Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Ranting, raving: Good design.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT

THAT IS WHY I HAVE USED CAPITAL LETTERS

IT HURTS MY EYES AND ANNOYS ME TO NO END WHEN I SEE GOOD CONTENT RUINED BY POOR DESIGN.

/cruisecontrol

Shouting aside, I think this is important to clarify:  Great content can be ruined by poor design.

Excellent design takes work. Excellent design takes risks. Excellent design does not EVER get in the way of content delivery.

Good design is simply elegant.

Bad design is many things, among them:

- Complex
- Distracting
- Unnerving
- Misleading
- Redundant

Those are merely the most obvious of things that can cause issue with design.

I do not mean to suggest that being complex or distracting or misleading is always bad- artwork and similar pursuits that have the visceral reaction of the audience in mind should do their best to take advantage of such possibilities.

What I do mean to suggest is that there are clear and important boundaries that anyone with the reader in mind should be conscious of. Notable among these are the following:

- Clarity of lines
- Ease of viewing
- Stimulus of thought

Design should never be uniform; to suggest that everyone remain constrained by the same unrealistic standards is wrong and unethical. Tastes vary, too- but I think it is fair to say that websites that are difficult to navigate and content that is difficult to process discourage the audience from participating and reduce the efficacy of communication.

More to come later this week, I think.

What makes for good design? Your thoughts, please.

14 comments:

  1. Clean content seems much harder to create than clean design.

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  2. I'm personally a big fan of minimalism.
    I think good design is where you can remove all redundancies and break something to it's most simplest forms/elements and still convey a strong message.
    Good design should have structure, yet should still flow elegantly and freely.
    Behind all good design there lies intention.

    But good design breaks the rules. So......

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  3. I don't know what exactly I'd define as a good design, but red text on top of a green background (I have seen it!) should definitely be called bad design. If I have to highlight text to be able to read it, I'd call that bad design.

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  4. I don't know what makes good design. Something that isn't aesthetically unpleasing--though the term itself is vague.

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  5. Design should be unique. It has to aim to the easiest comprehension of a text.

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  6. i agree with you. i've been struggling with this on my blog trying to keep it layed out well...the actual site design is probably okay but i worry about the way i do my posts sometimes. I think i could have presented the content in some of my recent posts in a more structured way to make it more accessible.

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  7. So many people struggle to reach the balance between aesthetically pleasing and easy to convey. People lose their message in the fiddling around with how it looks, and others will never catch people's attention for them to look in the first place. It's always a constant battle.

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  8. Anonymous1/2/11 16:28

    To me, it has to be easier on the eyes. You can't really be all over the place with text but at the same time, it can't be a wall of text either. So I definitely think there is a happy medium. Following

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  9. Unique is always the way to go .

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  10. Simplistic and similar color schemes is usually what I look for. Complicating things with weird designs and abstract color choices means people have to get used to it, and if they're not willing to become familiar with it then you're shit out of luck.

    following and supporting,
    CrustyCollective

    ReplyDelete
  11. as syxiv said: simplicity is the best.

    “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

    Leonardo Da Vinci

    ReplyDelete

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