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In all likelihood you probably read the first five (or perhaps only two) words of the first paragraph before skipping down to here. Many of you can probably recite the first line off by heart, but most likely all of you know what the text's name and primary usage is. Used as placeholder…
"Customers, although they might be able to articulate the problems with an interaction, are not often capable of visualizing the solutions to those problems. Design is a specialized skill, just like programming. Programmers would never ask users to help them code; design problems should be treated no differently."
Alan Cooper
About Face 3, The Essentials of Interaction Design
Typographic literacy is on the decline, and subsequently a whole host of errors are now accepted as ‘the norm’. Below is an exploration of some of the biggest typographic faux pas, and the ways each should be corrected.
Double Spacing
This convention harks back to the days of monospaced typewriters where it was common practice to insert a double space to distinguish the beginning of a sentence from the surrounding single word spaces. When using proportional fonts this really isn’t necessary, and is, to be brutally honest, just plain ugly.
‘Dumb’ Quotes
Typewriters are also responsible for the introduction of ‘straight quotes’, non-specific quote marks designed as a space-saving measure for…
Can you see what’s wrong with the statement above?
Bad typography is everywhere. It can be found in magazine articles, outdoor signage, restaurant menus, billboards, newspaper and TV advertisements and all over the internet. Spend just 30 seconds looking it’s easy to find a whole host of typographic faux pas—incorrect hyphenation, ‘dumb’ quotes, double-spacing, widows, orphans, poor kerning… the list goes on. Typography is something every designer should deeply care about, which is why it pains me to see it abused so profusely.
Typographic literacy seems to be on the decline, and as many designers who are not well-versed in typography move into teaching, they pass on little typographic knowledge to their students…
In the last few months here at Kristian Andersen + Associates, we have become increasingly more involved in iPhone application user experience/user interface design. Our existing experience with UX/UI design for the web was a great jumping-off point, plus we're all day-one iPhone users and are virtually tethered to them right throughout the day.
Our most recent app engagement began in the usual way, collaborating with the client on multiple rounds of wireframes and process maps, dialing in the inner workings and structure of the app itself. When we started to move forward into the initial visual prototypes the ideas for the navigation and overall aesthetic came fast, but we quickly realized something just didn't 'feel' right. It didn't take long before we realized why and just…
Recently I was fortunate enough to become certified in Landing Page Optimization (LPO) after attending a one-day course presented by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments, an internet-based research lab that conducts experiments in optimizing sales and marketing processes. The primary goal of LPO is to optimize the content and appearance of landing pages to make them more appealing to a target audience, in order improve the conversion rate of website visitors that become sales leads or customers.
Having been a designer for nearly 12 years I’ve designed my fair share of websites and landing pages, and I was skeptical about how much I could really learn from this course. However, as we dug deeper into the science of LPO I…
A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.
William Poundstone has written a great book on pricing practices called – Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value. For anyone interested in crafting brand experiences pricing strategies should be an area of deep study and reflection.
Below is a presentation on Personal Branding that I presented at the Notre Dame Campus Communicators Summit on January 7, 2010, in South Bend, Indiana.
Let me come right out and say that I think the term "personal branding" is pretty lame, but there does seem to be some common understanding as to what the term means. So in the interest of fostering continuity and establishing a shared vocabulary, that's what I'm running with. I hope that in 10 years, I will still be using…
Lately we've been talking a lot about the elements of a successful design project. We thought it would be interesting, and helpful to other readers, to hear a bit more about other folk's successes and how they were achieved. Tell us about the client, the challenge, and the solution.
A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.
Check out Mag+, a concept video on the future of digital magazines by BERG. This concept is killer in its own right, but what really impressed me was the quality of the product visualization itself.
Pentagram is hard at work proving that "traditional" design firms can compete in the user experience arena. Check out the work they did for litl.
UserPlus.org has created a pretty cool forum for web designers, developers, information architects, interaction designers, and usability specialists to share their design best practices.
This convention harks back to the days of monospaced typewriters where it was common practice to insert a double space to distinguish the beginning of a sentence from the surrounding single word spaces. When using proportional fonts this really isn’t necessary, and is, to be brutally honest, just plain ugly.
Typewriters are also responsible for the introduction of ‘straight quotes’, non-specific quote marks designed as a space-saving measure for… 
