BlogmyQuery – BMQ

When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what’s new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding information about “Navigation Design”.

After a couple of seconds of scanning this article, and maybe reading parts of the introduction, you may have started to ask yourself whether the information that you’re consuming at the moment is actually relevant to you—the user. Unfortunately (and as certain as death and taxes), if users cannot find the information they are looking for, chances are they will abandon their track, never to return.

Being the compassionate human being that I am, I’ll try to explain to you what this article is about, so you can make your choice either to continue reading, or not. This article is not about where you should place the menu of your website or mobile application, or about the number of options a menu should contain. It is also not about how you visually enforce the perceived affordance of a user-interface element, and why that is so important.

This article is about the tiniest of details that goes into creating the main centerpiece of your digital product—the construction of the elements of your navigation. This is the most important aid you can possibly give to your users as they are constantly seeking a reason to walk out on you.

Words, Words, Words

The first thing I do when I start to sketch out the information architecture of a digital product based on the requirements at hand is to blatantly label stuff. This is nothing unique—I simply need to formulate a label (most of the time accompanied by a short description) of all the possible information entities I discover to be able to reveal taxonomy and relationships between them. You might have a similar approach, using tools like post-its, whiteboards or even some digital application created for this purpose. This can be the inception of small problems that will constantly grow over time if we do not assess them correctly and in a timely manner: the labels are yours, and yours alone.

“Locate store” is your label of something that enables the users to find physical stores in a mobile application. “Commodities” is your label of a view that enlists all the goods your client wants to retail on an e-commerce site. “Start” is your label on the landing-page of a website. From a linguistic point-of-view, you can analyze the meaning of sentences, words and letters in different context for hours on end.

You can look at the structure in terms of morphology, syntax and phonology, or why not look at the meaning in terms of semantics and pragmatics. Fortunately, in most cases you do not have reach as far as asking a linguistic researcher about your labeling—people in your target audience will do just fine.

“This might be a good start!”

User-Testing Labels

So what is the easiest way of doing a sanity check of the way you express the information space? A really cheap and well-proven technique is Card Sorting. By using card sorting, you can transform your early taxonomy prognoses into folksonomy. Card sorting not only helps you to create an informed information architecture, it also enables you to get an insight to what keywords users relate to different activities in your product.

Another test is a Word Association game. Take all potential labelings of your navigation design and try them out on users asking them to “say the first thing that comes to mindâ€� (in regard of what they believe to be found beneath such a navigation option—call it Think-Aloud Protocol with a twist. For example, you could say “Productsâ€� and the participant might respond with “Price, description, information, stockâ€�. Market researchers have used this technique for decades to ensure that the right message is conveyed by their target audience when promoting products.

Two important questions that you need to find to an answer to at this stage are:

1. Can the users relate the labels in the navigation design to their explicit goals of exploring your digital product?
2. Are the meaning of the words metaphorically and visually separated enough not to be confused with each other?

“Ok, so lets change ‘Commodities’ to ‘Our Products’ and ‘Locate store’ to ‘Our Stores’.”

Removing Redundancy and Lowering the Reaction Time

In his master-piece “Don’t make me think”, Steve Krug writes, “When I look at most Web pages, I’m struck by the fact that most of the words I see are just taking up space, because no one is ever going to read them.” The more information we cram into our navigation, the harder it becomes for the users to quickly grasp the different options.

In 1935, the American psychologist John Ridley Stroop published “Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions” along with the now renowned “Stroop effect”. Stroop had found that given the task of naming the color a word was written in, took longer and was more prone to error if the word itself was the name of a different color (e.g. the word “Blueâ€� written in the color red).

What we can learn from Stroops discovery is that we have a hard time not reading words—even though we are given a task explicitly instructing us not to. Have a quick look at the navigation in your design and ask yourself can be removed without losing its meaning.

“It seems I really donʼt need the word ‘Our’ in front of ‘Products’ and ‘Stores’.”

What Did Product ‘A’ Do In Situation ‘B’?

If you still have not managed to convince your employer that early user testing will pay off in the long run, you should at least have the courtesy to look at the benchmark. In what way have others solved their navigation design? Just spending some time looking at what others have done will help you reach valuable conclusions. This can be really time efficient and a good way to increase product usability, since users will be able to use previously acquired knowledge by simply recognizing similar terminology used in other products.

“It does seem like all other websites in our business area have their contact information beneath an option labeled ‘Contact’. I better change ‘Reach us’.”

Symbols, Pictograms & Icons

Symbols, pictograms and icons in digital user interfaces are long gone from luxury to necessity. They contribute to signature, personality, recognition, and abstraction in our visual language. Furthermore, studies have given evidence suggesting that user interfaces have less favorable perceptions of usability and usefulness when only relying on textual expressions.

Why did I willfully write “Symbols, pictograms and icons� and not just “Icons� as we all love to call them? Before I start to use only the word “Icon�, I want to make sure we are all on board as to the differences (without digging too deep into the perilous depths of semiotic science).

What Is What

A symbol is typically defined as an abstract representation that requires conventional knowledge amongst the users for them to fully understand their meaning. People in some cultures have learnt that the meaning of an octagon shaped sign in a tone of red communicates “Stop.� So a symbol earns meaning over time through conventional use.

A pictogram on the other hand is usually defined as simplified pictorial representation. Pictograms—or pictographs—are, as far as possible, self-explanatory and most often do not require any deep previous learnings to make any sense. You often see pictograms (and ideograms) on signposts and in environmental design since they are least contingent to produce cultural misunderstandings. For example, a sign with an arrow indicating a direction.

The definition of the word “Icon� can be a bit vague depending on the context of use, but I like to say that an icon can be a sign, symbol, picture or image that stands for or represents an object in its resemblance as an analogy for it.

Whether you should use a symbol, a pictogram, an icon or a combination of all three to help you communicate information, all depends on the situation you find yourself in. Disregarding what we use, there is some common knowledge and analysis we can use to make sure that the receivers (i.e. our users) actually understand what we are trying to convey with our design.

User-testing Icons

There is an abundance of ways to perform user testing and peer reviews of iconography. My two absolute favorites are what I have come to call “tag-that-iconâ€� and “connect-the-dotsâ€� mainly because they are quick to perform and they give great insights into users’ spontaneous opinions (plus, they are actually quite fun to prepare and execute).

You can perform tag-that-icon in one of two ways:

• Method 1:
  Give several icon suggestions to the participants and ask them to tag them with whatever comes to mind within three minutes.
• Method 2:
  Randomly show the participants one icon at a time during a day and ask them to come up with tags for each icon during 20-30 seconds.

