of a climber on Mount Everest.


2. Extra Sensitive: the smile of Dr. Phil.


3. Extra Strength: the smile of Dracula.

Smiles of “power people” paired with success stories. Smiles of comedians — laughter is the best medicine. The smile as an international language of friendship. Why not develop our own “smilies” or emoticons? You get the idea. Don’t “just” design. It’s often just plain boring when compared to a well-developed concept.
GREAT IDEAS DON’T JUST HAPPEN
The most important aspect of art direction is the “concept.” Sure, talent might be an issue when it comes to thinking up great concepts, and your idea — or your art director’s — might not win you any awards, but you can develop good ideas. Creativity is a process, and you’ve got to find your own. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Goals, goals, goals. You’ve heard it all before, but there’s a reason you’ve heard it all before. Good concepts accomplish something. And that something should be the objective to which you and your client have agreed. Always ask yourself, “will this idea help us reach our goal?”


• Use idea-stimulating techniques. Fantastic ideas might just come to some in the shower, but the rest of us can be helped along by using techniques like brainstorming. There are plenty of books on idea generation, and the rules of brainstorming are fairly well-known. Initially you should generate a large quantity of ideas. Your chances of coming up with a winning idea are usually directly proportionate to the number of ideas you generate. You can use the method of your choice. One effective technique, especially if you work alone, is to take a sheet of paper and write your problem or objective at the top. Then force yourself to quickly write or sketch twenty different ideas, and do not stop until you’ve got twenty. It will be difficult, but hey, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be called work. Here are some pointers:


• Don’t censor yourself. You’ll do that later. All ideas are welcome at this point, even (and sometimes especially) the crazy ones.


• Sketch quickly, write quickly. You’ll flesh out the best ideas later.


• Use symbols, metaphor, or theme. Some of the best concepts utilize recognizable symbols, as in Zeldman’s example. Use your life knowledge and experience. To get a feel for this, take the creativity test at Ron Reason’s site and study the test examples.


• Don’t design. You’ll do that later.


• Once you’ve got your ideas on paper, put on the critic’s hat. Choose the best two or three ideas and flesh them out a bit. Now you can permit yourself to think more about the actual design, type, color, and layout. Test the ideas against your objective. The best idea should win, but stay flexible. Good ideas can always be made better.


• Keep the bird’s eye view Don’t get too wrapped up in the details. Work like a sculptor. Start with a large mass of ideas and refine from there — but keep looking at the whole through every phase of the project. Let the specialists work out the small details, and guide them subtly when necessary to keep everything on track.

DIRECT THE ART
So you’ve presented your idea and the client loves it (and you). Now the site needs to be produced. Your job as an art director has just begun — now you’ve got to deal with the client, the programmers,the designers, the project manager, and anyone else involved in the project. All of these people contribute their insight and talent, and it’s your job to make sure that the end result remains as closely related to your concept as possible. Here are some tips for the production phase:

1. Know your stuff. As an art director, you need to know what the technologies are and how they’re used. You need to know what everyone on your team does, and why. Leave the details up to them, but be sure you know what’s involved. It will gain you the respect of your team when they realize that you’re not working in a vacuum, and it will help you think up realistic ideas.


2. Keep the specialists in check. Being a team player is a good thing, but just because John the primadonna designer has a thing for bevelled buttons and 20-pixel drop shadows doesn’t mean you have to grant his wishes.


3. Be open to those “in the know.” John the primadonna designer might just have a point (in this case, probably not). Test your team members’ suggestions against your objective and your concept. If it fits and it’s okay for the budget, let them do it. They know their stuff, too.

IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO IT?
Hardly. The hardest part about art direction is arguably the development of a sound and creative concept. This literally takes years of practice in most cases. Finding an idea-generation technique that fits your own personality can take just as long. But the results can be very rewarding indeed. Good design is pretty, but good design based on a solid concept will help make your sites much more effective and memorable, especially when compared to the competition. You’ll make your clients very happy. Guaranteed.
And hopefully, you’ll enjoy the process.

