For those who don’t know, Be Best is a public awareness campaign promoted by United States First Lady Melania Trump. The program focuses on well-being for youth, and advocates against cyberbullying and drug use. In their own words: The mission of BE BEST is to focus on some of the major issues facing children today,… [Read more]
Design
The LOC gets a new logo
The Library of Congress (LOC) just got a new logo. It was created by the influential graphic designer Paula Scher, a partner at the New York firm Pentagram. You probably hadn’t notice the new look, but a lot of people did — Like John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who seems to be especially annoyed: This… [Read more]
da Vinci was a doodler
I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard of Leonardo da Vinci, the 15th century artist most famous for painting the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But maybe you didn’t know that he was also a sculptor, engineer, architect, and inventor. In fact, despite Leonardo’s wizardry with a brush, only 15 paintings have been attributed to… [Read more]
A single window
… life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. — F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby 1925 In the context of his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald probably wasn’t thinking about web design. I get that. More likely, this memorable line suggests that a person needs to focus on… [Read more]
The truth about logos
The truth about logos is that they are not that hard to do. If you ask people in the U.S. what logos they like and recognize, they’ll name Target or Nike. Target for example, is just a dot with a circle around it, that’s all it is, so if you want a logo like Target,… [Read more]
We’re not artists
Design is not art. Design is utilitarian, art is not. — Massimo Vignelli 1931-2014 First some bad news Full disclosure To be honest, I had to look up the word “utilitarian.” It means practical, functional, or useful. Except for you, no one is going to come to your site because of its cool design. People… [Read more]
The power of emotion
Don’t be boring Don’t mistake legibility for communication. Just because something’s legible doesn’t mean it communicates. More importantly, it doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing. So, what is the message sent before somebody actually gets into the material? I think that’s sometimes an overlooked area. — David Carson Why is this important? According to… [Read more]
