Web Design Manifesto 2012

THANKS for the screenshot. I know that on my site ( Approx. Translator - we are talking about www.zeldman.com ) large font size. I did it myself. I am grateful to you for your desire to help, but I know what the site looks like in a browser with standard settings on a desktop computer. Moreover, I work in a design studio. There is a couple there.

This is my personal site. There are a lot of similar ones, but this one is mine. Designers who have websites should experiment if they can. Before becoming a terribly busy person, I did a redesign almost every week. Sometimes I experimented with regrettably low contrast. Sometimes with an absurdly small font size. I experimented with technologies that are used for creating layouts and various presentation options. I do it now, just not so often.

Many people who visited this site after redesign noticed how the font size changed. It's hard not to notice. In the end, the word is almost everything I left on the site. Some people say they like it. Others - they do not know what's best. Many still think. Several said it was terrible and suggested that I was crazy. However, no one, before you, thought that I simply did not have access to a desktop computer and therefore I have no idea what I did. Design can be good, bad, can leave you indifferent, but it is not accidental.
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Several people who didn’t like this design asked if I’ve heard about responsive design . I heard. I was there when Ethan Marcotte invented it, I published his groundbreaking article (and later his book , which I read in the form of drafts dozens of times and which I still sometimes scroll to give or send for pleasure), and was honored to be present at ethan's lecture and conduct 40 minute workshops on this topic for the last three years. We introduced responsive design as a practice in our studio and I myself talked about this in three different countries at various stages of implementation. I even used the elements of responsive design in the current redesign, but you have to look into the code and think carefully about how, since I still do not feel the desire to explain it.

This redesign is responsive for e-books, web fonts, mobile and wonderful applications like Instapaper and Readability , which solve the problem of meaningless cluttering of interfaces and non-content-oriented layouts by removing the designer from the equation. (This is not all that these applications do, but it’s one of the benefits of using them and it shows how pitiful the design we created is if users use third-party software to simply access the site’s materials. And it also suggests that who do not develop a design for the user will not soon develop a design for anyone.)

This redesign is intentionally made with exaggerations, but new ideas are often exaggerated to show the essence. The design was made with iterations, but it did not become unreadable or, in my opinion, ugly. How can the main text written by Georgia and the Franklin headlines be ugly? I like to see my words big. It inspires me to write better and more often.

If it was a website made for my client, I would not go so far. If it was a website made for a client, I would be worried that maybe a third of the initial reviews regarding the redesign would be negative. Hell, let's be realistic: if this was a website made for a client, I would not give up so many minor features and definitely would not make the size so big. But this is my personal site. There are many similar. But this one is mine. And on it, I will try to realize my ideas about design and draw conclusions. On it I will be confused, stray and sometimes make mistakes. If this design turns out to be a terrible mistake, I probably will soon realize this and change it. (In any case, I will change it sooner or later. This is the web. Nothing is being developed for centuries, even the beautiful Douglas Bowman Minima is not eternal.)

But so far I do not consider this design a mistake. I consider him a harbinger. We can not continue to develop the way we did if we want to lure people with content. We cannot continue to take money for advertising blocks, which our layouts have taught readers to ignore. We can no longer focus on technology, forgetting that the web is often just a layer between the reader and the writer.

Most of you know it all perfectly and think about it every time you are asked to create a new design. But even our best customers can sometimes refuse to implement great ideas, and even the most exciting projects contain elements of compromise. A personal website is a place where there is no room for compromise. Even if you lose some readers. Even if some people do not like what you are doing. Even if the rest can not understand why you are not doing everything the same way as all those people who certainly know what to do and how.

I do not think that you will see the same font size on many sites, but I am sure that in the near future you will be able to see many one-column sites with more than usual size on desktops and mobile devices. For some types of content, larger size and easy layout make sense regardless of screen size. You don’t even need to use Typekit or similar projects to experiment with large font sizes. In modern operating systems on modern monitors yesterday's classic fonts that come with any operating system can look consuming with a large size. Try the old, well-worn Times New Roman. You may be surprised.

Modern designer refuses to die.