Web Design

153 posts

Theory and practice of design for interactive media, methodologies, people, studios and companies, projects, technologies and browsers.

Mon 30 Jun
2008

And Muxtape for All

07:55 PM
Remarks (22)

Muxtape and the pros and cons of minimalism. Plus, a Muxtape from me.

Tue 17 Jun
2008

Spacing Is Everything

07:45 PM
Remarks (65)

A little spacing could do Gmail a lot of good.

Mon 07 Apr
2008

Online Apps Turn Me Offline

05:54 PM
Remarks (22)

Is software better when it lives on the desktop or in the browser?

Wed 30 Jan
2008

Revving Up ExpressionEngine

10:47 PM
Remarks (38)

First steps to a new publishing platform.

Tue 29 Jan
2008

High-Fidelity Stereoscope

04:37 PM
Remarks (11)

“U2 3D” and the price of innovation.

Mon 14 Jan
2008

The Story So Far

09:30 PM
Remarks (24)

The shift from analog to digital sensibilities is a two-way street.

Mon 12 Nov
2007

Our Books, Our Shelves

10:36 PM
Remarks (10)

Where design books are found at your local bookstore.

Tue 06 Nov
2007

Something’s Missing in Web Design

10:03 PM
Remarks (36)

My embarrassingly not-so-brief reply to recent articles by Armin Vit and Dan Saffer.

Thu 01 Nov
2007

The Elements of My Style

11:05 PM
Remarks (23)

Five clichés I turn to again and again.

Mon 15 Oct
2007

New York to Boston to Denver, and Back Again

10:51 PM
Remarks (12)

A report from my three speaking appearances this weekend, including slides.

Wed 26 Sep
2007

Standing in the Drop Shadow of Usability

11:49 PM
Remarks (39)

Exactly why do the icons at this site look the way they do? Because I’m no good at iconography.

Tue 11 Sep
2007

A Brief Message, Briefly

01:54 PM

A new Message on today’s anniversary, plus a chance to meet one of our illustrators tonight.

Thu 06 Sep
2007

Form of… a Book about Forms!

10:32 PM
Remarks (36)

Finding beauty in the very boring world of Web forms.

Tue 28 Aug
2007

Now Fully Cooperating with Google

12:08 AM
Remarks (9)

What I did with the painfully slow site search on Subtraction.com.

Sat 25 Aug
2007

Sunday in the Times: Choking

10:14 PM
Remarks (18)

A special presentation for a series on China at NYTimes.com.

Thu 16 Aug
2007

This Way to the Web, Print Designers!

11:32 PM
Remarks (51)

The road to digital design had better be fun, or it’ll lead nowhere.

Mon 13 Aug
2007

Graphic Design at 70 M.P.H.

11:07 PM
Remarks (19)

The New York Times Magazine sneaks in a lesson on graphic design.

Tue 07 Aug
2007

The Framework Formally Known as ’Prints

10:28 PM
Remarks (20)

An interview with Blueprint author Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy.

Wed 06 Jun
2007

Nudge Your Elements

05:05 PM
Remarks (19)

The nuances of aligning elements on a layout grid for digital design.

Tue 08 May
2007

Pages Are the Problem

06:01 PM
Remarks (27)

Web sites should not be made up of what they’re made up of.

Tue 10 Apr
2007

The Other Times

11:04 PM
Remarks (22)

Praise for The Times of London’s Web site.

Tue 03 Apr
2007

Lately at AIGA New York

11:16 PM
Remarks (5)

Digital goings on for Spring at the New York chapter.

Mon 02 Apr
2007

Layers Cake

09:04 PM
Remarks (47)

Old Photoshop helps me create grids.

Tue 27 Mar
2007

Making Your Site Look Like Mine

09:02 PM
Remarks (30)

First in a series of F.A.Q.’s: can you use the design of this site for your own purposes?

Wed 21 Mar
2007

A Hugh Influence

09:11 PM
Remarks (15)

SXSW Interactive Event Director Hugh Forrest responds to readers on this year’s festival.

