Design Considerations
So a few days ago a friend sent me this link from A List Apart that I found very useful In Defense of Eye Candy. I found it a good read, and right on point. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to good design. I mean, when do we every see a bad looking site – aside from the original Plenty of Fish see this old version from the Internet Archive. It worked because it was free. Sometimes that helps out. But I’m a developer – I can understand what the guy who designed Plenty of Fish was thinking. Let’s get it working and take it from there.
To tie into this, I was recently reminded of an article I’d read quite some time ago when Hal Helms twitted about a design for developers article he’d come across. It’s got some really good points in it. Reset your styles so you’re forced to do things for yourself – which removes some of the unpredictability. Set some line-height, etc. I really enjoyed reading through it again. I highly recommend it if you’re a developer and don’t know for sure what you’re doing when it comes to design. My favorite point from the article by Stefano’s Linotype is when it mentions that most developers can look at two different designs and tell you which one is better. We generally just don’t know how to do it for ourselves.
On a related note – if you’re as design challenged as I normally am, I recommend looking at templates to get an idea of what designers think looks good. And then if you’re really feeling like taking the easy route – use the Skins from the YUI for your site. Will give you some basic style without having to worry about what you’re truly doing. They also have a reset stylesheet and a base stylesheet if you’re interested.