The latter has most probably proven itself to be really good and better for testing different metaphors for one specific icon when the number of participants are low.

When you have a set of icons and labels that are closing in on finalization, you can then do connect-the-dots testing. All you need to for the test are printouts with one section of all your suggested icons (in a random order) and one section with all your labels (in a different random order). Then, give the printouts to the participants and ask them to draw a line between an icon and the label they think it is coupled with.

“At least I can be certain that all my suggested icons works for the ‘Directions’ menu option.”

Removing Redundancy Re-Visited

Just as with labels, avoiding redundant information in the icons is just as important. This is of course quite a bold statement from a designer, but there are many cases out there in the wild that simply add so many details to an icon that it starts to disrupt the users’ ability to interpret and differentiate them. This becomes most evident when you have common shapes in the icons that affects their intergroup saliency (i.e. the quality by which an object stands out relative to its neighbors).

“Do I really need the circles? If I look at them briefly or squint, they all look the same—I better change that!”

Picture/Word Interference

Given a set of lined drawings of simple objects coupled with distractor words, humans show an clear effect of reduced response time in naming the drawn object. This is also known as Picture Word Interference (PWI). What PWI can be interpreted to mean is that when an icon is paired with a label in a way that the user does not connect together, it becomes much harder for them to work out the intended meaning.

For humans, a label with “Banana” coupled with a cucumber icon would be unclear as to what it is. What makes matters even worse for users in a navigation context is; “What should I really follow—your icons or your labels?” Avoid creating distracting stimulus through semantic interference between your icons and labels.

Looking at contextual consistency and standards in regards to iconography can really help you. There are some really great resources out there for finding inspiration, but you can also use them as a source of knowledge in finding trends and standards in iconography. If 9 out of 10 result with the term “Favorites” on Iconfinder.net that contain a star or a heart-shaped icon, then that may probably be a good starting point for your “Favorites” icon as well.

“I have no idea what I was thinking. I think I have to throw away all of these, restart all over again and do some more user testing.”

Six Navigation Design Guidelines

After reading all of the above, you should have a good foundation to take your navigation design to the next level and place it in its intended environment along with the rest of the design and perform controlled user testing and see how they interplay. Here are 6 navigation design guidelines for you to consider as you embark the journey of designing the navigation of your upcoming project:

• Clarity:
  Make sure that your navigation has a linguistic and semantic clarity that communicates to your users in an direct, efficient and adequate way.
• Simplicity:
  Avoid using technical labels and icons that no one recognizes. Speak the language of the user rather than using complex terms and form factors unfamiliar to your users.
• Saliency:
  Avoid having redundant and repetitive terms and shapes in your labels and icons that affects their intergroup saliency. This can easily influence your users ability to differentiate and interpret them as a whole.
• Context:
  Look at the consistency and standards for labels and iconography used in the context that you are designing for. It is more efficient for your users to recognize rather than needing to interpret information that is unfamiliar to them.
• Correlation:
  Avoid creating distracting stimulus through semantic interference between labels and icons. Reduce uncertainty and make sure that they clearly communicates one message as they are put together.
• Tonality:
  Ensure that the tonality of the message is still consistent at the end of the design work. Colors, typography and form heavily affect the way your audience conceive and interprets the information.

Of course, not all types of navigation design contain both labels and icons. Some just use icons and some just use labels. you have roughly three cues for guiding your users: One factual (the label), one helpful (the icon) and then—the sometimes subliminal—character (color, typography and form). They do not always need to co-exist since different context requires different solutions. But your message can easily become blurred the fewer of them you use.

So ask yourself this: Can I afford to be vague in the way I communicate and help my users to reach their goal? (Hint: No!)

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© Petter Silfver for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

This article is the fifth in our new series that introduces the latest, useful and freely available tools and techniques, developed and released by active members of the Web design community. The first article covered PrefixFree; the second introduced Foundation, a responsive framework; the third presented Sisyphus.js, a library for Gmail-like client-side drafts and the fourth shared with us a free plugin called GuideGuide. Today, we are happy to present Erskine’s responsive grid generator: Gridpak.

In the near 18 months since A List Apart published Ethan Marcotte’s article Responsive Web Design much has changed in the way we approach our design process. The new responsive attitude described in the article embraces device agnostic design, flexibility and the undefined canvas. Whilst John Allsopp’s A Dao of Web Design laid the foundations for change, Ethan’s article—alongside a maturation in technologies and a coinciding mass movement towards mobile browsing—really set the scene for a new design ethos.

The Problem

Challenges and problems inevitably arise when adopting new ideas and ways of working. One of the main stumbling blocks we found as an agency was in efficiently and cost-effectively implementing one of the fundamental ingredients of responsive design: a flexible grid based layout.

This is what our typical design and development cycle for creating a responsive website with a flexible grid system used to look like:

1. Create 3 or 4 different sized grids by hand in Fireworks to use as a reference in the wireframing/design stage.

   
   Create multiple grids, for desktop, tablet and phone.

2. Recreate the same grids with crude and often clunky browser extensions (mentioning no names) or write some JavaScript that would allow us to overlay our grid layers (exported as semi-transparent PNGs) in the browser.

   
   Recreating the same grids in the browser.

3. Write LESS stylesheets which cut down on the maths, but still required all the base values and formulas for calculating grid widths.

   
   Calculating percentage widths and writing CSS in order to make our website and grid responsive.

There were 2 crucial drawbacks to this approach:

1. It took a long time to measure up grids, create them in static graphic format, then produce long lines of LESS.
2. We couldn’t visualise the grids responding (sweet irony) until they were built.

At that time, most of the responsive frameworks forced you into a corner: you were required to use a pre-determined number of columns, gutters, padding and breakpoints. We felt that this undermined the ethos of a methodology that was by it’s very nature flexible.

We also felt that existing generators lacked the visual feedback that we required: we were desperate to see how our grids would react when squeezed and stretched in order to inform our decisions.

Solution

So one afternoon, dissatisfied as much with our own process as we were with the available solutions, we began to put pen to paper with the ultimate goal of creating a responsive grid generator that would:

1. Offer true flexibility:
   The interface allows the user to adjust the amount of columns in each grid, the inner padding and gutter width in either pixels or percentages, and where the breakpoints of the grid occur.
2. Allow the user to visualize a responsive grid system:
   The user can switch between and edit their grids in real-time using the tab system. They can see immediately how their grids react.
3. Streamline the design and development process:
   Gridpak outputs all of the file formats necessary to make a quick start to a responsive project. They are easy to extend, reference, or just throw away if not required. The file formats come neatly packed inside a small .zip file that includes:
   • PNG overlays of each grid the user has created for use in their graphics program of choice.
   • A HTML demo file.
   • A CSS file complete with appropriate media queries and predefined presentational classes.
   • LESS, SCSS and SASS files for the same purpose, but with the added power of variables and mixins.
   • A JavaScript snippet that allows the user to overlay their responsive grid in any browser using the “G” key.
   • A readme.txt file with some more in-depth documentation.