Sun 18 Mar
2007

Oh Yeeaahh!

11:31 PM
Remarks (71)

The meat of the grid presentations I’ve been making recently, now available for download.

Thu 15 Mar
2007

Missing Class at SXSW

11:09 PM
Remarks (12)

How I blew it during one of my SXSW appearances.

Panels and Growing Pains at SXSW

10:48 PM
Remarks (30)

The difference between panels and lectures at the fast-growing Web conference.

Tue 13 Mar
2007

Southern Fried

11:50 PM
Remarks (9)

We like to think of it as interestingness you can eat.

Fri 09 Mar
2007

Offending Experts and Pleasing Everybody

11:18 PM
Remarks (14)

Who to favor when designing features.

Wed 07 Mar
2007

A Commercial Message

11:27 PM
Remarks (55)

Interrupting this program for a word from your blogger.

Wed 07 Feb
2007

Writing and Sizing Twitter

10:09 PM
Remarks (21)

Sovereign and auxiliary postures and language as factors in updating my friends on what I’m doing.

Tue 30 Jan
2007

Two or Three Things You Know About Me

10:37 PM
Remarks (6)

Things about me that seem very important right now.

Mon 29 Jan
2007

Illustrate Me for December

11:20 PM

Just under the gun, December’s Illustrate Me goes live.

Fri 19 Jan
2007

Optimizing for Design Unusability

01:39 PM
Remarks (19)

An annual report and the way the Web used to be designed.

Wed 17 Jan
2007

New Boxes Are Here

11:29 PM
Remarks (48)

The new Boxes and Arrows should’ve looked better, and that’s not just my pride talking.

Mon 18 Dec
2006

Network Once, Socialize Anywhere

11:55 PM
Remarks (15)

Looking ahead at all the social networks I’ll join in 2007.

Tue 28 Nov
2006

Round-up Time!

11:47 PM
Remarks (22)

As I recover from a 24-hour bug, get ready for random.

Tue 07 Nov
2006

Election Night

08:29 PM
Remarks (20)

Live elections coverage at NYTimes.com.

Fri 03 Nov
2006

Return of the Friday Free-for-All

07:42 PM
Remarks (8)

Possibly the first of a long line of dumping grounds for links I can’t turn into full posts.

Thu 02 Nov
2006

What Kind of People Are These?

07:46 PM
Remarks (10)

Taking stock of the attendees at Jeffrey Zeldman’s recent AIGA Small Talk event.

Tue 17 Oct
2006

When All’s Said and Done

11:52 PM
Remarks (2)

How Jeffrey Zeldman’s Small Talk went over.

Tue 10 Oct
2006

Selling Jeffrey Zeldman on Selling

10:16 PM
Remarks (7)

It’s pointless to try and sell the father of modern Web design, but I try anyway.

Mon 02 Oct
2006

Listen Up, Adobe

09:36 PM
Remarks (39)

A surefire way for Adobe to hit a home run.

Fri 29 Sep
2006

Ripped from the Headlines

07:22 AM
Remarks (13)

With my friend Liz Danzico, a debate on the merits of the new NYPost.com.

Tue 19 Sep
2006

AIGA Here and There

11:36 PM
Remarks (12)

Come see me at AIGA Baltimore on Thu, and then go see Jeffrey Zeldman at AIGA New York in Oct.

Tue 12 Sep
2006

Home Page Heroics

11:07 PM
Remarks (6)

Art directing the NYTimes.com home page on the fifth anniversary of September 11th.

Thu 24 Aug
2006

Announcing Shorty

01:08 AM
Remarks (23)

A free link aliasing utility I built just for you.

Mon 14 Aug
2006

AIGA Wants YOU

05:52 PM
Remarks (4)

A wealth of opportunities at the New York chapter of AIGA.

Tue 08 Aug
2006

Feeding the Hand That Fed Me

08:28 PM
Remarks (25)

Now available: expanded, editable feed icons.

