Sometimes I look around and I hate what the web has become.

Years and years ago when I first came to the web, back in the mid nineties, my favorite website was called “Wisteria”. It was a whimsical, beautiful, personal website that explored mythology, fairytales, kitchen magic (homemade cosmetics and organic cleaning supplies, etc.) gardening, and […]

Websites owe their visitors a common courtesy: to speak to them as elegantly and clearly as possible. And if a tongue-tied website lacks the ability to do that on its own, well, that’s where I come in.

It’s funny how quickly priorities can change.
I’ve been a writer my entire life. When I was a little girl, my mother used to send me and my brother to our grandmother’s house outside of Cleveland for the summer. It was a much anticipated trip, as going away to grandma’s was like going away to another […]

We could lay the same complaint against written letters: before the standardization of typography and letterforms, people might have made determinations about the author based on his penmanship rather than the character of his text; they might assume prejudices against him because of what region his letters identified him as being from. They might allow their visual impressions of a page to sway how they felt about the content.

Of course, that’s the purpose of design. The difference is that a designer’s manipulation of a reader’s emotions is intentional.

The apple has two major cultural significances for me: the shiny red apple for the teacher on the first day of school, and the dreaded apple that ruined humankind forever, given to Adam by Eve. When I think of apples in a symbolic context, in the context it might acquire within a movie’s narrative, I’m assuming one of these two themes.

But interaction design alone isn’t enough. In order to bring intimacy to the web, those of us in charge of designing web experiences have to think very carefully about the emotions people feel when engaged with things they love.

At the heart of user experience lies a word I rarely hear bandied about in professional circles: love. It’s an unfortunate omission since, as Mick Malisic of frog design fame points out, “Design really is about loving something.”

Although White people are thought of as standard or neutral in visual design, there really is no such things as a neutral person. Visual designers need to thoughtfully consider their use of ethnicity in design.

A blinking OPEN sign is just as bad as an article written in “stop motion” writing. Design should make my life easier. I should be able to get my donuts and read an article thanks to design, not despite it.