Creating Your Own Font
By David Golding
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I have for many years now, tried to find out how to design my own font. I’ve utilized libraries, the internet, and even talked with people to find good answers, and have been very disappointed. There doesn’t seem to be a book out there that gives a how-to approach to designing fonts. All too often, they describe typography, which is useful, but I want to know the actual step-by-step approach. I have FontLab and Adobe Illustrator… What next?
I’ve discovered a handy source that has fulfilled these questions for me, at least in part. Typophile has user boards where professional designers will critique your work and several tutorials exist that give serious help to those trying to make a go at professional type design. However, my favorite section is the Wiki How-To, which, as of yet, is the only legitimate place that gives professional instructions. (All too often, folks just tell you how to turn your handwriting into a font, which is way too amateur for my aims and what I’m discussing here.)
So, thank you to Typophile. I hope to have more interesting stuff to post here in the coming months regarding typeface design.
The 3 Click Rule: Not Applicable?
By David Golding
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Usability folks have been preaching the 3-click rule for years: if a user can’t get to a page within 3 clicks, then the navigation needs to be tweaked. Overall, I think this rule has proven to be effective. Sites like Apple.com and Google.com operate by this guideline and have wonderfully navigable user interfaces.
However, a more important element should be planned and executed before implementing the 3-click rule. Jared M. Spool, Christine Perfetti, and David Brittan published a report that in some ways debunks the 3-click concept. In Designing for the Scent of Information, they posit that what users expect is that every click they make gets them closer to the information they seek. As long as they have indicators that they are heading in the right direction, they won’t likely abandon the site.
So rather than applying a strict 3-click rule, site designers would do well to develop a significant indicator of where the user came from, where he or she is at, and where he or she is headed. This doesn’t necessarily mean creating fancy breadcrumbs, although such navigation trails are certainly userful. The overall design of the site, and of each page, ought to be clear enough that the user doesn’t have to squint or zoom in to decipher what’s going on and where elements are located.
Let me introduce an analogy that has helped me focus on the more important design points we’re talking about here. Take a look at Apple’s iPhone internet video. You’ll see a device that quite strikingly produces a clear, useful view of web pages. Now, on the iPhone, when the page first loads, only certain elements are visible without zooming in.
Design your site so that the user gets, in the screen size of an iPhone, (on the first instance) indicators of their navigation. A breadcrumb probably won’t work, now, will it? But your H1’s and H2’s will, as well as images and graphic elements.
Good Design *Still* Evades Microsoft
By David Golding
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French analyst and researcher Andreas Pfeiffer recently reported that Microsoft’s new Vista OS is a step backward from XP. While Microsoft has worked hard to give a new look to its OS, it clearly went the wrong direction from a design standpoint. This brings me back to what Adam Smith preached back in the 1700s: specialization is the most effective way to go. Here’s what I mean.
Microsoft has employed gazillions of tech gurus from around the world to build software. Now, it’s debatable how well they do that, but everything still comes down to the design. Design is the bottleneck. If a user is lost in the program, it does not matter at all what the program can do; the user can’t access the power or the features. Time and again software companies hire out the guys that can build features but get little design help to make those features accessible. Microsoft, the world’s biggest software manufacturer, is at a loss of design expertise.
Take their rival, Apple. Apple employs as many industrial and graphic designers as they do programmers. And the result is that people know how to use the product right out of the box. There is always the learning curve, but no one can doubt the fluidity of using an Apple product as compared to a Microsoft product.
The principle? When building applications, web applications or any other, we need to spend as much time, if not more, in fleshing out the design. And the more Microsoft neglects to do this, the more frustrated users will become and the greater advantage they hand over to Apple and other competitors.
