I wanted to touch very quickly on something maybe a lot of people don’t know how to calculate when they say they want to be free lance web designers with the idea to make it a full time job. It’s a difficult thing to do, and it can get surprisingly costly very quickly. this is […]
Why In House Design Makes Sense For Large Companies.
Having talked to people of large corporate companies and knowing people who work at large corporate companies, what has amazed me constantly is how many companies outsource a good portion of their work to smaller web design shops. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to outsource some of your site, but when you outsource the […]
Web Design It's Not Just For PCs Anymore
I have been working in the web design/development community since 1998 and it seems like every time the web takes a step forward it means two steps back for developers. A lot of the same issues that plagued developers when dial-up was still predominant are issues still today. Not because people are on dial-up, but […]
Content as Navigation Steering the Course
Picking up on the last posting, what exactly is content as navigation? To me it’s something we’re already seeing on sites like Amazon, but as more services open up that offer content streams and feeds, we need to start to think of ways to use this content. It’s not enough to simply get an RSS […]
Which Came First Content or Navigation?
Actually this post should probably be titled “Which is More Important Content or Navigation?” The term “content is king” has been around for at least as long as I have been involved in web design which is quite some time. I have heard this saying repeated over and over. However in the other corner you have the usability group usually lead by Jakob Nielsen which leads me to the question; after your sites aesthetics which is more important to a users experience content or navigation?
All The Pretty Websites Get Picked First
It was once famously said
“Prettiness, that’s what’s important. Followed by Navigation then content.”
… OK maybe not that famous but it was said, and it was in response to the question: Which is more important content or navigation? The response in it’s own right has it’s points. People will argue that a site like Google isn’t very pretty, nor is Amazon. What they do offer is function and service, but I would actually argue that Google is full of “prettiness”. Google may not be pretty everyday but she certainly does like to dress up every now and than as seen on the Holiday Logos archive, and there is something else, Google has a certain kind of symmetry.
Why Good HTML is Like a Magic Show
In the movie the Prestige Michael Cain’s character says:
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.”
So what does this have to do with good web design?
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