Fri 14 Jul
2006

Icon Do It

05:43 PM
Remarks (27)

What we did with the feed icon.

Thu 13 Jul
2006

Plagiarism in Our Schools

11:31 PM
Remarks (80)

Learning to deal with the sincerest form of flattery from an institution of higher learning.

Wed 12 Jul
2006

After An Event Apart

11:44 PM
Remarks (9)

Wrapping up my appearance and attendance at An Event Apart New York City.

Tue 27 Jun
2006

The AIGA and Web Design

07:34 PM
Remarks (25)

The divide between the Web design community and the AIGA.

Wed 14 Jun
2006

Mirror, Mirror

11:21 PM
Remarks (13)

The moment for reflectivity is here, or maybe it was fifteen minutes ago.

Mon 05 Jun
2006

Crazy Like a Vox

11:46 PM
Remarks (16)

Six Apart’s Vox is a beautiful work-in-progress.

Tue 30 May
2006

Little Orange Icons

10:37 PM
Remarks (37)

Trying to make the best of an emerging standard.

Tue 02 May
2006

Going Back on Friends

11:47 PM
Remarks (9)

Looking at the way we collect friends in social networking software.

Mon 01 May
2006

Arts & Croft’s

09:29 PM
Remarks (11)

For the May 1st Reboot, Jeff Croft hit a home run.

Thu 27 Apr
2006

Event of the Summer

05:46 PM
Remarks (3)

I’ll be there as a speaker when the rolling design conference, An Event Apart, comes to New York in July.

Wed 26 Apr
2006

Pictures for Clothes

08:42 PM
Remarks (4)

Alternative illustration for mainstream fashion.

Mon 17 Apr
2006

The Home Page’s Middle Manager

11:48 PM
Remarks (10)

All about the row of images running across the NYTimes.com home page.

Mon 10 Apr
2006

Wrapper’s Delight

10:34 PM
Remarks (32)

A new links section raises some issues with CSS text control.

Mon 03 Apr
2006

The Awesome Redesign I Didn’t Do

01:25 AM
Remarks (101)

Something’s different at NYTimes.com, and it’s only partly my fault.

Mon 27 Mar
2006

I.A.s in Isolation

11:52 PM
Remarks (10)

Maybe I’ll go to the I.A. summit next year, but why should I?

Thu 23 Mar
2006

C’mon Feel the Signalz

10:51 PM
Remarks (26)

The 37signals book “Getting Real” as a casual manifesto.

Wed 15 Mar
2006

Report from SXSW

11:55 PM
Remarks (9)

In lieu of live blogging, some after the fact bullets on my SXSW experience.

Sat 11 Mar
2006

Post-panel

12:36 PM
Remarks (4)

Just finished talking about design with a bunch of design-heads.

Mon 06 Mar
2006

The Elements of Style Manuals, Part One

09:10 PM
Remarks (5)

Design documentation has fallen a long, long way from its golden age.

Wed 22 Feb
2006

Talk Amongst Ourselves

10:47 PM
Remarks (8)

Come see me talk about design at this year’s South by Southwest.

Wed 15 Feb
2006

How to Get Ahead in Online News Design

09:34 AM

There are four, count ’em four positions I need to hire at my new place of employment.

Thu 26 Jan
2006

Mail of the Species

05:28 PM
Remarks (18)

Cut off from POP3 access at work, I’m forced to resort to webmail.

Mon 23 Jan
2006

Awards Season

10:49 PM
Remarks (13)

An unexpected honor from the Annual Weblog Awards.

Wed 21 Dec
2005

The Lost Art of Art Direction

12:10 AM
Remarks (21)

Alexey Brodovitch and the impoverished state of Web design.

Mon 07 Nov
2005

Interview at The Weekly Standards

01:35 PM

James Archer grills me on that one big project I worked on recently.

Mon 10 Oct
2005

Thinking about The Times

10:42 PM
Remarks (17)

When you’re a de facto standard for best practices, what can be improved?

