Designing for the web
What is still yours to decide, on a medium full of constraints.
Notes I took over the years as a web designer.
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The quiet is the design
Why a calm page is harder to make than a loud one
Count what a careful web page gives up. No decorative typeface, because it has to be read by someone with low vision on a bad screen. No colour that carries meaning on its own, because a twentieth of the men looking at…
Designing for the web
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The interruption you cannot turn off
Pop-ups were beaten once. They came back as part of the page
You follow a link because you want to read one paragraph. The page arrives, and before you reach it: a box about cookies. Behind it, a box offering ten per cent off. In the corner, a request to send you notifications…
Designing for the web
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Nobody names the honest ones
Dark patterns all have names. Their opposite has none
Harry Brignull named them dark patterns in 2010 and has been keeping the catalogue ever since; he now calls them deceptive patterns, which is the more honest word. The catalogue has grown into a taxonomy with names for…
Designing for the web