I’ve put in Slideshare slides on Image Optimization for the Web from a presentation I did yesterday.

By optimization I don’t only mean reducing file size, but also colour precision, http requests and
optimized coding and deployment.

The slides also show and extensive benchmark of image production alternatives and compares file
sizes and quality.

Also, it was a happy surprise today that Slideshare sent me an email to tell me the presentation has been
editorially selected to be showcased on the design section today.

And if you like it, would you consider retweeting it?

Zo’C has entered the age of video. It took me a while to get all things right, but better safe than sorry isn’t it?

I intend to periodically share some videos on web design and development things. That can be Photoshop, Illustrator, how to install a tool, CSS tricks and so on. It could just as well be about videoblogging.

For my first tutorial on this new era I’m going to teach you how to create a cool animation in Photoshop like the one on my last post about videoblogging and podcasting and I’ll show you how to export it in several video formats including Flash video, Quicktime .mov and animated Gif’s.

Have a lot of fun!

Oh, and did I mention that you can subscribe via iTunes or any other tool via media feed.

You can’t make better design with computers, but you can speed up your work

Win Crouvel

I’ve been a computer geek for almost as long as I know my own name and I’ve also been very passionated about them, but then for some strange reason I ended up studying architecture before I turned to computers again and this is where I started to become a designer.

In the 90s it was common in the architecture milieu (at least the one that surrounded me) to see computers as the devil and I have seen professors and colleagues to speak of computers as Tomás de Torquemada would have spoken about witches in Medieval Spain.

I never agreed with them for a second, yet, there is truth in the fact that a lot of computer automatic features are being overly used in place of plain creativity.

A touching thing in Win Crouwel’s interview is that, different from other designers without a strong computer background I’ve known, he clearly stated he wished he had computers in the sixties, so they could produce more.

This is a sensitive statement, and his quote at the begin of this post summarize my ups and downs with these thoughts for years.

Computers are a great tool, probably the best design tool yet invented, but is just a tool, if one can’t produce design without it then is no designer at all.

Space to breath, also called White Space or Negative Space is a very delicate part of design and is directly responsible for the state of mind the reader of the reader.

I was reading a great post of Tom about The White Space Paradox and he cites:

In western culture we associate uncluttered spaces with good taste

(Newark1)

Now, I think that this is not entirely true. First because some eastern cultures have a very minimalistic artistic tradition as well, and for the other part, western culture sometimes really likes some chaos.

While the modernist movement was cemented over Mies van der Rohe’s well know phrase “less is more”, all the punk movement was created over visual chaos.

And by punk movement I don’t mean the crazy guys with random safety pins, but I also mean Vivienne Westwood who build a whole new aesthetics that is still alive inside our design.

What is true, is that white space helps us to relax and read (which is not what the punk movement was intending, of course).

The golden rule of white space doesn’t lie in a great amount of white space, but in an adequate amount.

Too many things flying around the text, like birds of pray, can’t but disturb you and hurry you up, like door knocks when you are in the bathroom. But an excess of whitespace can be just as weird as being in the desert with no soul at sight.

White space should help you follow a certain flow. Typographic line separation, also know as leading, for instance has the purpose of aid the view to find its destiny when the eyes move from the end of a line to the beginning of the next one. A well chosen line width does just that.

As another one of Mies van der Rohe’s famous quotations says “God Lives in the details”.

So, the point is that there has to be some balance, because minimality comes together with quality. Increasing the focus an element has, necessarily should reflect on the quality of it, because there is no point in focus a bad or poor element.

Minimality has to come hand in hand with the ability of being succinct.

Minimality may be associated with luxury, yes, but that only happens if the few elements that compose the design are able to tell the whole story by themselves. Minimality demands great ability in condensing. Otherwise, empty space makes just empty design.

I think the right amount of white space in web pages is that one that provokes that cousy feeling of knowing that you can easily navigate within the page, but that no one is knocking at your door trying to hurry up from what you are trying to do. Which in a blog should mean read, of course.

They turned to me because they wanted an for a dinner party that would officialize the engagement.

I made this basically in Photoshop with Helvetica and the heart was made with Photoshop Support’s My Vintage Valentine Brush Set.

In fact, I think this is no contradiction at all, no monarch can keep the throne without proper garment.

As some others in this blog, this post started as a comment on someone else’s blog, and became too big and needed more room.

In this case, I was reading a nice post by Chris Garret, about blog branding.

It seems that many people rely on the “Content is King” concept to overlook proper visual for its blog. After all, if Content is King, why the need of fancy design? Is not the design you want people to come to your blog for.

Design is support (I’ve said this before). I am a designer as much as a programmer and I support this theory with no shame.

After all, what is a king without a crown and a sceptre? In this case, typography, layout and color seem to fit the role just well.

