It’s a long known fact among users that websites are hard to read. I will never forget the reams of paper an old boss of mine would go through printing out webpages and emails because she couldn’t focus on the screen. Web designers have been trying to change things with better typography and layouts for screens but sad to say, the purpose of a webpage isn’t always to allow the content to be read. Some websites place more weight on…

Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness. In visual terms, style is an aspect of design; in commercial terms, style can communicate brand attributes.…

Unlike other forms of art, graphic design is not just about taking paper and pen and letting the work flow. Graphic designers have to help viewers get the message and help sell a service or product. Creating a design for a client with little or no strategy just doesn’t work. Unlike traditional art, graphic design has to convey a very narrow message. Developing a system for the graphic design process can help the designer achieve the best results. Systematizing any…

I’ve been working hard on an update to the Midsouth SLA website and it’s finally done. I’d love some feedback.

Typography has long been a problem in web design. Technology in new browsers brings a practical solution to custom type.

My thoughts on the nature of design.

Yes I am one of the many geeky Iron Chef fans. I loved the original and I love the American version as well. It only hit me tonight though, the may things I had learned from a mere tv show that ca be applied to my own, non-culinary pursuits. Have a plan They may not know what the specific ingredient is going to be but they obviously have a plan going in.The secret ingredient is revealed and they go straight…

By now WordPress has been bent, folded and mangled in any number of ways to for custom CMSs. One of the most interesting ways I did it was to both manage a website and create a small Yahoo! like link directory within it. The website was part of a grant project for helping senior citizens find reliable health information on the Internet. My purpose in using WordPress as a backend was to speed development time as well as make it…

My first professional website. I was so excited, I had worked so hard to position myself within my department for it. Then I realized, I had to work with our official color: orange. Not a nice warm earth tone, or a bright energizing version either. But what I’m pretty sure is the ugliest web-safe color to be found. Dark, dreary and muddy- not the image we wanted to present to our users. Worse, the secondary color was a web-safe green…