Although some designers dislike them, because, at a first glance, they seem to be too overwhelming and too densely packed with information: If you design them carefully, mega menus work really well for site navigation. They convey site structure, present your users all avail...
When I was in school our art teacher used to say:
Kopieren heißt kapieren.
Which translates to something along the lines of “copying somet...
A few days ago, John Maeda, Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic, shared this tweet:
Good design is about clarity over style, and accountability over ego.— John Maeda (@johnmaeda) March 14, 2019
...
Yesterday, the Web turned 30.
Thirty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a document called “Information Management, A Proposal,” his formulation of an information network for sharing and exchanging information at CERN, marking the birth of the World Wide Web. Three decades...
People like to stick to their habits. Why? Because it is safer where they are now. Following a routine, a trusted pattern, reduces uncertainty about the future and thus alleviates fear. Everything is plannable and manageable. Tomorrow is safe.
The problem is: The future is u...
If you’re riding through the suburbs in a train, you might recognize that houses usually come in two flavors. For one, there are the townhouses: Tightly packed, not too large, repeatable, convenient. And then there are the individual single-family homes which come in all for...
When you are developing a statement about something, this advice can be useful: If you can turn the statement into the opposite and it sounds like the most ridiculous thing on earth, chances are that your original statement isn’t that distinctive.
For example, if you were t...
I spent the last days of 2018 listening to an amazing podcast: Stephen Fry’s Great Leap Years brilliantly tells the story of the evolution of information technology throughout human history – from Johannes Gutenberg inventing the printing press to Alexander Graham Bell and h...
We all know that we should backup our data regularly and ideally with some sort of backup strategy but let’s be honest: Many of us don’t. Over the years, I got a bit better, but after listening to one of the highly recommended episodes of the (mainly German) Working Draft po...
I have a confession to make. I’ve become utterly terrible at finishing books, especially non-fiction. I once even published a list of books I will definitely maybe read one day. The reasons why I don't finish them are manifold: For one, there is always some work to do that s...
I recently listened to an interesting episode of the podcast “The Design of Business | The Business of Design”, in which Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut talked with Mariana Amatullo, who teaches strategic design and management at Parsons School of Design at The New School...
This morning, I read a tweet by Dave Rupert that made me smile:
Hey, Internet. My son loves drawing. This is great. My house is filled with 1000s of pieces of paper tho. This is not so great. Has anyone converted a ~...
Yesterday, I shared some advice by Seth Godin from an interview with Chase Jarvis. Today, I’ll do the same again, but not because I’m lazy (at least not this time) but because I think it’s a great follow up and just as actionable and useful advice.
It goes like this: Wheneve...
Last weekend, I listened to a highly interesting episode of the Chase Jarvis Live Show, a podcast featuring interviews with creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs. The episode’s guest was Seth Godin and as you might expect, he dropped a lot of knowledge and good advice. And...
I spent two weeks in August...
Recently, I read two posts within a few days that both resonated a lot with me. The topic of both pieces was the same: Writing. Or more specifically, writing on your own site. The first piece, “Just write.”, is by Sara Soueidan and if you haven’t read the article, I highly e...
Prototyping has been captivating me for quite some time now. Since 2012, I teach Interface Prototyping at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel, Germany and especially over the last few years, I could watch prototyping slowly attracting more and more atten...
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The Illusion of Control
We have a problem. And ...
Edit on 09-04-2022: This article is quite old and I have since realized that the conclusion I draw in the article was wrong. The upsides of using EMs as the unit in your media queries, especially in terms of accessibility, far outweigh the one downside I described in the pos...
In all of the posts I published on my site so far, I’ve never shared a single line of code. But since this is going to change with the next article on pattern libraries, I spent a little time over the weekend implementing syntax highlighting for my posts. I settled on Lea Ve...
