The Hickensian

18.06.06 Good Design vs Great Design

23 comments
Tagged with: atmedia, speaking

Never Mind the Comic Sans It was a real honour to prepare and present the “Good Design vs Great Design” panel with Veerle and Cameron, and I don’t care if that sounds trite. It’s something I’d never have foreseen, except in some sort of cheese-fuelled dream. As promised, here are the slides from our presentations, along with the URLs I mentioned:

Download great_design_slides.zip

Cindy Li and Steve Marshall both have notes from the panel, and I intend to get the podcast transcribed when its available from VIvabit.

URLs mentioned in the presentations:

Khoi Vinh’s Subtraction for examples of how to show hierarchy without changes in type size.
Jason Santa Maria’s redesign of A List Apart where the typography is the design itself.
Denis Radenkovic’s LogoLog for examples of clever logos.
Survey of default fonts installed for Windows, Mac and Unix.
Sign up for Type catalogues from Type Foundries such as FontFont and House Industries
Richard Rutters’ Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the web
Mark Boulton’s series Five Simple Steps to Better Typography.

Also, someone in the audience asked about the problem of scaling up’ in the future. This post by Dave Hyatt of the Safari team was the link I mentioned in my reply – I hope its useful!

Speaking

Anyone who knows me, knows that I really don’t feel I’m a ‘speaker’, but Patrick Griffiths is very good at doing sad puppy eyes and appealing to ego, so I agreed to be a part of the panel! I’m really glad he did, in fact I wished I could talk for longer. There was so much about typography that I wanted to talk about, and the wee 12 minute slot that we each had was only long enough to highlight a few elements. It seemed to go OK, there were a lot of encouraging comments afterwards, and I had a star-struck fan-boy moment when Jeffrey Veen came up to tell me he enjoyed the panel (apparently he likes the ‘g’ of Meta too!).

It boosted my confidence that I might have something to say that some people would find interesting, and who knows, I may just do it again sometime.

I was also asked back for the wrap-up session of @Media , The Hot Topics panel, with Tantek, Eric Meyer, Jeremy Keith and Molly. Jeremy revealed hidden talents in moderating the panel like the genial host. I always feel that SXSW could do with a final wrap-up section like this, to avoid that ‘fizzling out’ feeling. Again I was chuffed to be asked, and genuinely enjoyed every minute.

I enjoyed @media even more than last year, with a superb venue (only let down by the Wi-Fi), and a great spread of people. As always, time is too short to get to speak to everyone as much as I would’ve wanted, or see every presentation. Hats off to Vivabit for organising such an enjoyable event. Please get those podcats online so that I can catch up on the ones I missed!

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No.1

∞ Shane said 1332 days ago:

Hi Jon – thanks a lot for making those slides available. There’s a lot of great information in those links too.

No.2

∞ luxuryluke said 1332 days ago:

“Cheese-fuelled dream” you say? Of course it is!
Sorry you got chuffed, let us know how you get along.

Also, you mention not much WiFi. I’ve seen people SubEthaEdit the events to death, however, I can’t seem to find much online, yet. I’ll keep looking!

glad you enjoyed it, Jon. Slip a few comments into your Found Sounds, eh?

No.3

∞ George said 1331 days ago:

Thanks for posting this. Some really interesting stuff in there. I do feel a bit sorry for poor old Comic Sans though. I know it is horrible but almost every presentation ridicules and lambasts the poor font. I saw Dave Shea’s presentation had a lengthy section on the horrors of Comic Sans. I have never known a designer who uses Comic Sans but it seems like a proverbial donkey to kick at any opportunity. I would like to see Comic Sans raise a knowing cheer from the design community rather than having eggs thrown at it every conference. Poor Comic Sans…

No.4

∞ Richard said 1331 days ago:

Couldn’t make @media, but the slides look interesting. Although one part that always seems to be missed on these ‘design’ talks is the fundamental part of concept generation, sure we now have a huge repository of information regarding typography, colour theory & grid systems etc. – but what about ideas? How about showing how ideas can be brainstormed, documented (mind maps) how a design should fundamentally be born of an concept?

I guess I’m waiting for (or should be starting) a call to arms for an understanding / documentation on the conceptual stages of designing, rather than production.

No.5

∞ Jon Hicks said 1331 days ago:

“I would like to see Comic Sans raise a knowing cheer from the design community rather than having eggs thrown at it every conference. Poor Comic Sansâ€¦”

It is quite rightly ridiculed, as it used out of context so often. If you saw my presentation, you’d know that I said “Comic Sans is for great designs too” – in the right context.

“I guess Iâ€™m waiting for (or should be starting) a call to arms for an understanding / documentation on the conceptual stages of designing, rather than production.

Thats another session in itself!

No.6

∞ Matt Caton said 1331 days ago:

I think you are right Richard. Im afraid I really felt the session was a bit confused as to who the audience were. If it aimed at designers then “green is for go and red is for danger” is a bit high level. If it aimed at developers then as you say the real issue is how to get ideas, not how to work them. Jon’s bit on typography was genuinely great though, as the passion was very evident which in turn was very motivating to “go out there and improve”. However, the introduction to color and grids was surely teaching granny to suck eggs and at a ridiculously high level.
I think this was a problem with all the panel sessions to be fair. Especially bad was the Strategic CSS management session. The concensus was “use whatever works for you”. Well, thanks kindly. And if “use comments” is worth a Â£400 entry fee then sign me up as a speaker next year cos I want some of that.