WHAT IS ART DIRECTIO

WHAT IS ART DIRECTION?
That’s a hard question to answer. In the movies, art directors are usually responsible for creating the “look and feel” of the film. In advertising and print work, art directors (often teamed up with a copywriter) come up with “concepts,” the creative ideas which communicate with us on a gut level through such devices as theme, metaphor, and symbolism. Some art directors do little more than dream up these ideas and present them to clients, while some oversee almost all aspects of the design and production process. Surprisingly, art direction is seldom taught in schools and there is very little formal information on the subject; it is often learned in practice.
Still sounds vague, doesn’t it? One might argue that art direction can’t be explained. But you can get the feel of it by studying it. Zeldman has posted a wonderful example, and he accurately describes the difference between art direction and design. Try checking out the covers of news magazines (in my opinion, covers of The Economist are a showcase of consistently effective art direction), the features section of many newspapers, and all types of print advertising. Watch television commercials, and ask yourself what devices or elements make some commercials work, while others don’t.
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO THE WEB?
Suppose a toothpaste company asks you to come up with a site that will be aimed at all age groups. Someone purely concerned with design might create a proposal which uses very nice type, blue as a background color because it’s “fresh,” and some stock photos of generic mouth and teeth or laughing model families. They’ll spend time tinkering with lines and shadows, wondering if they’ll use a two-column or three-column layout. They might even have a tube of toothpaste being squeezed on to the screen and use the straight line of squeezed toothpaste as a navigation bar. It might look nice, but that’ll be the end of it.
An art director would perhaps come up with a concept which communicates the importance of the smile. What does a smile communicate? Power? Confidence? Happiness? Amusement? All of the above? The art director might choose to delve into the smile as a symbol of healthy teeth and gums. She might even choose to categorize types of smiles and relate these to types of toothpaste, exaggerating the images used to portray the toothpaste types:

1. Cool Minty Fresh: the smile of a climber on Mount Everest.


2. Extra Sensitive: the smile of Dr. Phil.


3. Extra Strength: the smile of Dracula.

Smiles of “power people” paired with success stories. Smiles of comedians — laughter is the best medicine. The smile as an international language of friendship. Why not develop our own “smilies” or emoticons? You get the idea. Don’t “just” design. It’s often just plain boring when compared to a well-developed concept.
GREAT IDEAS DON’T JUST HAPPEN
The most important aspect of art direction is the “concept.” Sure, talent might be an issue when it comes to thinking up great concepts, and your idea — or your art director’s — might not win you any awards, but you can develop good ideas. Creativity is a process, and you’ve got to find your own. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Goals, goals, goals. You’ve heard it all before, but there’s a reason you’ve heard it all before. Good concepts accomplish something. And that something should be the objective to which you and your client have agreed. Always ask yourself, “will this idea help us reach our goal?”


• Use idea-stimulating techniques. Fantastic ideas might just come to some in the shower, but the rest of us can be helped along by using techniques like brainstorming. There are plenty of books on idea generation, and the rules of brainstorming are fairly well-known. Initially you should generate a large quantity of ideas. Your chances of coming up with a winning idea are usually directly proportionate to the number of ideas you generate. You can use the method of your choice. One effective technique, especially if you work alone, is to take a sheet of paper and write your problem or objective at the top. Then force yourself to quickly write or sketch twenty different ideas, and do not stop until you’ve got twenty. It will be difficult, but hey, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be called work. Here are some pointers:


• Don’t censor yourself. You’ll do that later. All ideas are welcome at this point, even (and sometimes especially) the crazy ones.


• Sketch quickly, write quickly. You’ll flesh out the best ideas later.


• Use symbols, metaphor, or theme. Some of the best concepts utilize recognizable symbols, as in Zeldman’s example. Use your life knowledge and experience. To get a feel for this, take the creativity test at Ron Reason’s site and study the test examples.


• Don’t design. You’ll do that later.


• Once you’ve got your ideas on paper, put on the critic’s hat. Choose the best two or three ideas and flesh them out a bit. Now you can permit yourself to think more about the actual design, type, color, and layout. Test the ideas against your objective. The best idea should win, but stay flexible. Good ideas can always be made better.


• Keep the bird’s eye view Don’t get too wrapped up in the details. Work like a sculptor. Start with a large mass of ideas and refine from there — but keep looking at the whole through every phase of the project. Let the specialists work out the small details, and guide them subtly when necessary to keep everything on track.

