Selling Design – an online reading list
TOMORROW, WHICH IS also my birthday, I begin teaching “Selling Design” to second-year students in the MFA Interaction Design program at School of Visual Arts, New York. Liz Danzico and Steve Heller created and direct the MFA program, and this is my second year teaching this class, whose curriculum I pull out of my little blue beanie.
In this class we explore collaboration and persuasion for interaction designers. Whether you work in a startup, studio, or traditional company; whether you design print, products, purely digital experiences, or any combination thereof; whether you’re the sole proprietor, part of a tightly focused team, or a link in a long chain of connected professionals, it is only by collaborating skillfully with others—and persuading them tactfully and convincingly when points of view differ and yours is right—that you can hope to create designs that make a dent in the universe.
During this spring semester, we’ll explore collaboration and persuasion from many points of view, and hear from (and interact with) many accomplished designers who will serve as special guest speakers. For our opening get-acquainted session, we’ll focus on texts that explore the some of the most basic, traditional (and rarely taught) aspects of design professionalism from the worlds of web, interaction, and print design:
Demystifying Design
by Jeff Gothelf – A List Apart
- Draw together
- Show raw work (frequently)
- Teach the discipline
- Be transparent
- Take credit for your wins
Design Criticism and the Creative Process
by Cassie McDaniel – A List Apart
- Critique as collaborative tool
- Presenting designs
- What is good feedback?
- Negotiate criticism
- The designer as collaborator
Personality in Design
by Aarron Walter – A List Apart
- Personality is the platform for emotion
- A history of personality in design
- Personas
- Creating a design persona for your website [or other project]
- Tapbots: Robot love
- Caronmade: octopi, unicorns, and mustachios
- Housing Works: a name with a face
- The power of personality
Design Professionalism
by Andy Rutledge
You should read this entire brief book, but for now, sample these bits:
Do You Suck at Selling Your Ideas?
by Sam Harrison – HOW Magazine
Dyson is used as an example of a product that currently dominates the market, even though nobody initially believed in the inventor’s idea. Lessons:
- Tell a personal story
- Create emotional experiences for decision makers
- See what’s behind rejections
How to sell your design effectively to the client
by Arfa Mirza, Smashing Magazine
- Understand the nature of your client
- Have a rationale for every part of your design
- Show the best design options only
- Defend your design, but don’t become defensive
- Solicit good feedback and benefit from it
Money: How to sell the value of design – an email conversation
by Jacob Cass – Just Creative
Narrative of standing up to new-client pressure to do something against the designer’s self-interest, or which devalues design. Story told here is about money but it could be about any designer/client conflict in which the designer needs to gently educate the client. (Some designer/client conflicts require the client to educate the designer, but that’s another matter.)
How to choose a logo designer
by Jacob Cass – Just Creative
Basic article outlines ten background materials any designer (not just logo designers) should prepare to encourage confidence on the client’s part:
- Experience
- Positive testimonials
- A thorough design process
- Awards won/published work
- A strong portfolio
- Price
- Design affiliations
- Great customer service
- Business Professionalism
- Appropriate questions
Filed under: "Digital Curation", Advocacy, Best practices, business, Career, Design, SVA, Teaching, The Essentials, The Profession
The Big Web Show No. 61: Khoi Vinh of Mixel and NYTimes.com
NOW ONLINE for your pleasure! In Episode No. 61 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview Khoi Vinh, co-creator of Mixel, former NYTimes.com Design Director, co-founder of NYC design studio Behavior, and more.
In this episode we discuss Khoi’s career, including his fine-art background, art school, and design classes, his time at AIGA, how he came to love the grid, why he joined the NYTimes.com and why he left, and more. We also explore the inspiration that led Khoi to combine social with collage, and talk about the choice every design studio faces as it begins to succeed: get bigger, or get more selective? Don’t miss this free-ranging exchange of ideas with one of webdom’s nicest and most influential designers.
The Big Web Show features special guests and topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography, web technology, and more. This episode is sponsored by Happy Cog Hosting, TinyLetter, and Uncle Slam.
Other recent Big Web Show episodes:
Filed under: Big Web Show, business, Career, Design
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Veen: Building Typekit on relationships
TYPEKIT FOUNDER JEFFREY VEEN has always shared knowledge freely, whether writing great books about web design and user experience, or (in this case) happily sharing a key secret of his business’ success: raising money isn’t about raising money – it’s about people.
Building Typekit on relationships by Jeffrey Veen.