Thu 01 Sep
2005

The Funniest Grid You Ever Saw

10:12 PM
Remarks (19)

An in-depth look at the complicated layout grid behind The Onion.

Tue 30 Aug
2005

Making New Fake News

11:49 PM
Remarks (67)

A complete redesign of The Onion’s Web site, and I’m exhausted.

Mon 22 Aug
2005

Free Form for All

11:26 AM
Remarks (25)

Borrow, steal and/or adapt this form that I built.

Mon 15 Aug
2005

Form Doesn’t Function

11:06 PM
Remarks (22)

Designing forms is a black art.

Fri 08 Jul
2005

Get Yer Invoice On(line)

01:56 PM
Remarks (5)

Billing customers got you down? Try Blinksale.

Wed 06 Jul
2005

The Road Ahead

10:34 PM
Remarks (10)

Camino, king of the uphill battle.

Wed 29 Jun
2005

How to Design Faster, Maybe

09:36 PM
Remarks (16)

The hardest part of Web design is production, and it can’t be avoided.

Mon 27 Jun
2005

Vote Gets a Vote

06:25 PM

I.D. Magazine gives a nod to Behavior’s design for Vote: The Machinery of Democracy.

Wed 22 Jun
2005

The Problem with Fireworks

11:28 PM
Remarks (23)

Fireworks is better, but the whole damn category of web design software kind of sucks.

Sun 19 Jun
2005

The Problem with Photoshop

05:18 PM
Remarks (17)

The Web production traps of working with Adobe Photoshop.

Tue 17 May
2005

The Peacemaker

09:35 PM
Remarks (14)

Coming to terms with remarkable similarities which may or may not be intentional.

Un Rip-off

03:38 AM
Remarks (34)

When I wasn’t looking, someone stole my Web site.

Mon 25 Apr
2005

How Many Blogs Does One Man Need?

05:12 PM
Remarks (10)

Just because I have the power to create a new weblog, does it mean I should?

Fri 22 Apr
2005

Imitation, Flattery, Coincidence

01:46 PM
Remarks (4)

Someone’s ripping off somebody’s design.

Tue 19 Apr
2005

An Inside Job

11:41 PM
Remarks (11)

What it might be like to get out of a design studio and into a design department.

Mon 18 Apr
2005

You Got Your Flash in My Acrobat

06:34 PM
Remarks (5)

Thoughts on Adobe’s announced acquisition of Macromedia.

Mon 11 Apr
2005

Programming Skills Wanted

08:17 PM
Remarks (19)

For years, I’ve been nursing a daydream of an extended vacation spent learning to program.

Wed 06 Apr
2005

The Art of Wiki Design

09:33 PM
Remarks (8)

There’s a great design opportunity in wikis — except it looks like someone else got there first.

Wed 16 Mar
2005

The New New Methodology

12:04 PM
Remarks (17)

There’s a new process in town, and it’s not all bad.

Mon 14 Mar
2005

Day Three at SXSW

11:54 AM
Remarks (2)

On the third day, the second report from SXSW.

Thu 24 Feb
2005

The Nav that Almost Was

10:36 PM
Remarks (6)

The navigation bar that I worked long and hard to perfect, and then gave up on.

Sat 05 Feb
2005

Bragging Rights

01:24 PM

Behavior has two finalists in this year’s Web Awards at the South by Southwest Festival.

New York to Nashville and Back Again

12:17 PM

Time is a weird phenomenon when you’re holed up in a week-long series of business meetings.

Wed 26 Jan
2005

Fictitious Weblog Name

10:34 PM
Remarks (9)

What is a blog, weblogs as fiction, and other vague, ill-formed ideas about the medium.

Fri 14 Jan
2005

Individual Style

06:08 PM
Remarks (20)

A trick I use for applying unique CSS rules to individual articles.

Mon 10 Jan
2005

The Many Crimes of Internet Explorer

08:29 PM
Remarks (18)

Just to prove I’m not just being a jerk, here’s why I.E. gets second-class treatment.