The simple interface makes is easy to visualize, create and edit your responsive grid system.

Stylesheets

Gridpak is not really meant to be a framework. Although its stylesheets will work “right out of the box”, they are meant to be plucked and pruned into your own stylesheets and methods of working. That’s why they only contain information which is essential for your grid system.

We had a niggle with media queries on grid based layouts when the number of columns changed between breakpoints. To solve this problem, we eschewed the use of “span_x” in our class names in the markup, preferring to use semantic naming like “news_item”. We then added our semantic class names to gridpak.css, right next to their counterpart:

.span_1, .span_2, .span_3,
.news_item {
    margin-left:2%;
    padding:0 1.5%;
    ...
}

.span_6,
.news_item {
    ...
}

In this way, our markup isn’t coupled to the CSS nor are the elements to the breakpoints. It’s a far more scalable way of doing things. Implementation is very much open to interpretation, and we look forward to seeing how people apply it to their own projects.

Gridpak uses media queries, box-sizing and background-clip properties (although there are ways to use it without these queries.) These CSS3 properties are supported in all new browsers, as well as IE8 but we would recommend using a polyfill or detection service such as Modernizr to handle the degradation.

Help Us Help You

Coming soon: Baseline functionality and an ability to edit the position of the breakpoints after you have created them.

We know Gridpak is not a one-stop, cure-all panacea—it was never designed to be. Like all tools it has limitations, but we believe it is a useful part of the responsive designer’s armory. As the field evolves further we will undoubtedly see a proliferation of similar tools and approaches. People will ultimately choose the ones that work best for them and fitting to their workflows.

Since the launch, we’ve added important features like the ability to adjust gutter widths and column padding in percentages as well as in pixels. With our next release we’ll introduce a more flexible approach to allow the creation of a wider range of asymmetrical grids… but we can go much further. That’s why we’ve open sourced the Gridpak codebase on Github. We’d love to see it become a truly collaborative effort where people get into the code and make their own improvements.

Feedback

We hope that Gridpak will grow and evolve over time, so we’d really welcome your feedback and input. You can send feature requests to gridpak@erskinedesign.com or @gridpak on Twitter. We also have a Trello board where you can comment on and vote for features, or even just keep an eye on what we’re currently working on. We, at Erskine Design, have found Gridpak to be a great resource for our day-to-day client work, so we hope you enjoy using it as much as we do… and we do.

Written by Sam Quayle.

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© Erskine Design for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

A few months ago I went to collect a friend from hospital. Arriving early, I entered the waiting room and noticed in-house magazines stacked by the door. I picked one up, grabbed a coffee and took a seat.

The magazine read like a very long press release, blabbering on about patient-centric care and employee awards. I was quickly bored, so I read from my phone instead. The magazine failed in its purpose.

Effective content marketing holds people’s attention. It gives you a distinctive brand, loyal fans and increased sales. You don’t need a big budget to succeed, which is why good content marketing is the single best way to beat bigger competitors online.

Content marketing used to be about customer magazines and mailed newsletters. Now it covers blogs, email newsletters, eBooks, white papers, articles, videos and more. In this article, you will learn about content marketing techniques that you can apply to your business.

Prepare

Before creating content, you need to prepare. Think about your tone and style, where to find the best writers and how to organize your workflow.

Tone and Style

Too many companies start writing content before their brand has a defined voice. This leads to inconsistency. It’s like using one logo in your brochure, another on your website and another on your blog.

When speaking with people, you see their expressions and you adjust your tone accordingly. In a meeting, when you see that someone is confused, you clarify meaning, simplify sentences and speak reassuringly. The Web offers no feedback until your content is published, and then it’s too late.

To get the right tone, think of the person who best represents your brand. The person could be fictional or real, and they may or may not work for you. Now think of adjectives that describe them. Once you know what you want, provide clear details and practical examples.

Let’s say you run a travel agency that markets to young independent travelers. You want your representative to sound experienced, helpful and friendly. Try using a table like the one below to delineate what your adjectives do and don’t mean:

You’ll also need a style guide, so that your authors write consistently. Should you use title case in headings? Are contractions appropriate? Check out The Yahoo! Style Guide for ideas.

Picking Content Creators

Don’t pick the wrong people to create your content. It’s hard for a non-technical person to pick the best Web developer, and it’s the same with content marketing. You need to know about content creation in order to judge other people’s abilities. Some people suggest making everyone in your company a content creator, but this is a bad idea. Not everyone can be a good accountant, secretary or rocket scientist, and the same applies here. To succeed, you should pick the best.

Ask everyone who wants to be a content creator to write a sample blog post. Then you can find the best few people. Some might not be able to write but have interesting ideas. In this case, you’ll need someone to edit their copy. Perhaps you want to raise the profile of a particular staff member. If they can’t write, have someone ghostwrite for them.

Workflow

Some companies have a simple workflow: one person does everything. The person researches, writes and publishes without any input from others. This model can work, but you’ll see more success with a workflow that enables other people to take part. Have different people write, edit and proofread. It’s a good way to catch mistakes and to bring more ideas into the process. Think about the best process for each type of content. One person might be enough for a tweet, whereas four to six people might be ideal for an eBook.

Imagine you’ve got a well-staffed company that is putting together a B2B white paper. You could organize your workflow like this:

An example of how to organize your workflow in a well-staffed company.

Persuade

Your content should be persuasive. Pay close attention to how you speak and what you say.

Use Simple Language

Take the question below on Yahoo! Answers. To “sound intelligent,� this person would like to know “big words that replace everyday small words.�

Many people make this mistake. They use language that is unnecessarily complicated, usually to show off or to sound corporate and professional.

“Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all,� said Winston Churchill. So, don’t talk about “taking a holistic view of a company’s marketing strategy to deliver strategic insights, precise analysis and out-of-the-box thinking.�

Prefer “make� to “manufacture,� and “use� to “utilize.� While “quantitative easing� offers precision to economists, your personal finance audience would prefer “print money.�

Lauren Keating has studied the effect of scientific language on the persuasiveness of copy. She found that most people respond best to advertisements that contain no scientific language. People found them more readable and persuasive, and they felt more willing to buy the product. Lauren’s conclusion was clear: copy needs to be plain and simple.

