“For too long typographic style and its accompanying attention to detail have been overlooked by website designers, particularly in body copy. In years gone by this could have been put down to the technology, but now the web has caught up. The advent of much improved browsers, text rendering and high resolution screens, combine to negate technology as an excuse.”

“Social by Social is a practical guide to using new technologies to create social impact. It makes accessible the tools you need to engage a community, offer services, scale up activities and sustain projects. Whoever you are, it shows you how to take technology and turn it into real world benefits.

We want to help people in the public and third sectors do more good, by showing them the power of these technologies and how to access them. In the process, we hope we can also educate funders and policy workers about the huge shift of mindset and expectations needed to commission these projects successfully, to give the innovators more space to work.”

“What I’d like to argue today is the goal should be good design, not more user data. It’s always possible to collect very interesting user data. But if the goal is to create a great product, is collecting user data always the best way to go about it? Do great product ideas in fact come from interesting user data?… People who invented [Google websearch] had a great idea, and they focused on this idea and they improved it by… very targeted usability testing… Should we have told those early search engineers, “You know what, you should go just study librarians for a couple of years. You would really learn a lot about how people do search and you really need to understand that space deeper”? My answer to that question is probably no. They were doing something great. They had lots of ideas on how to do how it well. They had good tools for improving their product the way it was. Doing the broader user research may have been interesting, but given their limited resources, it probably should not have been a priority.”

“When Dan Saffer first suggested that I move to San Francisco to be one of the founding partners of a new design studio, I laughed. I remember thinking, “That’s a flattering idea, but he must be joking.” I was immersed in other things at the time—leading a 25-person User Experience team at HUGE, training for the New York City triathlon, and in contract on new construction in Brooklyn—not to mention on another coast. I liked my life (and my income, to be honest) and had never seriously considered starting my own studio. Too much risk!”.

“Today we are inundated with such an immense flood of printed matter that the value of the individual work has depreciated, for our harassed contemporaries simply cannot take everything that is printed today. It is the typographer’s task to divide up and organize and interpret this mass of printed matter in such a way that the reader will have a good chance of finding what is of interest to him.”

“There are many reasons why centered type often doesn’t look that way, and the fix is usually visual rather than mechanical. It’s a truism of typography: If it doesn’t look right, it’s not right—even if your accurate-to-a-micron program says so. This conflict between what your eyes see and what your software says is probably most obvious in the case of centered type.”

“Color offers an instantaneous method for conveying meaning and message in your logo designs. It’s probably the most powerful non-verbal form of communication we can use as designers. Our minds are programmed to respond to color.”

“Alice Savoie started out with a foundation course in Applied Arts and then studied graphic design and typography for four years in Paris. She then set sail for the UK to follow the MA in Typeface Design at Reading University. Upon graduating in 2007 she relocated to London to work as a graphic designer. In March 2008 Alice joined Monotype Imaging as a full-time type designer.”

“The process of designing a logo differs from designer to designer. I’ll explain here how I handle the logo designs for my clients. The logo I’ll be discussing here is the Qlicks logo. Qlicks in an Internet Marketing company, specializing in strategic marketing communication.”

“If you don’t deal with bad feedback it can disrupt, slowly corrode, and in the end, kill your creativity. If you’ve ever said “Yes, I can change that” and know deep down inside of you a little bit of your creative soul died, then this article is for you. We’ll tackle negative feedback and learn how to combat it. You’ll discover the 12 ways to manage feedback and keep your creativity alive.”