October 27, 2006
This is a project of mine that has been kicking around for well over a year now, so I thought I’d stick my neck out and just go with it. I’m going to be releasing Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web as a PDF download book in a couple of months time (around Christmas). It will cost $19. It will be stacked full of useful, practical information for applying graphic design principles to designing on the web.
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October 19, 2006
It’s been ages since I’ve had a stab at a Simple Steps series. So far we’ve had Better Typography, Designing Grid Systems and Typesetting. This one has been kicking around for a while so I thought I’d just publish the first couple and see where we go from there (of course there will be five, I just haven’t written the last couple yet).
Designing with colour is perhaps the element of graphic design which is the most difficult to get right. Why? Well, because it is the most subjective. For some, a palette of dark grey with splashes of bright pink will be just great; to others it would just be all wrong. Too many designers, whether schooled in colour-theory or not, end up making subjective decisions about colour and then when it comes to explaining those decisions to a client, things begin to unravel.
This first post in the series will be dealing with looking at tone and the value of limiting your palette.
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April 01, 2006
The screen is just one of the media types for which we have to design for. Another media type, which I feel is often neglected as part of the design process for a web site, is print.
There are times when a web designer has to know about print design. Not just the values and aesthetics of designing for print, but the terminology, measurements and production values that are important in print design—including typesetting. I’ll be addressing these, along with a working examples over the course of the next three installments of this ‘Simple Steps’ series.
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February 06, 2006
In this installment I'll be talking about three dashes which are often used, but frequently misused. The Hyphen, the En Dash and the Em Dash.
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January 26, 2006
Typography, as discussed in the introduction to this series, is comprised of many constituent parts, one of which is Typesetting. As already discussed, Typesetting is the composition of a body of text from raw material into a designed presentation. One of the aspects of Typesetting which seems to be lacking in the design profession—and I'm guilty as this as the next designer—is that of a thorough understanding of the written word. A total grasp of punctuation, grammar and structure and when and where to use them.
A good Typesetter should really know the language in which they are composing.
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January 25, 2006
It's been quite a while since the last Simple Steps series, but this new series of articles has been brewing for a while. Before I go into the first installment I'd like to clarify what exactly I mean by Typesetting and how that differs from Design, Typographic Design or Typography. Each 'Simple Step' will be just that, clear simple rule(s) to follow.
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August 09, 2005
The third installment to this series is going to be a little different. The previous installments have been talking through some of the basics of grid construction using ratios as the primary device. They've also dealt with grid construction for print media. Unfortunately, as designers for web media, we don't have some of the luxuries as our print designer collegues.
Rather than go through tutorials (I'll be covering these in the last two installments), I'll be using this installment as a platform to discuss some of the challenges and rewards of designing grid systems for the web.
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July 16, 2005
In part one of this Simple Steps series I talked about how to use a simple ratio, that of the paper size you are using, to create a symmetrical grid on which to create your designs. This, the second part in the series, will deal with other ratios and how they can be combined to create more complex grid systems.
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I'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for