Have Opinions

Interesting people have opinions, and interesting brands are the same. Look at the amazing work of new search engine DuckDuckGo. It has positioned itself as the antithesis of Google, launching websites that criticize how the search giant tracks you and puts you in a bubble. The strategy is paying off: DuckDuckGo is seeing explosive growth.

DuckDuckGo is an alternative search engine that breaks you out of your Filter Bubble.

While this strategy is perfect for defeating a big incumbent, you don’t have to be openly hostile to your competitors. You can say what you think without mentioning their names.

Bear in mind that people are ideologically motivated. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler’s study, “When Corrections Failâ€�, describes the “backfire effectâ€� of trying to correct people’s deeply held beliefs. The authors found that contradicting people’s misconceptions actually strengthened those opinions. If people see you as an ideological ally (like a political party), they are more likely to agree with you on other issues — even ideologically inconsistent or non-ideological ones. You can use your opinions to attract people to your company: converting the agnostic or validating the views of allies.

As a small-scale brewer, for example, you might have a strong opinion on ale, believing in craft over mass production. You might think the market is dominated by big businesses that sacrifice quality for quantity. In this situation, you could use content marketing to talk about the best way to make beer. By stressing how seriously you take the development of your product, you communicate your opinion to those who share it without directly criticizing your competitors.

Think politically: consider the popularity of your views and whether they will attract media coverage. Ideally, your opinions should be bold and popular.

Sell the Benefits

In the same way that you sell your products and services, tell your audience the benefits of your content. This technique is essential if your audience doesn’t know what it wants.

PaperlessPipeline is a transaction management and document storage app for real estate brokers. Its founder, Dane Maxwell, had a creative idea to sell his product. The biggest problem for real estate brokers is recruiting. So, Dane invited them to a webinar titled “Recruiting Secrets of the 200-Plus Agent Office in Tennessee.� Brokers didn’t even know they needed to manage transactions, so he didn’t mention it in the invitation.

Paperless Pipeline takes your real estate transactions and related documents online—without changing how you work.

In the webinar, he introduced PaperlessPipeline and explained how it enables brokers to recruit more agents. The webinar attracted 120 guests, and “16 ended up buying at the end,� said Dane in an interview with Mixergy.

Imagine you run a company that develops technology for mobile phones, and you want to promote a new femtocell that boosts mobile reception in public spaces and rural areas. This technology could be valuable to people who want to improve mobile reception, but those people might not have heard of it.

So, instead of promoting the technology directly, offer content that focuses on the benefits. By using benefit-focused copy, you immediately tell the reader what’s in it for them.

Teach

Think about what your audience wants. People want to hear answers and to learn something new, so give them what they want.

Give Answers

Content marketing needs to offer practical advice that people can use. Readers have been trained to expect answers on the Web, and yet so much content fails to deliver.

Consider FeeFighters, a comparison website for credit card processing. One of its blog posts, Do You Know What Makes Up Your Credit Score?, talks about the factors that affect your credit score. Instead of offering abstract advice and concepts, the post provides practical tips for improving your credit score:

Area #2: Your Credit Utilization Ratio

The second largest determining factor in what makes up your score is the amount of credit that you have available to you in relationship to how much of that credit you’ve used. This accounts for 30 percent of your credit score. The optimal rate is 30 percent, which means that if you have $10,000 in credit available to you, you should only be using about $3,000 of it. One trap that some people fall into is believing that if they max out their credit cards every month and then pay them off at the end of the month, they’ll build their credit. But since that gives them a 100 percent credit utilization ratio, and that ratio accounts for 30 percent of their overall credit score, they’re really doing more harm than good.

Say or Do Something New

Most content is boring and unoriginal, which is good for you. It makes it easier to beat your competitors.

You can make your content interesting by doing something new, without necessarily saying something new. For instance, you could write a comprehensive article on a topic that has only piecemeal information scattered across the Web. Or you could use a different format for a topic that gets the same treatment; rather than writing the fiftieth blog post on a topic, shoot the first video.

You can also make your content interesting by saying something new. An infographic by Rate Rush compares the popularity of Digg to Reddit, creatively combining a bar graph and clock to present the data. Although Rate Rush is a personal finance website, with little connection to social news, its staff researched a topic they were interested in and drew attention by putting it to imaginative use.

Our agency also researches things that we find interesting, and this has been a great source of content. In 2010, we polled around 1000 iPad owners to find out how consumers use the device. It led to a slew of media attention.

You can do the same. Come up with an original idea to research, and then undertake a study. Also look into studies that your business has done in the past, because interesting stuff might be lying around. One of our clients looked through her company’s research archive and found amazing material. She didn’t spend any money on research but got a lot of great content, links and media coverage.

Captivate

Give your content more personality. Captivate your audience with stories and characters that will draw them in and keep them coming back.

Tell a Story

Telling a story is a great way to connect with readers. According to a number of studies summed up by Rob Gill of Swinburne University of Technology, telling stories can be useful in corporate communication. Storytelling is fundamental to human interaction, and it can make your content more compelling and your brand more engaging.

Citing Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor, Rob says this: “It is believed people receiving the narration often come to the same conclusion as the narrator, but through using their own decision-making processes.� Told through a story, a message becomes more personal and relevant. The reader is also more likely to remember what was said.

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz. Instead of sharing only positive accounts of his business, he also writes about difficulties such as his failed attempt to raise capital:

Michelle was the first to note that something was “odd.� In a phone call with Neil, she heard him comment that they “needed to do more digging into the market.� In her opinion, this was very peculiar.… Tuesday morning we got the call; no deal.

An email shared by Rand Fishkin in his post about SEOmoz’s attempt to raise funding.

Brands need stories, and stories need people, suspense, conflicts and crises. By reading SEOmoz’s content, and seeing both the positive and negative, you become immersed in its story.

Ikea is another example of a brand that tells stories that generate opinions about its company. For instance, it plays up its Swedish roots and paints a romantic image of a wholesome and natural society. Its website is full of stories that contribute to this effect.

A survey conducted by the B2B Technology Marketing Community showed that around 82% of LinkedIn users found that telling a story through case studies was the most effective form of content marketing.

Sometimes you’ll want to use anecdotes to make a point, and sometimes you’ll write a post or tweet to build a narrative. When you’re cultivating a story, keep the information simple, and don’t be afraid to repeat points here and there; some readers might have missed what you said before.

Always mix interesting stories with useful information; fail to do this and your audience will feel you’re wasting their time.

Use Real People

Think of your favorite writers. You’ve probably seen their photos and heard them speak. Likewise, people need to see and hear your employees, so use pictures, audio and video. This will bring your audience closer to your brand.