Filed under: Advocacy, Best practices, business, Career, creativity, Design
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HTML5, CSS3, UX, Design: Links from An Event Apart Boston 2011
Meeting of the Minds: Ethan Marcotte and AEA attendee discuss the wonders of CSS3. Photo by the incomparable Jim Heid.
THE SHOW IS OVER, but the memories, write-ups, demos, and links remain. Enjoy!
An Event Apart Boston 2011 group photo pool
Speakers, attendees, parties, and the wonders of Boston, captured by those who were there.
What Every Designer Should Know (a)
Jeremy Keith quite effectively live-blogs my opening keynote on the particular opportunities of Now in the field of web design, and the skills every designer needs to capitalize on the moment and make great things.
The Password Anti-Pattern
Related to my talk: Jeremy Keith’s original write-up on a notorious but all-too-common practice. If your boss or client tells you to design this pattern, just say no. Design that does not serve users does not serve business.
What Every Designer Should Know (b)
“In his opening keynote … Jeffrey Zeldman talked about the skills and opportunities that should be top of mind for everyone designing on the Web today.” Luke Wroblewski’s write-up.
Whitney Hess: Design Principles — The Philosophy of UX
“As a consultant, [Whitney] spends a lot of time talking about UX and inevitably, the talk turns to deliverables and process but really we should be establishing a philosophy about how to treat people, in the same way that visual design is about establishing a philosophy about how make an impact. Visual design has principles to achieve that: contrast, emphasis, balance, proportion, rhythm, movement, texture, harmony and unity.” In this talk, Whitney proposed a set of 10 principles for UX design.
Veerle Pieters: The Experimental Zone
Live blogging by Jeremy Keith. Veerle, a noted graphic and interaction designer from Belgium, shared her process for discovering design through iteration and experimentation.
Luke Wroblewski: Mobile Web Design Moves
Luke’s live awesomeness cannot be captured in dead written words, but Mr Keith does a splendid job of quickly sketching many of the leading ideas in this key AEA 2011 talk.
See also: funky dance moves with Luke Wroblewski, a very short video I captured as Luke led the crowd in the opening moves of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (a)
“The next talk here at An Event Apart in Boston is one I’ve really, really, really been looking forward to: it’s a presentation by my hero Ethan Marcotte.”
Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (b)
Ethan’s amazing talk—a key aspect of design in 2011 and AEA session of note—as captured by the great Luke Wroblewski.
An Event Apart: The Secret Lives of Links—Jared Spool
“In his presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jared Spool detailed the importance and role of links on Web pages.” No writer can capture Jared Spool’s engaging personality or the quips that produce raucous laughter throughout his sessions, but Luke does an outstanding job of noting the primary ideas Jared shares in this riveting and highly useful UX session.
An Event Apart: All Our Yesterdays—Jeremy Keith
Luke W: “In his All Our Yesterdays presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jeremy Keith outlined the problem of digital preservation on the Web and provided some strategies for taking a long term view of our Web pages.”
Although it is hard to pick highlights among such great speakers and topics, this talk was a highlight for me. As in, it blew my mind. Several people said it should be a TED talk.
An Event Apart: From Idea to Interface—Aarron Walter
Luke: “In his Idea to Interface presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Aarron Walter encouraged Web designers and developers to tackle their personal projects by walking through examples and ways to jump in. Here are my notes from his talk.”
Links and Resources from “From Idea to Interface”
Compiled by the speaker, links include Design Personas Template and Example, the story behind the illustrations in the presentation created by Mike Rhode, Dribble, Huffduffer, Sketchboards, Mustache for inserting data into your prototypes, Keynote Kung Fu, Mocking Bird, Yahoo Design Patterns, MailChimp Design Pattern Library, Object Oriented CSS by Nicole Sullivan and more!
An Event Apart: CSS3 Animations—Andy Clarke
“In his Smoke Gets In Your Eyes presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Andy Clarke showcased what is possible with CSS3 animations using transitions and transforms in the WebKit browser.” Write-up by the legendary Luke Wroblewski.
Madmanimation
The “Mad Men” opening titles re-created entirely in CSS3 animation. (Currently requires Webkit browser, e.g. Safari, Chrome.)
CSS3 Animation List
Anthony Calzadilla, a key collaborator on the Mad Men CSS3 animation, showcases his works.
Box Shadow Curl
Pure CSS3 box-shadow page curl effect. Mentioned during Ethan Marcotte’s Day 3 session on exploring CSS3.
Multiple CSS Transition Durations
Fascinating article by Anton Peck (who attended the show). Proposed: a solution to a key problem with CSS transitions. (“Even now, my main issue with transitions is that they use the same time-length value for the inbound effect as they do the outbound. For example, when you create a transition on an image with a 1-second duration, you get that length of time for both mousing over, and mousing away from the object. This type of behavior should be avoided, for the sake of the end-user!”)
