It’s not very often that a font makes me drool, or almost ache that I don’t have the funds to buy all the fonts I want. Hoefler’s slab-serif Archer did just that. For a font that reminds me of Courier, it’s amazingly elegant and somehow honest. It makes words come alive, with a simple beauty and simplicity.

Joshua Porter writes an eloquent post on Five Principles to Design By. To quote my favorite part:

“Simplicity is treading a line: knowing what to keep and what to throw away…it comes across as magic when it works, because none of the complexity is transferred to users…only simplicity. That is the highest achievement for a designer.”

He brushes aside the clutter that is sometimes considered “design” and dives right to the heart of what design is and what its purpose should be. Delivering the message is key. Spoon-feeding content is the raison d’être. So naturally “Great Design is Invisible” tops my own list of basic design principles. As I go into every project, I actually visualize the word “Simple” in my mind. I might stylize it or animate it, something so that all my concentration is focused on that principle, and the message becomes the Main Event.

I’m a simple person at heart: I don’t like drama, I prefer quiet with a slight unobstrusive background buzz to keep me from going insane and I like to be on my own, even in a room full of people. Well, I’m pretty introverted anyway, and I don’t like calling attention to myself. I even purposely adopted 2 great looking dogs so that people ooh and aw over them, and hardly even look at me. That’s just the way I like it.

And this is why I like being a designer.

Because if I do my job well, no one ever notices. No one pays attention to the hours of work I put into a little ad. No one notices if I just spent a half an hour adjusting the spacing between two letters in a title on a CD label because they weren’t quite right. If I did my job well, my clients won’t even realize what they like about the work I’ve done. They just know they’re happy, and that gives me the sense of fulfillment I need to start another project. My work should be like I like to keep myself: neat and clean, simple, and most of all, nestled nicely behind the scenes of the main event.

Justin Shattuck’s beautiful site was recently featured on a lot of style gallery sites, and for good reason. It’s well layed-out, nice colors, pretty good contrast, great content. And as he pointed out in a recent post, being noticed has as many good points as bad. One of the most unfortunate results of such accolades are those who hop on for a free ride by ripping off someone’s design. I sympathize with the complaint. I’ve spent way too many hours working on this site, moving stuff here, tweaking stuff there, completely thowing out something I just spent hours on because it just doesn’t fit. It’s part of me, like a child (or at least a really well-liked cousin). Read the rest of this entry »