There are many examples of analogous situations in real life. The job interview is one of them, but then, on different point of view, how would you feel going to a restaurant with excellent food served in rather ugly and damaged plates and cutlery.

It certainly doesn’t affect the food, but would be too pretentious from the chef to feel that the customers that really appreciate the food should not care about that.

Putting obstacles for someone to appreciate your skills, either in the kitchen or writing, is just inadequate. Instead, surround talent with more talent, can’t be but wise.

But is not only about being comfortable, a visual identity is essential to stand out, to look as unique as you want your content to be.

Now, some points I’d like to highlight on content and on design:

Typography

In a romance, you are supposed to read every word from start to end and there is very little hierarchy. Some have titles or chapter names, some don’t even have this.

In a blog, just like in a newspaper, hierarchy of content is essential. Typography is the great ally to make this subtle hierarchy not so subtle.

Visual Identity

Stock layouts are very handy, and a good part of them convey enough quality for the reader to be comfortable, but the question is, will they recognize your site if they end up there by chance again?

By no means, visual should be distractive, but it should be unique enough so you can be remembered, because this is what will make you trustful.

Grammar

For this one I will just quote a great teacher I had years ago, when I was still a computer science student. (It has been a long time since I heard it, so is not an exact quotation)

You don’t use proper grammar so people get impressed on how well you write. You use proper grammar so it can just disappear from the reader’s eyes. You don’t want people to pay attention to your grammar, because the reader only sees the grammar when there are errors. And this is just right, grammar is not to be noticed.

]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/06/if-content-is-king-design-is-the-royal-garment/feed/ 12 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/is-talent-an-innate-gift/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/is-talent-an-innate-gift/#comments Thu, 10 May 2007 16:40:44 +0000 guioconnor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/is-talent-an-innate-gift/ I always heard people talking about abilities that are not just accessible to anyone. Apparently, design, like some other areas, demands something called talent, that you are born with or not.

Some people, like Roger Johansson claim not to have “talent” for web design. Roger is an expert in web standards, usability and accessibility and runs a very beautiful blog about these subjects.

Well, I have studied both architecture and computer science, so I think I have a good background of both areas.

Still, I am a little skeptic when it comes to talk about talent.

I do believe some people has some innate aptitude to do things that we may call talent (and this is true for design an computer science as well), but for the most part of it, I think that anyone who is really interested in develop as a designer might eventually do it.

Over the years I gave this subject a though, the greatest doubt I still have is

May it be that ‘talent’ is the name given to the real desire and pleasure of doing that particular thing?

Today, I consider myself a designer, just as much as a software developer, but it haven’t always been like this.

When I entered the architecture school, my visual concepts were quite lousy and starting any piece of desing was really a pain. The more interested in learning the thing, the better I got.

I may not be the setter of new breakpoints in design, but I did learn how to start, continue and finish design pieces in a way that pleases me and my public.

So, could it be that talent is this determination of pursuit a particular knowledge instead of an innate hability, or really all designers and artists in general just were born with this magic on them?

]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/05/is-talent-an-innate-gift/feed/ 13 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/04/great-design-is-invisible/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/04/great-design-is-invisible/#comments Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:23:40 +0000 guioconnor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/04/great-design-is-invisible/ Art is not design, and vice-versa. There are many intersecting points between both, but they have different purposes.

Art and design may often borrow elements one from each other, but ultimately, there are two separated things.

Design means usability, not ornamentation. However, ornamentation may be play a huge role on usability.

Art is an expression of the self. That is why art is so often developed by single individuals or, less often by a very small group, generally a duo. And that is why a lot of duos or groups break up very soon, and sometimes not without fights.

While the purpose of art is to draw the attention to itself, to make the viewer to forget the world for a while and concentrate on it, the purpose of design is just to sit there, without being noticed, while the viewer pays attention to something else.

Design is a support area.

Design is a support area, the designer’s job is to leverage someone else’s message and not to draw attention to his own work. Design is an area for team players, for group work. And design must take the user into account.

Maybe typography is one of the areas in which traditional principles of usability are more important. The longer the text you intend to write, the bigger the concern in helping the reader to get through all the text.

If you intend the reader to get through a phrase, probably big letters are about all you need to pass your message. If you want your reader to get through a paragraph, you probably need more.

If you plan to give the reader a full 500 pages book, you’d better help the reader to pause every once in a while, the page should have breathing space, that is, you have to use good indentation, good line and character spacings.

You want to preserve the peripheral vision from distracting with close elements, so a good amount of white space around your text might be very useful. Just like water, tasteless but not disturbing.

Now the point is, that not always, passing a message means “sit and read”. Some design pieces have little text or no text at all, like a CD cover, for instance.

Sometimes the message is not a calm one.

