All these articles were interesting for different reasons. First and foremost, as you read through each you begin to either gain a greater appreciation or have a greater appreciation reinforced as to the finer points of building a successful website. Guevin’s Visual Architecture demonstrates to me at least the old saying that a picture is still worth a thousand words – give or take cost-plus appreciation. She cited the time of 6 seconds (or less) to grab the attention, I have heard and read that ‘less’ is more the norm including some ridiculous ideas of one or two seconds. Perhaps that is a time for a younger generation but for me I like to think that I do take longer than six seconds. I do notice, however, that certain things do put me off immediately such as too many moving parts or just too much clutter on a given website. Her two examples of the milk carton/sunglasses and text and the painting from two looks were very interesting. After I finished reading the articles I went to a website of an art museum to actually look at how their pictures of portraits were presented and tried to keep a mental note of what I first focused on each time I saw a picture.
Wroblewski’s article Visual Narratives presented an interesting take on perception. I was particularly taken with the four principles of perception and immediately began comparing some of our pages at work to these templates with interesting results. Even more interesting was the almost instant dismissal I received from one of our IT engineers who told me that he cared little about design – surprise surprise – and our head graphics person who fought a continuing battle against those who simply want to fill up a page with everything possible. Once again I found myself more just observing and listening to opinions and appreciating what a huge spectrum of views exists on all these topics. One person’s brilliant design is someone elses excuse for how not to do something.
Erin Kissane’s article was particularly pertinent and I agreed with everything that she wrote. The issue of double hyphens and double primes continues to plague me with authors. One gets the sense that they are in their comfort zone and will not make the step up to the new standards. Kissane’s arguments for usability and style are right on target. The problem I confront a great deal are those people who secured their PhD’s back in the 70′s and even 80′s who truly believe that they are God’s gift to writing and there is not anything or anybody who is going to teach them how to write. In fact, it is not even teaching, gently editing for usability and style is viewed by some of these people as sacrilege. Preserve us please.
I think Mark Boulton has an intriguing template for manging/running an ‘idea session’ and I think it would be interesting next time I am roped in to such an endeavor to see whether his template can be used. I fear the biggest problem, and it always seems to be the problem, is ego. It takes a strong leader to have people check their egos at the door as it were before sitting down to such a meeting. Once again, I think age difference is a huge factor. I believe that younger people are far more receptive to this type of meeting format and function extremely well; it is a rarity for older people, particularly those who consider that they have a vested interest in a company or idea or theme, to sit back and engage in such meeting without ‘pulling rank,’ or ‘judging ideas.’ I would be very interested to see how some of the management guru’s who have written books on how we need to move as a country to more efficient and open meetings view Boulton’s ideas.
The Photographic Pallettes article brings to the forefront some of the arguments/debates that I have been privy to on what colors go best with which illustration or picture. I have a colleague who continues his struggle with trying to convince people that white space on a page is not such a bad thing and that just because you have a blank page does not automatically mean that you have to fill it with every color known to humanity. But there are those who see the blank screen as an invitation to ‘add color’ to the point that much gets lost in a presentation.
In all of these things there unquestionaly a skill involved that is both taught and comes with experience. But it also involves being open to listening to advice and suggestions. I have often found that someone who has no graphics background or layout skills can produce a gem or spark of an idea in a meeting simply because they come at a project from a different view point. The problem is as Boulton notes “Saving the Spark.”
Alan
