Visual design
What a page looks like, and why the calm version is usually the harder one to make.
Reflections on thirty years in tech: as a writer, a designer, a developer and a user.
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Why an alligator
I chose the name for its sound. The animal turned out to have more to say.
My family name is Allegaert. Say it quickly and the alligator is already half there, so when I needed a name for a small web practice the choice took about a minute. It was a matter of sound, not of meaning: the two…
Visual design
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The best interface is an invisible one
Invisible Interfaces was my company for five years. The name was the brief: an interface works best when nobody notices it.
It was a registered company in Belgium, and I ran it for five years. The name was not a joke about a studio that delivers nothing you can see. It was a description of the job. For an interface designer, and for a…
Visual design
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Mascots in webdesign
When a drawn character helps a website, and what everybody learned from the paperclip
This site has a mascot. There is an alligator on the homepage, drawn in a few lines, and the footer says the site was made by the alligator himself. That is all he does. He does not wave, does not appear when you…
Visual design
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An icon is not a drawing
Why the icon you drew yourself will not be understood
An icon looks like a drawing problem, which is why designers treat it as one. It is a vocabulary problem. A magnifying glass means search, not because a lens resembles the act of searching, but because thirty years of…
Visual design
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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…
Visual design