DIRECT THE ART
So you’ve presented your idea and the client loves it (and you). Now the site needs to be produced. Your job as an art director has just begun — now you’ve got to deal with the client, the programmers,the designers, the project manager, and anyone else involved in the project. All of these people contribute their insight and talent, and it’s your job to make sure that the end result remains as closely related to your concept as possible. Here are some tips for the production phase:

1. Know your stuff. As an art director, you need to know what the technologies are and how they’re used. You need to know what everyone on your team does, and why. Leave the details up to them, but be sure you know what’s involved. It will gain you the respect of your team when they realize that you’re not working in a vacuum, and it will help you think up realistic ideas.


2. Keep the specialists in check. Being a team player is a good thing, but just because John the primadonna designer has a thing for bevelled buttons and 20-pixel drop shadows doesn’t mean you have to grant his wishes.


3. Be open to those “in the know.” John the primadonna designer might just have a point (in this case, probably not). Test your team members’ suggestions against your objective and your concept. If it fits and it’s okay for the budget, let them do it. They know their stuff, too.

IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO IT?
Hardly. The hardest part about art direction is arguably the development of a sound and creative concept. This literally takes years of practice in most cases. Finding an idea-generation technique that fits your own personality can take just as long. But the results can be very rewarding indeed. Good design is pretty, but good design based on a solid concept will help make your sites much more effective and memorable, especially when compared to the competition. You’ll make your clients very happy. Guaranteed.
And hopefully, you’ll enjoy the process.

Reading Design

Recently, I came across an article written by Dean Allen. Dean Allen created and abandoned Textism and Cardigan Industries so he could bring the world Textpattern. He lives in the South of France.

READING DESIGN

My stomach dropped the first time I opened a copy of Warren Chappell’s A Short History of the Printed Word.
The book was a facsimile reprint of the first 1970 edition, on cheap paper and not holding together very well, but each page was utterly alive with its elements: the body type—handset in Monotype Janson—was unapologetically large and forceful, the typesetting done by the time–honed and wondrously imprecise method of pressing ink into paper with raised metal, giving it an organic, breathing presence on the page.

Designed by the author, the book seemed almost visually perfect: the margins, the text block on the page, the placement of the illustrations, all were chosen with a most careful eye; one that craved both the lively and the serene, but with ultimate, consummate respect for the words on the page.

It’s interesting to consider that the book first appeared in 1970—not an entirely high point in the history of graphic design—when practitioners of the highest of so–called “high” design were still seemingly locked in an arms race of Swiss Modernist grids and attempting always to out–ugly each other.

Chappell was one of those designers, and he did some really bizarre and regrettable stuff, but when it came time to produce his small masterpiece on the history of the printed page, what shone out was the virtuosity that comes from a lifetime’s study by example of what works and what doesn’t.

It may be that, for Chappell, it was easier to perform like a virtuoso when designing his own words, at his own pace. Designers who work in the day-to-day grind of deadline and presentation rarely find opportunity to bring such a concentration of skills to one project. I’m going to suggest, however, that designers will benefit from following Chappell’s example, and approach their work now and again as being written rather than assembled.

* * *

Every designer can remember the uncertainty of early days: the scramble to learn new tools, to acquire the best machinery and gear, to have as many fonts and plug–ins as possible on board; to try it all and to be ready for anything.
Most every designer can also point to creative decisions sprung from what the gadgets can do: depending on when the career began, that might mean half–megabyte splash pages and Rollover–everything, or endless graduated fills and drop–shadows, or mezzotints and squeezed and stretched type. Or, to go further back, the gilt edges and cherubim–and–seraphim excesses of Victorian printing.
As with the haircuts and clothing of teenagers, there’s that tendency in the early days toward jealous defensiveness, as though projects, when under scrutiny, were an extension of the designer’s body: you criticize my work, you criticize me and all that I am.
There’s also an eagerness to define oneself in opposition to something else, to destroy what came previously, though such gestures rarely carry much lasting weight; for example it’s a real forehead–slapper to think that David Carson was once considered innovative.
Connected to this, surely, are the haughty declarations of the absolute divide between the lame and the cool.
I bite my lip when I hear a young designer say something like “Helvetica sucks;” while it’s true that Helvetica indeed does suck in many and varied contexts, those situations inevitably involve the work of one who’d make such an airless declaration.
All of these tendencies are familiar to designers—and to those who work with us—but that we even notice such behaviour is, I propose, a little wonky. Imagine a journeyman plumber or apprentice hang–gliding instructor indulged for such tantrums: if pipes burst, or a glider crashes to earth, there’s no account exec to take the client to lunch and chalk it up to creative freedom.