Jakob Nielsen has studied people’s reactions to images online. He used eye-tracking software to discover that people ignore images that seem decorative, random or generic. They even ignore generic images of people. But when they come across a photo of a “real� person, they engage with it for a longer time.

People prefer to get involved with a company with which they feel a personal connection. But introduce your employees gradually; as with any story, introduce too many characters too early and you’ll confuse your audience.

Summary

Develop a compelling tone of voice. Don’t assume that anyone can write amazing copy, because they can’t. If you want the best content, then you need the best writers and thinkers.

Produce something informative that people will want to read. Give your brand a personality and your business will benefit across the board, from recruitment to sales. Warren Buffett looks for businesses protected by “unbreachable moats,� and no moat is more unbreachable than a brand with a story, ideas and opinions.

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© Craig Anderson for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

Since Elliot Jay Stocks so poignantly told us to destroy the Web 2.0 look, we’ve witnessed a de-shinification of the Web, with fewer glass buttons, beveled edges, reflections, special-offer badges, vulgar gradients with vibrant colors and diagonal background patterns. The transformation has been welcomed with relief by all but the most hardened gloss-enthusiasts. However, design and aesthetics work in mysterious ways, and no sooner does one Web design trend leave us before another appears.

The Symptoms

So, exactly what is this new epidemic? Well, let’s start by looking at some of the most common symptoms, many of which you have probably noticed. They are easy to spot, and as with many other conditions, they often appear in conjunction with each other. (This is why the contagion spreads so effectively — seemingly independent symptoms grow more infectious when combined with others.)

Please note: The following list appears in no particular order and does not indicate the level of infectiousness or severity, which seem to be stable across the board. Note also that the instances given often exhibit more than one symptom, making classification more difficult.

Stitching

Stitching appears gradually, often as a result of the designer playing too long with borders and lines, particularly of the dotted variety. A full-blown stitch is evidenced by the subtle shift from dots to dashes, augmented by drop shadows and other effects to give the impression of 3-D. The purpose of the stitch is somewhat elusive, but it seems to thrive in environments where certain textures are applied, most notably fabric and leather, but also generic graininess.

While determining the exact cause of stitching is difficult, scientists are certain that it belongs to a larger strain of the infection known as “Skeuomorphism.�

Clockwise from top: The Journal of Min Tran; Dribbble shot by Mason Yarnell; Dribbble shot by Liam McCabe.

Zigzag Borders

Borders are common elements of Web design, and as such, they are difficult to avoid; luckily, they are usually harmless and often have a positive effect on the layout. However, for some reason, a particular type of border — the zigzag — has grown exponentially in the last few years and is now threatening the natural habitat of more benign border specimens. Exactly why this is happening is unknown, although some researchers claim that the pattern created by the repeating opposing diagonals has such an alluring effect on designers and clients alike that straight borders have somewhat lost their appeal.

Clockwise from top: You Know Who; Dribbble shot by Christopher Paul; Dribbble shot by Meagan Fisher.

Forked Ribbons

Like borders, ribbons have long existed in various forms. What we’re seeing now, though, is the near dominance of a particular style of ribbon, easily identified by a fork at one or both ends. Some ribbons are also folded over twice, creating a faux effect of depth and reinforcing the diagonal lines in the fork. Whether the fork is related to the zigzag effect is unknown, but it seems that diagonal lines are the key to the ribbon’s survival, along with its ability to evoke memories of times past.

The danger of the ribbon lies mainly in its ability to exist independent of other symptoms (although it thrives in the company of vintage typography), meaning that it could date your design long after the epidemic ends, even if the symptom itself appears dormant. In many ways, this is reminiscent of the “special offers� badge of the Web 2.0 look.

Clockwise from top: Ryan O’Rourke; Cabedge; Jake Przespo

Textures

In the age of all things digital, it’s a conundrum that textures should dominate our illustrations and backgrounds, and yet they are indeed one of the most common symptoms on our list. Manifested by subtle grain, dirt and scratches, paper-esque surfaces and fold marks, they seem to embrace the spirit of the handmade. But ironically, they’re often the complete opposite: computer-generated effects or Photoshop brushes.

Possible explanations for the widespread use of textures include a yearning for tactile media (especially considering the emergence of touchscreens) or envy towards print designers, who have a much richer palette of materials and surfaces to play with.

Clockwise from top: Gerren Lamson; Zero; Amazee Labs.

Letterpress

A Smashing Magazine article from 2009 outlined letterpress as one of the emerging trends of the year and, boy, were they right. The simple effect has gone from strength to strength and is now a household technique for sprucing up typography online. A relatively harmless symptom, letterpress might also have infected designers through other digital interfaces, such as operating systems and games, as early as the turn of the millennium, indicating a very long incubation period.

Scientists disagree over whether the incubation period is due to the infection needing a critical mass before emerging from dormancy or whether the infection simply needed the right conditions — CSS3 text shadows, to be specific — for symptoms to appear.

Clockwise from top: Billy Tamplin; Dribbble shot by Phillip Marriot; Remix.

19th-Century Illustration

After being released from copyright quarantine, this symptom, favoured by fashionable ladies and gentlemen, was nearly eliminated during the last epidemic due to its inability to cope well with gloss and shine. But in this new vintage-friendly environment, it has found its way back into our visual repertoire. For better or worse, the 19th-century illustration will most likely hang around for a while, emerging stronger from time to time like a flu virus.

Clockwise from top: Killian Muster; Dribbble shot by Trent Walton; Simon Collison.

Muted Tones

After a long period of vibrancy, the average online color scheme seems to have been somewhat desaturated across the board. We’re seeing widespread use of browns, earthy greens and mustards and a general leaning towards “impure� colors, although this is generally thought to be a minor symptom of the epidemic. Some scientists will even argue that muted tones are, in fact, not a symptom themselves but rather a side effect of other symptoms, in the way that sweating is a natural response to a fever.

Clockwise from top: Dribble shot by Dave Ruiz; Cognition; Web Standards Sherpa.

Justified or Centered Typography (JCT)

This symptom is nothing new; in fact, it was pretty much the standard for the first 500 years of typography, until Tschichold and the New Typography showed up and quarantined it on the grounds that it was old fashioned, difficult to read and inefficient. Although we’re not sure at this point, this link with history might be what has made JCT reappear so vigorously under the umbrella of vintage symptoms. We do know that overall reading habits among humans have not changed in recent years (most Westerners still read left to right), and there is no plausible argument that JCT improves legibility; so, whatever the cause of the outbreak, we know it’s rooted in subjective emotion rather than rational thought.

Clockwise from top: Grip Limited; Tommy; Visual Republic.

