Thoughts on website design — the process, the details, and the results. I include user experience (which some shorten to UX and I still habitually call usability) with design because the two are so closely linked.
Design philosophy
I don’t sell design — I design websites. Design is not a line item in the budget, it’s not about up-sell or branding, nor is it the sacred, mysterious product of overly-sensitive artists.
Designing a website is about meeting your business objectives while respecting your customers’ time and intelligence. Design is the problem-solving process.
While some think of design as how a thing looks, it’s not about decoration — it’s about how that thing works and the process that gets you there.
Good design is never an accident. Great design is all about care and attention to details.
- Think your desktop site’s good enough for mobile visitors? Does Google?
- Typography — the clothes you dress your message in
- Publishing PDFs: how to make a website harder to use
- Content formatting
- FAQs are a cancer on your website
- Opening off-site links in new windows doesn’t keep visitors on-site
- Stay DRY
- Forms