Thu 06 Jan
2005

Miss Manners Guide to Opening Links in New Windows

08:48 PM
Remarks (19)

Is it good manners to open links in a new window? What the heck do you know?

Sun 02 Jan
2005

New, Improved Original Flavor!

10:17 PM
Remarks (35)

Welcome to Subtraction Version 7.0.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love I.E.

09:09 PM
Remarks (24)

Users viewing Subtraction.com with Internet Explorer will now see a notice that says, effectively, that the site won’t work.

Fri 31 Dec
2004

Grid Computing… and Design

07:51 PM
Remarks (13)

A look at the layout grid behind the version 7.0 redesign.

Mon 15 Nov
2004

Deliciously Indulgent

10:06 PM
Remarks (2)

What’s good about Delicious Library if the software’s no good?

Tue 09 Nov
2004

InDesign We Trust

09:54 PM
Remarks (8)

Though I’m still cold on print, I’ve really warmed up to Adobe InDesign.

Wed 03 Nov
2004

Do I Have to Draw You a Map

08:02 PM
Remarks (4)

Here are a few of my favorite electoral maps from around the Web.

Tue 28 Sep
2004

The Shadow Knows

09:32 PM

Sometimes you do design work that you otherwise never would have done, never ever.

Fri 24 Sep
2004

Inflation Architecture

06:37 PM
Remarks (5)

How much should information architecture be worth in New York City, circa 2004?

Tue 21 Sep
2004

Set My Firefox

07:51 PM
Remarks (10)

My Firefox usage is growing every day, thanks to two small tweaks I’ve made to it.

Tue 07 Sep
2004

Building the New This

10:25 PM
Remarks (7)

In the process of redesigning Subtraction.com, and dumping BBEdit or skEdit.

Tue 24 Aug
2004

Citizen Daddy

05:40 PM

Behavior helps you get your vote on: announcing the launch of CitizenChange.com.

Thu 19 Aug
2004

No One Likes a Cheat

11:55 PM
Remarks (1)

Thanks and a very important correction on who’s responsible for that Boxes and Arrows entry.

Wed 18 Aug
2004

Get on the OmniWeb Bus

09:32 PM
Remarks (9)

After a week with the finalized OmniWeb 5, its very impressive feature set is still imperfect.

Tue 17 Aug
2004

IE, That Is

08:51 PM

For Internet Explorer users, special accommodations are always necessary.

Mon 16 Aug
2004

New Boxes, Same Arrows

10:34 PM
Remarks (19)

How I spent my weekend doing a free redesign and liking it.

Wed 11 Aug
2004

Ecto Plurbius Unum

12:58 AM
Remarks (2)

Though I just started using ecto, I already have a complaint.

Tue 03 Aug
2004

Flirtations with Fame

11:43 PM
Remarks (4)

Two minor flirtations with fame today, one for me and one for my four-legged companion.

Mon 03 May
2004

What I Did on My Vacation from Blogging

11:56 PM
Remarks (3)

Wow, what a bust the last week turned out to be, at least for blogging.

Sun 14 Mar
2004

Board to Death

10:42 PM
Remarks (2)

Community building is messy business with phpBB.

Wed 18 Feb
2004

Forum Follows Function

04:49 PM
Remarks (7)

Behavior launches a brand new AIGA Design Forum.

Wed 11 Feb
2004

Sliders and Buttons, Oh My

01:39 PM
Remarks (4)

Evidence that I attended the Design Guard, where I learned how to make slick UI widgets.

Tue 10 Feb
2004

Foxy Bird

06:25 PM
Remarks (6)

A new version of the resurgent Mozilla project’s Firebird browser was released yesterday under the new name “Firefox,” which seems to me to be an even dodgier moniker than Firebird, but I guess they had a good reason for the...

Thu 29 Jan
2004

Beautiful Girls

09:27 PM

New work from Behavior, including hot chicks!

Tue 25 Nov
2003

The Road Runner Ahead

02:59 PM

The future looks anti-aliased, smoothed out and drop-shadowed.