Circular Script Logotypes (SCL)

A circle is a basic shape and, in isolation, is no more a symptom of an epidemic than a triangle. However, if you repeat enough triangles in a line, you get a zigzag. Similarly, if you include a circle in your logotype, you end up with a circular logotype. And if that logotype happens to be set in a script font, you’ll get — that’s right! — a Circular Script Logotype (SCL). Not that SCL is lethal or anything, but it is relatively contagious and can be highly detrimental when enough hosts have been infected.

Clockwise from top: Trent Walton; Mercy; Dribbble shot by James Seymor-Lock.

Skeuomorphic Features

Skeuomorphic features — i.e. ornamentation or design features on an object that are copied from the object’s form in another medium — are rife, particularly in mobile applications, and this symptom is one of the defining indicators of the epidemic. Possibly a mutant cancerous strain of mildly skeuomorphic features such as stitches and letterpress, it can sometimes grow to overtake an entire interface, bloating it with redundant visual references to physical objects and materials. However, due to the labor involved in preparing the graphics and the heavy reliance on image resources, some researchers argue that we’re unlikely to see full-blown skeuomorphism dominate our desktop browsers any time soon.

In fact, most scientists regard the phenomenon as a curiosity and predict that some virtual metaphors for physical attributes will prove useful (as tabs have) and some won’t. Interestingly, while Apple has embraced and continues to pioneer the technique, Google seems to some degree to resist the urge to mimic physical reality in its interfaces. Perhaps it has developed a vaccine?

Clockwise from top: iBooks; Dribbble shot by skorky; Dribbble shot by Igor Shkarin.

How Did It Start?

Pinpointing the epicentre of a design epidemic (read: trend) is always hard, especially given the myriad of symptoms and the contagious nature of the Internet. Identifying Patient Zero is virtually impossible, and, to be pragmatic, doing so would serve no purpose. What we can say is that we’re most likely experiencing a reaction to the Web 2.0 aesthetic — a craving for textured surfaces and retro imagery, something tactile and natural-looking, as an antidote to the shiny impersonality of the past — and that this is both healthy and necessary for pushing the design industry forward. Whatever the sources of trends, they often start with applying smart design to solve a particular problem or, indeed, to counter another trend.

Let’s say that everyone used sans-serif fonts, strong contrasting colors and crisp white backgrounds as a rule. Imagine, in this environment, if a designer went against the grain by using Clarendon or some other warm serif to infuse some personality into their website (which happens to be selling “Grandma’s homemade jam�), and then complemented the personality of their font selection with earthy colors and some brown paper textures. The result would inevitably stand out from the crowd: beautiful, emotional, different.

Incidentally, this aesthetic inspires another designer who happens to be working on a website with a global audience, exposing the new approach to a whole generation of designers who, in turn, apply it at will (often without considering the context). A trend is born. And yet, paradoxically, the potency of the epidemic is under constant threat. The more people get infected, the less differentiated the symptoms appear; and once the infection reaches a critical mass, the symptoms begin to work against themselves. Infusing personality into your visuals is meaningless if everything looks the same.

Is It Dangerous?

In today’s open collaborative world, avoiding an epidemic of this scale is difficult; so, in a sense, everyone is affected to some degree. The symptoms listed above are not restricted to small-scale up-and-coming designers, but affect even the elite of the design community. This means that even though some symptoms are harmless — like a light fever or a runny nose from a flu infection — the viral onslaught of trendy features puts constant pressure on our immune system to protect our creativity, and staying vigilant is important to maintaining a healthy dose of original thought.

If you’re displaying a handful of symptoms, it’s really nothing to worry about — catching a cold that’s going around is not hard, but recovering from it is also easy. If, on the other hand, you display most or all of these symptoms, then there’s reason to be extra cautious in your next project. Using all of a trend’s identifiers as cornerstones of your work might make your portfolio look oh so contemporary, but in a way this practice is no different than passing off the work of your favorite designer, artist or musician as your own. Granted, symptoms with no identifiable origin are not protected by copyright, but that’s beside the point — you should be worried not about legal implications, but rather about the creative integrity of your output. The danger is not only that your work will be seen as a passing fad, a popular aesthetic that will look dated in a couple of years’ time, but that you will lose the respect of your peers when they catch on to you.

While nothing is original, we all need to respect the difference between inspiration and imitation. As Jean Luc Goddard said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.â€� And if you don’t take them anywhere, what’s the point?

Worse perhaps than the loss of respect and integrity is the effect that epidemics have on clients and, in turn, the design community as a whole. The more designers are infected and the more symptoms they show of the same disease, the less your clients will believe that you’re capable of solving real business problems. Eventually they’ll exclude you from the early stages (where all the real design thinking takes place) and employ your services merely to skin their wireframes, in the process reducing the whole profession to an army of decorators.

What Can You Do About It?

Now that we’ve seen how detrimental trends can be, how does one avoid them? Is this even possible? Trends, by definition, are popular, and arguably nothing is wrong with tapping into that popularity to increase the exposure of your product. Convincing a client to accept a design that is off-trend can be difficult, and you run the risk of alienating the audience by going completely against the trend just for the sake of it. On the other hand, blindly following others is never a good idea, and you could severely stifle your creativity, integrity and client base by accepting what’s “in� as a given and copying it without purpose.

So, what’s the right thing to do? Trends are intrinsic to our society, whether in politics, culture, design or even religion, and as the consensus sways in one direction or another, so will your opinion (or “tasteâ€�) — to some degree, at least. Alas, avoiding trends altogether seems an impossible and pointless undertaking, but that doesn’t leave you powerless. In fact, you can do a host of things to combat the lemming syndrome.

Ask Why

Always question your design decisions (and make sure they are your own), and keep asking the magic question, Why am I doing this? Am I doing this simply because it looks cool or because it suits the message I’m trying to communicate? Why am I using this ribbon? Does the zigzag border add to or detract from the personality of the website? What does this leather texture have to do with the finance app I’m designing? The moment you stop asking questions, you fall prey to the epidemic.

Put Some Effort In

In his article “The Dying Art of Designâ€� Francisco Inchauste asserts, among other things, that inspiration requires perspiration, and I couldn’t agree more. I was lucky enough to attend a college where no computers were allowed in the first year, which meant we had to use physical tools to express ourselves — tracing letters by hand, drawing our photography, stocking up on Pantone pens (remember those?), abusing the copier. Not only did our creativity grow, but we learned an important lesson: good design is not effortless, and the best results come from your own experimentation.