Everything You Wanted to Know About CSS3 Gradients
Ethan Marcotte: “Hello. I am here to discuss CSS3 gradients. Because, let’s face it, what the web really needed was more gradients.”
Ultimate CSS3 Gradient Generator
Like it says.
Linear Gradients Generator
By the incomparable John Allsopp.
These sessions were not captured
Some of our best talks were not captured by note-takers, at least not to my knowledge. They include:
- Eric Meyer: CSS Anarchist’s Cookbook
- Mark Boulton: Outing the Mind: Designing Layouts That Think for You
- Jeff Veen: Disaster, DNA, and the Fathomless Depth of the Web
It’s possible that the special nature of these presentations made them impossible to capture in session notes. (You had to be there.)
There are also no notes on the two half-day workshop sessions, “Understand HTML5 With Jeremy Keith,” and “Explore CSS3 With Ethan Marcotte.”
What have I missed?
Attendees and followers, below please add the URLs of related educational links, write-ups, and tools I’ve missed here. Thanks!
Filed under: An Event Apart, Archiving, Boston, Career, cities, Code, Community, conferences, content, creativity, CSS, CSS3, Design, Designers, development, Education, events, Fonts, glamorous, Happy Cog™, HTML, HTML5, Ideas, industry, Information architecture, IXD, Layout, Marketing, Markup, people, photography, Real type on the web, The Profession, This never happens to Gruber, Typekit, Usability, User Experience, UX, W3C, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards, webfonts, Websites, webtype, Zeldman
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Mobile v Small Screen, Edible City beta, HTML5 Reset, Science Blogs, Monkey Do
BABY GOT FRONT-END! Tim Murtaugh, Dan Benjamin and I discuss “mobile” versus “small screen,” HTML5 and HTML5 Reset, Science Blogs, the Edible City beta, and more. The Big Web Show #45: Tim Murtaugh.
Filed under: Career, Code, Design, HTML5
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How to work with a designer who is new to the web and wants to control everything
Q. Working with print designer who is just getting into web and they want to control everything. Any advice on how to deal with them? – @FossilDesigns
A. I ASSUME YOU’RE CODING what your colleague designs. Gently explain how pixel-perfect design falls apart on the web, using visual examples. Start with a design that looks great in the environment it was designed for. Your colleague will smile. “Yes, it does look nice here,” you will agree. Then move on to three or four common environments where that same design breaks or is unpleasant to use. As long as you are not being a jerk about your superior knowledge, your calm, friendly expertise together with a few examples should make your colleague amenable to learning more. At that point, there are dozens of resources in print and on the web. Start with gentle, introductory books and articles. (I wouldn’t plunge your friend into Mobile Boilerplate.) I leave it as an exercise to readers of this page to list articles and books that can help.
If your colleague remains adamant about pixel-perfect design, you’re working with the wrong designer. Relationships only work when respect flows both ways. If your partner will not listen, you need a new partner. If this is a freelance gig, find one. If it’s a job, and you simply can’t get through to your new colleague, involve your boss. Be firm but not threatening. You’re not trying to get your colleague fired, you’re simply trying to resolve a dispute in which only one of you has expertise. If you’re afraid to involve your boss, you’re in the wrong job, and your non-web-savvy colleague is merely a symptom of a larger organizational problem. Get out! You can do better.
Filed under: Best practices, business, Career, Compatibility, Design, The Essentials
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The glory of the doodle, the grandeur of the sketch, in A List Apart No. 322.
In Issue No. 322 of A List Apart for people who make websites: respect the doodle, honor the sketch—use the power of visual thinking to create and share ideas:
The Miseducation of the Doodle
by Sunni Brown
The teacher who chastised you for “mindless doodling” was wrong on both counts. Far from shutting down the mind, the act of doodling engages the brain in the kind of visual sense-making people have practiced for over 30,000 years. Doodling sharpens concentration, increases retention, and enhances access to the problem solving unconscious. It activates the portions of the visual cortex that allow us to see mental imagery and manipulate concepts, and unifies three major learning modalities—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Doodle Revolution leader Sunni Brown introduces strategic doodling and presents the ABCs of our shared visual alphabet.
Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool
by Mike Rohde
You don’t have to be a great singer to write a great song—just ask Bob Dylan. Likewise, you needn’t be a Leonardo to draw your way to more and better ideas. Sketching helps you generate concepts quickly, exploring alternatives rapidly and at no cost of resources. The looseness of a sketch removes inhibitions, granting clients and colleagues permission to consider and challenge the ideas it represents. Mike Rohde outlines the practice, surveys the tools, and shares ways to become confident with this method of brainstorming, regardless of your level of artistic ability.