* * *
I spent a few semesters teaching typography at an institute of art and design. My classes began on the first day with a short quiz asking students—at that stage three years into a communications design degree—to draw some basic symbols such as an ampersand and an apostrophe, and to mark suggestions for typographic improvements to some fairly shabby copy I’d written.

Term after term I’d go over the tests and scratch my head wondering what they’d been up to the past three years. With due respect to my colleagues in the program—many of whom taught in addition to running corporate design shops or ad agencies—the education had plainly focused away from what I consider the primary goal of communication design: to make vital, engaging work intended above all to be read. To use design to communicate.
To the students, text had been handled as a graphic element, to be shifted within grids, manipulated and filtered like a photo, to be squinted at and scrutinized upon critique but never apparently to be read.

“But editors take care of text, we just have to design it” was the response when I’d insist that designers learn about editorial style and usage, which always made me laugh.

I complain about the cult of designer ego because it takes away from the craft mentality that leads to better work. The cult of editorial ego is another matter altogether: surrounded as we are by stilted prose, overstatement and eye–glazing textual banality, text has no more implicit safety in the hands of editors.
That said, there are talents and hacks on both sides of the barbed wire and landmines that lie between editors and designers, none of whom benefit from ignorance of what the other side is doing. If you design with editors, study what they know, and have the same reference books at hand.

And above all, read what you are designing, and imagine reading it for the first time, like someone who just found it.

* * *

There are those who make a living as art directors or creative directors, in agencies and large organizations; I simply don’t have any respect for them. Back in the day when specialists covered production steps like colour separation, typesetting and paste–up, design by necessity was a cooperative enterprise, with a commercial artist (and a budget) steering the ship.

A graphic designer must now of course practice all those specialties and more, which means that making pages that sing and elucidate, that beguile and entice, is no simpler now than before, no matter how powerful the processors and software.

Even though image editing, information architecture, typography, and varied media are part of the designer’s toolkit, and it’s easy to see how many designers are led down a garden path of putative “specialization” (for example turning out gardening–supply store websites clogged with Flash), one thing remains constant: that designers need to be able to render ideas clearly.

It’s very nearly impossible to do that in an art–directed environment, of course, which is why most commercial design looks like wispy crap. Committees and org–chart hierarchies never add in the way of improvement, flinging subjective taste and private agendas in the way of clarity at every turn. People sometimes ask me how to improve the design work that comes out of large organizations, and I inevitably answer, “You can’t.”

* * *

How can you design for the web if you can’t code? How can you direct photography if you’ve never worked in a darkroom? How can you design text if you’re not a careful reader?
Surely there must be a list somewhere, of basic skills a designer who knows how to read must possess before donning the goatee and the ironically nerdy glasses? I looked and couldn’t find one, so I made my own:
An Entirely Incomplete List of Things a Non–Illiterate Designer Should Know Before Being a Designer:
That text will inevitably be read before it is looked at
That words themselves make remarkably effective clip art
That the self–conscious layering of messages usually subtracts more value than it adds
That the practical value of white space towers over its value as a design element
That the deep symbolism of a design decision, referring perhaps to a treasured memory of the designer, is irrelevant to the person attempting to glean something from the work
That print designers who gauge their work on the screen, and web designers who gauge their work exclusively on their own machines, are arrogant in their disregard
That the physiobiology of reading is one that demands easy points of exit and entry
That simply paying attention to the design of type, or distinguishing it as “fine” or “invisible” or “classical” is like making a big deal about putting salt on a boiled egg
That letters are not pictures of things, but things
That words are not things, but pictures of things
That arbitrarily altering (or allowing software to alter) the shapes of letters, and the spacing between letters and words, is done at one’s own risk
That emphasis comes at a cost
That overstating the obvious can be effective, but not all the time
The precise point at which a quantity of information no longer requires assistance to be differentiated from another
The knowledge to back up design decisions clearly without falling into a fog of hidden meaning, or so–called “creativity” .