Try Something Different

Remember that being distinctive is, for the most part, a good thing. Most great artists in history, regardless of their field, stood out enough for the world to take notice. Who painted melting clocks before Dali? Who would have thought to build a huge wall on stage before Pink Floyd? While mimicking what’s popular might be comfortable and might secure short-term victories, long-term success requires a unique, memorable approach.

Diversify Your Inspiration

In order to remain creative, staying curious and looking for inspiration all around you is crucial, not just in the latest showcase of fashionable WordPress themes. Read a book, perform a scientific experiment, listen to music you haven’t heard before, walk through a new neighborhood, or experience a foreign culture. Widening your horizons beyond your favorite websites and finding more than one source of inspiration is critical to making original, lasting designs.

Focus on the Basics

Finally and most importantly, study the underlying principles of design in order to understand what is and isn’t defined by style. Grid systems, contrast, legibility, juxtaposing imagery, well-written copy — these are the key components of successful design, yet they are entirely independent of fads and styles.

At the end of the day, design is not so much about style as it is about communication, and all style, imagery and typography should be inspired by the content, functionality and personality of the product, not by what simply looks cool at the moment.

No matter how cool something looks, it too shall pass.

(al) (fi)

© Espen Brunborg for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

Good typography shouldn’t have to rely on ornamental crutches to stand tall. Yet despite all the tools and knowledge available to us, we readily embrace a flourishing, decorative typography, with cheap tricks used in a misguided attempt to make it “pop�. This ancient art may rapidly be gaining popularity, but are we paying it the respect it deserves?

Take a snapshot of the visual culture that surrounds you—magazines, movie posters, packaging, websites—how much of it relies on typography? How much of the typography around you is actually well considered? Chances are you’ll find a handful of beautifully crafted typographical designs competing with an avalanche of visually “richâ€�, image-heavy creations. Typography is then relegated to the role of “necessary evilâ€� in order to display text, or ill-considered typographic pieces, where the meaning of MS WordArt has been interpreted a smidgen too literally… Why?

Looking Back

It’s fair to say that the global webdesign community is experiencing a typographical renaissance. Revolutionary technologies like Typekit, Fontdeck, the introduction of the @font-face tag, and online licensing for professional typefaces are all encouraging type enthusiasts around the Web to transcend the shackles of common type. Furthermore, clever use of CSS and JavaScript are allowing us to mimic a range of typesetting techniques (though admittedly some basic typographical controls are still frustratingly infantile).

But with such power comes great responsibility. And even though modern tools give us the opportunity to do so many things, doing a great deal of these things isn’t always a recipe for beautiful design. Just because we have many options opening up to us doesn’t mean we need to employ every single one of them in the hope of developing a design that stands out—and most likely for all the wrong reasons.

That’s not to say typographic design can’t be ornamental, complex or even illustrative. But centuries of working with movable type has left us with principles on which to base our typography, and it’s our duty as designers to understand them (at least if we’re aiming to break them). A good place to start is to look at what those who came before us have done—even the briefest throwback into the annals of typography and design history will help.

Consider Milton Glaser’s “I love New York� logo from 1977, commissioned as part of a marketing campaign by the New York State Department of Commerce. Glaser, who did the work pro-bono, wisely avoided skylines, figures of people holding hands, or flowery ornaments by using only a simple heart shape to represent the key word of the mark: love. We all know the subsequent success of the logo, as it has been brandished on millions of white t-shirts, inspiring countless knock-offs since its inception.

And if the heart-symbol of Glaser’s work seems too pictorial in this context, how about Robert Indiana’s “Love� sculpture? Originally created for a Museum of Modern Art Christmas card in 1964, this iconic piece of type shuns imagery altogether, relying only on the power of letterforms (arguably based on Clarendon) to ignite our compassion.

Lovely examples of modern typographic icons.

Milton Glaser’s post-9/11 update of his own masterpiece.

Of course, this kind of admiration for type didn’t just start with 60’s advertising. Typography is a craft going back thousands of years—to the birth of writing, if you wished to go deep enough—and has evolved and developed a great deal since that time. Theories have been postulated and developed as to how to best communicate through letterforms, especially when an idea needs to be transmitted as easily as possible. As Bringhurst explains while introducing the first chapter of his timeless “The Elements of Typographic Style”: Typography exists to honor content.

Beatrice Warde’s well known essay “The Crystal Goblet” beautifully explains the role of the typographer and his or her type, and she reinforced this point during an address given in 1930 to the British Typographers Guild in London. Advocating the idea that type was not there to be admired, or even noticed, that it existed only with the purpose of communicating an idea, she proclaimed; “I have a book at home of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Paris.â€� I wonder how many us have the same consideration for content when we browse through MyFonts or Typekit in search of the perfect typeface.

One of the many great designers who echoed Warde’s ethos was Jan Tschichold. His most well-known work is found in the legacy he created during his time working for Penguin (1947-1949), refining and redesigning the former book covers and creating the rulebook for the Penguin covers that followed him.

Notice the absence of decorative elements in this series of Penguin covers by Tschichold.

Looking at these covers one will see that the focus is unequivocally on the communication of a book’s title and author, and the result is truly magnificent. The covers are not beautiful because of particular ornaments or images, or even the individual shapes of the letters, but for their clarity of message. It’s not by accident that a clarity of (and focus on) typography has stuck with Penguin until the present day, which is beautifully demonstrated by David Pearson’s designs for the “Great Ideas” series from 2004, 2005 and 2008.

Though the style may be different, the focus on typography still embodies the spirit of Tschichold.

Challenging The Rules

The approach advocated by modernist typographers is one of clarity and legibility. Scientific methods (let’s call it early “A/B testing”) were utilized in the quest to find the perfect typeface—not in terms of aesthetic, but rather efficiency for communicating—and rigid systems were developed to achieve ideal reading conditions. In the strictest sense, typographic beauty is not to be gained from the letters or ornaments themselves, but should come as a natural result from an “invisible” type that unselfishly honors the words and content.

However, movements of any kind invariably inspire counter-movements, and the modernist ethos was to be thoroughly challenged towards the end of the last century, most notably by David Carson (b. 1954), Peter Saville (b. 1955) and Neville Brody (b. 1957). While earlier designers sought to communicate the messages they were setting as clearly and cleanly as possible, these young contenders wished to push the boundaries of legibility and normality, so that the emotion and idea wasn’t delivered via what the words represented, but how the words were seen as objects separated from their meaning.

These three designers were to shape the face of contemporary typography with their groundbreaking work spanning magazines, newspapers, film titles (Carson and Brody) and record sleeves (Saville). They helped pioneer experimental typesetting in the 80′s and 90s’, throwing the modernist rulebook out the window, yet retaining the communicative authority for letters and words.