No.7

∞ Matthew Pennell said 1331 days ago:

I reallly enjoyed your presentation, Jon – it was one of the highlights of the event.

No.8

∞ Miles said 1331 days ago:

Really enjoyed your presentation Jon and actually put you down on the feedback as one of my favourite speakers. As you say it was a pity you didn’t have more time than just the 12mins to really expand on what you had to say.

It was a little noticeable that you were nervous before the start but I’m not sure why! I felt you dominated the panel with a funny, passionate and well presented talk.

Hope to see you doing another presentation soon!

No.9

∞ Ben Darlow said 1331 days ago:

Indeed, a great presentation – in particular the typography parts. Another example of Comic Sans being used appropriately was the Ben & Jerry’s site, although it appears they’re no longer using it.

Of course, one area of typography which rarely gets mentioned or discussed is that of legibility in the accessible sense; cognitive disorders such as dyslexia, and even mild visual impairment can make some typefaces better choices than others (plus of course the good rules on letter-spacing and line height, etc.).

Anyway, good stuff, and great meeting you Jon. I’ll be getting in touch with Aubergine about some nice business cards. Hopefully they do them in ‘bone’...

No.10

∞ David Hughes said 1331 days ago:

I thought you did a great job Jon. For somebody who doesn’t like public speaking I thought you were a natural.

Thanks for fuelling my growing fascination with typography…

No.11

∞ Erwin Heiser said 1331 days ago:

Thanks for sharing John, as always great info for those of us who couldn’t make it. Cheers!

No.12

∞ Andy Croll said 1331 days ago:

As I said on the day Jon, I enjoyed the typography section too, cheers muchly.

I can see Matt’s (#6) point about the egg-sucking, but the audience was extremely mixed, from design rock-stars to those with no interest in typography (shame on them!).

I think my trick for next year will be to go to the sections I know nothing about, as for audience of the 300+ size a high level is all that can really be delivered.

Perhaps next years conference needs a key of some kind, use of ‘An Introduction to…’ or detail where there is a more detailed practical session?

No.13

∞ 3stripe said 1331 days ago:

Cheers for sharing this :)

(It was very interesting that all 3 panelists used http://www.subtraction.com/ to illustrate their particular topic…)

Your style was great, really natural… (is Cameron Moll a robot?)

Overall, I actually found a lot of the presentation very patronising as a designer, but I’m sure the developer-types found it much more useful.

No.14

∞ Alex said 1331 days ago:

Hi John.

I really enjoyed your panel discussion. Like Matt said above it was one of the highlights. I always get a kick out of listening to other designers discuss there work as it helps to demystify the process and opens me up to new ways of working.

Hereâ€™s hoping that weâ€™ll hear more for you in the future.
Alex

No.15

∞ Derren said 1331 days ago:

The font freak in the audience who won the book for shouting out helvetica 65 – that was me. There were at least three others I could have named… but we’ll draw a veil over that. Thanks for the book, anyway.

It’s very good advice to sign up for the excellent stuff fontfont send out. If you ever get the chance to see Erik Spiekermann speak, go. He is witty and insightful at the same time. Probably has something to do with the day job – convincing corporates in suits to spend thousands of euro on their own custom-made font can’t be easy.

One more book recommendation – dutch type by Jan Middendorp (www.dutchtype.org). Really beautiful type, great book design. Probably won’t fit next to the loo though.

No.16

∞ Michael said 1331 days ago:

Thanks for the slides Jon, I was hoping you’d get these up today so that I can re-live the panel discussion with my creative director this afternoon. There were some interesting points made and I enjoyed the session massively.

Thanks again, Mike

No.17

∞ Christine said 1331 days ago:

I really enjoyed the panel discussion and as a relatively new designer I found it very informative. I’d echo the idea of different “skill” levels being associated with the presentations next time.

No.18

∞ Jeremy Keith said 1330 days ago:

Such a shame I couldn’t make it to the design panel. I really would have liked to have seen it but that’s the way the schedule crumbles.

The closing panel was a blast. That was a heck of a lot of fun. I hope we get to do it again next year.

No.19

∞ Owen said 1330 days ago:

I very much enjoyed the panel. While you don’t think of yourself as a speaker, I would have to disagree. So much so I insist that Patrick allocates you your own presentation slot next year! It was nice to very briefly catch you at the party on Thursday night. Sorry I couldn’t help you at the bar!

No.20

∞ Hilde said 1330 days ago:

I am proud to have met and talked to you, Jon, and my pride went up the roof as my Mint started throwing big numbers at me!

Thank you for the conversation, thank you for your inspiration, thank you for the beautiful business card – and thank you for your link and kind words!

No.21

∞ jacquie said 1329 days ago:

Hello – I enjoyed reading your typography presentation – very helpful to those of us who are not expert designers, or didn’t make it to @Media 2006. I recognized many of the fonts used in your presentation, too, and thought it was interesting that you say Europeans love sans serif fonts, while Americans love serif – since I am American. I think Mac users in general like sans serif fonts regardless. I think PC users do also, depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the font. The sans serif hfonts that have as many possibilities and especially if you are designing logos.

The grids were also very helpful to view overtop of the web page examples. And yes, the photo of the black lab on the Subtraction web page really made that whole website, in my opinion, as well as the simple use of black, white, and the orange link colors. It is very clean and crisp, and makes a bold statement especially the dog – so maybe that is what you mean by “great design.” I think iit s also a process of seeing things in the fonts and the possibilities of puting them together in unique ways to create something new. Easier said than done in many cases, but I think easily recognizable, when it’s done well.