Fri 21 Nov
2003

Ghosts of Dotcom Bubbles Past

04:43 PM
Remarks (2)

The ghosts of a once-high flying dotcom haunts the Internet still.

Tue 18 Nov
2003

Snapshot of the Photographic Web

09:13 PM
Remarks (5)

Some links from a day of surfing photographers’s Web sites.

Fri 10 Oct
2003

Good Day for Muléh

10:09 PM

Behavior relaunched Muleh.com today.

Wed 08 Oct
2003

Downloads for Dead Products

10:16 AM
Remarks (2)

All you have to do to get this Cisco wireless PC card working is download the software. I swear.

Tue 30 Sep
2003

Veer Have All the Good Stock Photos Gone?

08:02 PM
Remarks (1)

Lots of stock photo agencies try and kick it; only Veer gets it done.

Tue 23 Sep
2003

Tickets to Nowhere

09:50 AM
Remarks (3)

Here’s a quick complaint about online ticket purchasing for highly popular events: it has a long way to go.

Mon 22 Sep
2003

The Paperless Home Office

10:29 AM
Remarks (1)

How I threw away all of the manuals for my home electronics.

Sun 07 Sep
2003

That Lovin’ Feelin’

11:47 PM
Remarks (1)

The intensely personal part of Web design.

Thu 28 Aug
2003

Labor Day Weekend, Citysearch-Style

06:35 PM
Remarks (1)

It’s nice to spend the holiday weekend in New York, bu don’t count on Citysearch.

Thu 26 Jun
2003

The Page I Made… Except for the Tabs

10:24 AM
Remarks (2)

The immutability of Amazon.com’s tabs.

Fri 23 May
2003

We Did Can Do

03:12 PM

The latest launch from Behavior is CanDoFitness.com.

Thu 24 Apr
2003

Blogger’s Toolbox

12:22 AM

For the sake of posterity, a few technical notes on how I built Subtraction.com version Six.5.

Tue 22 Apr
2003

A Hundred Words or Less, or More

05:32 PM
Remarks (1)

How redesigning my site has influenced how I write, and how I write has influenced redesigning my site.

Mon 21 Apr
2003

Immovable Parts of Movable Type

06:08 PM

Movable Type is among the best software packages I’ve ever used. It has its shortcomings, but you have to dig deep to find them.

Sun 20 Apr
2003

Sir WThRemix-a-Lot

11:59 PM

The winners of the WThRemix contest have been selected, though the entries are a bit disappointing.

The Fix Is In

09:07 PM

Most of the major work on Six.5 is done, including transforming the site from fluid to fixed-width layouts.

Thu 17 Apr
2003

Imperfect Visio

11:23 PM
Remarks (2)

Charged with creating a series of interactive wireframes, I’m wondering if there’s a way I can get out of using Visio.

Tue 15 Apr
2003

Tab Dance

02:56 PM

The newest public release of Safari features the most elegant implementation yet of tabbed browsing.

Thu 10 Apr
2003

Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen

11:13 PM
Remarks (1)

Why is it so hard to find good design talent?

Tue 08 Apr
2003

I-E-ecchh

01:42 PM

It used to be that I hated Netscape, but now, after diving into CSS and XHTML, I realize how poor a Web browser Internet Explorer really is.

Fri 28 Mar
2003

Separating Style from Substance

05:05 PM

Behavior is moving its extranets over to Movable Type, and I’m pushing my CSS skills.

Sat 22 Mar
2003

See CSS Run

09:24 PM
Remarks (1)

Eric Meyer helps you get your head around Cascading Style Sheets.

Tue 18 Mar
2003

Feeding on RSS

04:18 PM

RSS is fun, and NetNewsWire is a great RSS client.

Thu 18 Jul
2002

Flash’s Fonts Fussiness

10:28 PM

Flash drives me crazy, what with its crappy handling of fonts and what not.

Fri 19 Apr
2002

Out to Launch

06:40 PM

New site launch pushed back.

Mon 04 Mar
2002

New Flash

11:19 PM

Flash MX is here.