Sometimes tension is desired. Sometimes color leads to the right amount of exitement desired from the viewer.

But still in this case, it is the designer’s role to pass on another one’s message. In this case of the CD, the message is assumption about the music content. (Well, not always the music, we all know that some “artists” succeed not by artistic qualities, but just for a lifestyle they represent. But this discussion is outside the scope of this post.)

This is a great space for ornamentation and visual trickery. To draw the attention to the design elements, to pass the message on, not as an instrument of self expression of the designer.

Ultimately, even in a CD cover, great design is invisible. People that pick up the CD in a store should be tempted to listen to the music, and not just stare at the cover.

Even in the craziest and more iconoclastic design pieces like the ones of Neville Brody(who, by the way, gave major contributions to typography), design is support to a message. If you see books like Neville Brody’s G1 you will see that longer texts are supported by a lot of readability concepts, even in the middle of all the iconoclastic work.

And even the very ornamental Art Nouveau posters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec could successfully pass the message on through ornamentation.

Good design becomes art, and is timeless.

But talking talking about Neville Brody and Toulouse-Lautrec is very tricky, because this is another point where art and design touch each other. Good design becomes art, and is timeless. Just like Joshua Porter said on his “Five Principles to Design By“.

]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/04/great-design-is-invisible/feed/ 13 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/elements-of-typographic-style-and-web-typography/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/elements-of-typographic-style-and-web-typography/#comments Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:23:11 +0000 guioconnor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=30 I have just finished reading Robert Bringhurst’s book Elements of Typographic Style, a classic book and essential guide on typography.

Being typography an art over half a millenium old and being the natural heir of the millenar legacy of scribes, there is plenty to learn from history when typesseting a text.

Any good designer knows that desing is much more than just good taste and typography is no exception.

Much of what pleases us is related to natural (biological) factors and is generally universal and somehow unvariable over history. Another good part is cultural, which ends up in history again to understand its dynamics.

Some of the caracteristics of typography on certain periods of time are due to technical limitations that can easily overcame in digital typesetting, however some are very well rooted in the cultural or natural perception of people.

Robert Bringhurst’s Elements of Typographic Style is an outstanding historical and technical reference for
typography.

Typography on the web is not exception to typography in general, but because of very specific caracteristics of the medium, its technical aspects are very different, and unfortunately this is a science of its own, and it has no place on such a book.

Fortunately Richard Rutter has launched Web Typography a beautiful project that consists in comment relevant parts of Robert
Bringhurst’s bookand add web techniques and considerations.

So, if you are pleased by typography the traditional way this book is a perfect reference and, if you are an iconoclast and want to do some weird, freaky and disturbing typesetting you still can find this useful, after all, one can’t break
somethin one cannot reach.

]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/02/elements-of-typographic-style-and-web-typography/feed/ 0 http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/01/talent-is-not-enough-business-secrets-for-designers-review/ http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/01/talent-is-not-enough-business-secrets-for-designers-review/#comments Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:49:06 +0000 guioconnor http://www.z-oc.com/blog/?p=28 I think most people that love their work, not only designers, are not very joyful with the perspective that there is a complex business science behind it and that getting to know it increases the chances of success, where success is, of course, earning money, respect, stability and, last but not least, the power and freedom to do what you want.

I came across with “Talent is not enough: Secret business for designers” by chance and decided to buy it because I read some nice reviews of it, and additionally, is a cheap book.

Whether you are a designer or any other kind of problem-solving professional, as software developpers, photographers or even artists, if you like what you do but you are frustrated with the amount of bureacracy and networking envolved, you must definetely buy this book.

Please be aware that you won’t find a perspective in which all that is irrelevant. On the contrary, Shell Perkins will just tell you how important that is.

However, he will do it on a very pragmatic way. You won’t get the cheap philosophy associated, just the practicals.

Also, the book will start on how to build your first portfolio when you just graduated and will overview all the career you may have, ending ond how to sell your business when you are ready for another challenge, many years later.

It is true, that the portfolio chapter is not of much use for non-designers, and it is also true that the chapters about taxes are very boring (especially if you, like me, don’t live on the United States) but, hey, it would be a miracle to make that sound like fun!

You can certainly skip a good part that may not be relevant to you, but even if you don’t plan to ever run a company of your own, chances are that you will be working on one, or for one, eventually, and it would be good to know how are the company internals are.

On the overall, I found this book is a very good reading for anyone on a creative, problem-solving area.

The only major flaw I think is worth noticing is that the type is extremely small. Not only that is very annoying, but also it is very odd on a book written by a designer to a designer audience.

Nevertheless, the content deserves the extra effort to read it.

]]> http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/01/talent-is-not-enough-business-secrets-for-designers-review/feed/ 1