About ‘art .#’

art .# is something I started doing over at unbinded.net in my blog there. Basically it is an assembly of some of my favourite art quotes that I have come accross. They don’t have to be incredible, but they usually show something about art, whether its Mark Rothko’s attempt at being a nonconformist, or Jean-Michel Basquait’s cynically undertoned observations.

I’m always open to adding suggestions, and am only a little way through entering the entire set. So please if you have a good one then post it in a comment.

design .one //web and thoughts

Over the past month I’ve been saturating myself with design ideologies and philosophies. Tonight, while watching Jeopardy (one of the Back to School week ones) a girls description was:

“Likes designing things because when you design there are no rules.”

How incredible. Especially since I’ve been browsing endlessly looking for sites of interest so I can follow their rules. Well tomorrow I plan to finish off this little project, which involves creating a design for a site called indieplace.net (not yet created, all part of Paragraph’s Contest over at http://unbinded.net).

Not all of my ‘research’ (and I use the term very loosely) has been wasted after realising that the little girls view was correct. Art. Lebedev Studio has a website that I frequent, and I enjoy reading their Mandership immensely, so I was delighted to find § 130. Five quotes from Roma Voroneshski a rather cynical look at some of the more accepted design myths.

“Another curious shibboleth: if something’s not seen on the first screen, well, if it’s way below, users think it’s not there—even in the event they’ve seen it before. Which means that users are creatures who, having turned away from a wardrobe, forget about its being there. That’s what some guys, never mind who, believe. it’s not

To put it shortly, there is no first screen.”

Roma Voroneshski (http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/130/ and http://www.narisoval.ru/)

Its so obvious. A designer should not treat their audience like they are moronic, people know how to scroll (nearly every mouse nowadays comes with a scroll wheel so its no longer an inconvenience either). If the first screen is King, then why even bother with the rest of the site? Honestly, I believe it should work like a very concise book – a brief introduction followed by an easy to follow contents page, all backed up by further appendix information if required.

I don’t pretend to be a Design God, because I’m not. However, I am a fan of good design, and a fan of intelligent theories. All this was meant to say that in the primary stages of design there should only be one rule:

1. There are no rules.