♥ Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart, a publication of Happy Cog.
Filed under: A List Apart, art, Best practices, business, Career, creativity, Design
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Big Web Show #28: Finding Your People
In Episode No. 28 of The Big Web Show, Dan Benjamin and I talk about what we’re thankful for, awards, visibility, public speaking (and why you should do it), Pub Standards, meetups (and why you should start or join one), and how to make a change in your career and the industry.
Filed under: Acclaim, Big Web Show, Career, Design, The Big Web Show
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Gary Vaynerchuk on The Big Web Show Episode 26
GARY VAYNERCHUK is our guest on Episode #26 of The Big Web Show, taped live before an internet audience at 1:00 PM ET Thursday 4 November at live.5by5.tv. Gary is the creator of Wine Library TV, the author of the New York Times bestselling book Crush It!, and the co-founder with his brother AJ of VaynerMedia, a boutique agency that works with personal brands, consumer brands, and startups.
The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) is recorded live in front of an internet audience every Thursday at 1:00 PM ET on live.5by5.tv. Edited episodes can be watched afterwards, often within hours of recording, via iTunes (audio feed | video feed) and the web. Subscribe and enjoy!
Filed under: Big Web Show, books, Brands, business, Career, content, Dan Benjamin, New York City, people, Publishing, Respect, Self-Employment, Small Business, speaking, The Big Web Show, The Profession, work, writing
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SlideShowPro adds HTML5
Most of us web folk are hybrids of one sort or another, but Todd Dominey was one of the first web designers to combine exceptional graphic design talent with serious mastery of code.
Being so good at both design and development that you could easily earn a fine living doing just one of them is still rare, although it looks like the future of our profession. One of the first serious designers to embrace web standards, Todd was also one of the few who did so while continuing to achieve recognition for his work in Flash. (Daniel Mall, who came later, is another.)
Finally, Todd was one of the first—along with 37signals and Coudal Partners—to abandon an enviably successful client services career in favor of full-time product development, inspiring a generation to do likewise, and helping bring us to our current world of web apps and startups.
A personal project that became an empire
In Todd’s case, the product was SlideShowPro, a project he designed for himself, which has grown to become the web’s most popular photo and video slideshow and gallery viewer. When you visit a photographer’s portfolio website, there’s an excellent chance that SlideShowPro powers its dynamic photo viewing experience. The same is true for the photo and video gallery features of many major newspaper and magazine sites, quite possibly including your favorites.
But deliberate lack of Flash support in the iPad and iPhone, while lauded here on February 1, 2010 as a win for accessible, standards-based design (“Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first”), presented a serious problem for developers who use SlideShowPro and readers who enjoy browsing dynamic photo and video galleries.
Mr Dominey has now solved that problem:
SlideShowPro Mobile is an entirely new media player built using HTML5 that doesn’t require the Flash Player plugin and can serve as a fallback for users accessing your web sites using these devices. But it’s not just any fallback — it’s specially designed for touch interfaces and smaller screen sizes. So it looks nothing like the SlideShowPro player and more like a native application that’s intuitive, easy to use, and just feels right.
The best part though is that because SlideShowPro Director (which will be required) publishes the mobile content, you’ll be able to provide the mobile alternative by simply updating the Flash Player embed code in your HTML documents. And just like when using the SlideShowPro player, because Director is behind the scenes, all your photos will be published for the target dimensions of these devices — which gives your users top quality, first generation images. The mobile player will automatically load whatever content is assigned to the Flash version, so the same content will be accessible to any browser accessing your web site.
A public beta will be released in the next weeks. Meanwhile, there is a video demo. There’s also an excellent Question and Answer page that answers questions you may have, whether you’re a SlideShow Pro customer or not. For instance:
Why mobile? Why not desktop?
We believe that (on the desktop) Flash is still the best delivery method for photo/video galleries and slideshows for it provides the most consistent user experience across all browsers and the broadest range of playback and customization options. As HTML5 support matures across all desktop browsers, we’ll continue to look into alternate presentation options.
Into the future!
Filed under: Acclaim, Applications, apps, architecture, art direction, Authoring, Best practices, Browsers, business, Career, Code, creativity, CSS, Design, development, HTML, HTML5, Ideas, industry, interface, ipad, iphone, javascript, links, maturity, Photoshop, Platforms, Publishing, Standards, State of the Web, Stories, The Profession, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards
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