Nowadays it’s easy to argue that their use of type did indeed include a great deal of flourish and extras. But seen in the context of the post-modern era, it’s clear that this was not simply an attempt to “beautifyâ€� their work. On the contrary, the disrespect for clarity and to embrace “grunge” were design statements opposing the impersonal coldness of the modernist designers… they were adding emotion to the words they were communicating, which also reflected the cultural movement of the time.

Jan Tschichold might have turned in his grave at brash expressions such as these, but the power of typography seemed stronger than ever. Their work showed that there is an infinite number of ways that typography can be used to communicate a message.

Clockwise from top left: Saville’s cover for Hard-Fi: Once Upon a Time in the West, Carson’s High Priority spread for NY magazine, Nike ad by Neville Brody.

The conscious tenet arising from such examples is an appreciation, by the designer, of how typography can be emotionally valuable. Each of the above examples evoke something—whether heartfelt, or slightly adrenalin pumping, it can be concluded that this is often the role of illustrative typography: to move the heart, and not just yell at the mind.

From Movable Type To Type That Moves

Regardless of the word count, the typographic experience can be as emotional as any pictorial masterpiece. This notion is beautifully exemplified by the “Coming Togetherâ€� campaign for FontAid by The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) in support of relief efforts following the 2010 disaster in Haiti. The project—a font consisting of hundreds of ampersands designed by contemporary typographers—showed that despite the common saying that “a picture speaks a thousand wordsâ€�, sometimes all you need is a handful of letters… or indeed, just a single character.

The “Coming Together” typeface shows us the power of a single character.

Other, less sentimental examples of moving (literal as well as metaphorical) type are masterfully displayed on the blog of Trent Walton, a true magician in terms of utilizing modern technologies to add depth to his typography. When spelling out the title Workspace, a particularly illustrative typographic treatment conjures up images of your very own—or perhaps your dad’s very own—workspace, complete with holes in the wall for hanging up indispensable tools (“I really needed that magnetic stud finderâ€�).

In another example, Unitasking, the “Iâ€� in the headline doubles as an illuminated “1â€� when it is interacted with, emphasizing the message of the article. Granted, neither example can be described as “pure” typography. But note how the extensive use of technology with typographic tricks can be used to illustrate the message, infusing it with added emotion, rather than for decorative purposes.

Movable, interactive typography with nostalgic undertones.

Laborious use of CSS trickery adds value to the message.

Stefan Sagmeister is another designer (actually, another legend) fascinated by the concept of emotional typography and how design can touch our fellow human beings, and he’s unafraid to use unconventional means of communication. For a 1999 AIGA lecture poster he literally carved all the copy into his own body using a razor blade (well, his studio mate did the carving) before photographing himself, the result being so disturbingly powerful that it’s difficult to look away.

But it’s not all gore, of course. As part of his “Things I have learnedâ€� series he created a type-only billboard for Experimenta Lisbon, spelling out his message in capital letters: “Complaining is silly. Either act or forgetâ€�. Simple enough, right? Not quite. Using no ink what so ever, Sagmeister and his team created a gigantic stencil and exposed huge sheets of newsprint to the scorching sun over a period of weeks.

The letters (covered by the stencil) would remain white as the newsprint yellowed, and by the time the billboard went up the statement was easily read by onlookers. The subsequent effect was, as you may have deduced by now, that the letters would slowly fade away as the previously non-exposed newsprint would yellow to the same color as the background. Thus the message to “act or forget� was emotionally strengthened with every passing day.

Sometimes typography can be effective without trying to be beautiful.

Using the sun’s ultraviolet rays to slowly fade away the message.

At this point we’ve come a long way from the clear, simple typography of Tschichold. I’m sure many of you are questioning whether the latter examples, in comparison, rely too much on visual tricks to get their messages across. Indeed, I opened this article by challenging the over-use of ornaments and decoration in order to enhance our typography, and yet aren’t Walton’s and Sagmeister’s work examples of just that? Not quite.

Despite heavy use of non-typographic elements, there are no unnecessary flourishes to be found, nor are there any signs of unrelated decoration (though, to be pedantic, Walton’s use of surface textures may be superfluous). In truth, both designers are adding value by choosing techniques and expressions that purposefully match the content and create an emotional frame in which to deliver the message, thus highlighting it’s impact.

Contemporary experimentalists like Walton and Sagmeister might contradict traditional typographic principles, yet they play an important role in the global, ongoing design conversation by constantly discovering new and unconventional means for typographic expression.

Spread The Word. Literally.

In all honesty, type is not just movable, it has the power to move—and it’s up to us to carry this legacy forward and into the digital frontier, that is inevitably our future. By learning from past examples of excellence, we can challenge the status quo of mediocre typography and misplaced stock photography, and start to push things forward. We don’t always need to do too much (well written copy is, after all, your very best friend), and we certainly don’t have to use all the tools in our drawer every time.

But we can continuously look for new ways to add value, as long as we make sure our typography doesn’t communicate anything other than the intended message. Sometimes that means heavy use of CSS, making creative use of sunshine, or experimenting with size and position. Other times—perhaps most times—it means keeping things simple, letting the words do the talking and letting the typography work itself gently into the background.

Remember, despite the plethora of typographical tools we now have at our immediate disposal, we’re the latest chapter of a long history of typographic craftsmanship—typographers painstakingly arranged letters by hand for centuries before the computer (or even phototypesetting) came along. We should honor the hard work that has been put in by those who came before us. We can do this by recognizing typography as an essential part of our work (be it for Web or print), learn about the principles (especially if you’re aiming to break them) and consider all the factors that make for great communication through letterforms.

If right now you are thinking “but my boss will never let me do what Sagmeister does!”—don’t sweat it, most projects don’t allow for typographic experimentation. But that doesn’t mean you can’t hone your skills—there’s plenty to be gained from taking pride in the small things, and making sure you get the details right. If your brief dictates uninspiring imagery, put your effort and pride into perfecting the accompanying typography. Is the line-length appropriate? What about font-size, line-height, and hierarchical contrast? Does the typeface echo the sentiments of the message? Maybe if you get all the small things right, the bigger things will come easier once that suitable project comes your way.

So roll up those sleeves, consider the meaning of the words you’re setting, and pay some respect to the centuries of evolution behind the typeface you’re using today, and just as importantly, the craft of typography as a means of expression. By all means use images, but just remember that you don’t always have to—typography can be just as meaningful by itself, even without the alluring magic of word-art.

(jvb) (il)

A Thank You to our fabulous Typography editor, Alexander Charchar, for preparing this article.

© Espen Brunborg for Smashing Magazine, 2012.