Tiago Franco Blog

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This, along Dieter Rams’ ten principles “good of design.”

Kyle Fox probably has the most comprehensive guide to web typography I’ve ever read. Great tips, mostly classic typography rules of thumb that are always good to remember, as well as how it translates into web design.

https://speakerdeck.com/kylefox/typesetting-the-web

I’ve heard this a long time ago, can’t remember from where, some story about a teacher saying this to his student:

People are stupid and lazy.

This is pretty much my motto when creating interfaces. And before you run to the comments and hit the keyboard at full force, read this:

People are stupid
So when you’re creating your next website or app, make the UI obvious, easy to use.

People are lazy
So make it so that it’s quick and effortless to do whatever it is that the users do in your website/app.

Now obviously there are exceptions(get and study your demographic!), but it’s a motto for simple, quick and easy to use interfaces that is somehow funny.

Update November 16th: More about this gif: Yesterday I was reflecting on Jeffrey Zeldam’s talk at RefreshLX and about how the first thing we do when visiting a new website is resizing the browser window (and how your arm movement might look questionable while doing it). I popped up Photoshop and my Wacom tablet and sketched and animated this, posting it on reddit.com/r/webdesign, then on my own twitter feed, referencing Smashing Magazine and Zeldman himself. Only then I posted it to my blog. I guess that was kind of dumb, I somehow lost credit, even if isn’t that good. I has since been retweeted by RWD (curated by Ethan Marcotte, the guy who started all this responsive web design stuff).

And then a complete rethinking to match the rest of the apps minimalist visual style:

Go 90’s on it!

Click the picture!

I get a lot of satisfaction from sketching letters and getting them into Illustrator. Just like this:

I still have a few ideas on hold for a videogame magazine, one of those highly limited, one edition only. Kinda like Exp. or The Controller, written in portuguese, with special atention to visuals and a few invited guests with their own vision about particular subjects, and their own illustrations.

I went for a minimalist aproach.

This is part of my “new years resolutions”. Finish the concept, design and maybe even print.