Best Steve Jobs quote I have ever heard
“When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple with all these simple solutions, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. And your solutions are way too oversimplified, and they don’t work.”
“…Then you get into the problem, and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while…”
“…But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, underlying principle of the problem, and come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works.”
—Steve Jobs (1984)
Thank you to Jeff Veen for sharing this quote with us at An Event Apart.
What I learned from Jeff Veen and Hay Net
We design websites for people. Well at least that’s who I thought we were suppose to be designing for. Anyway, when I browse the web I see a bunch of cluttered up web pages and unwelcoming copy text. Somewhere along the road the user has been cast aside for personal agendas, corporate politics, intrusive marketing tactics or some other reason. A lot of sites try and fill every inch of the page with as much information as they can, creating a confusing message that leaves the user unsure of what they need to do or where they need to go.
Where did simplicity go? Jeff Veen provided a brilliant example of good web design by showing us a picture of the old Hay Net website. He said people come to Hay Net for 2 reasons, they either have hay or need hay. So what does Hay Net do? They provide their users with 2 options of have hay or need hay. Brilliant. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we are designing web sites.
I now present you with Hay Net.
* Update: It’s a shame the new Hay Net site decided to clutter things up.
Inspiring words from Jason Santa Maria
At An Event Apart in New Orleans, Jason Santa Maria gave an inspiring talk on why Good Design Ain’t Easy. Here a few quotes from my notes of his presentation.
“The message comes first, it’s not about making everything look nice”
I’m so glad to hear someone say this. As a web designer our primary focus should be on creating a design that clearly conveys the message of the site, not on creating a graphical masterpiece that looks nice. Of course it never hurts to have very functional web site that looks good. Jason goes on to say,
“It’s not fair to compare print to the web. They are different animals”
When we design a website we need to break free from the print design mindset and realize that we are designing for the web. The web has different constraints and different objectives then print does. Also when we evaluate a web sites we need to evaluate them like we would different animals. Good web design is different then good print design.
Sneak Peak of the new Virb
I have always been a fan of the Virb Inc designers. They have a clean, simplistic style that is rarely found on high traffic web sites. For the longest time they have been redesigning the inner and outer parts of Virb. They recently posted some screen shots of their new design and it looks good. Actually, everything these guys design looks good. The new site should be a breath of fresh air from mybook and facespace.
Web 2.0 Out The Wazoo
As much as I hate the term Web 2.0 and all the buzz words and hype the stem from it, the true innovation and meaning behind the word is quite grand. Web 2.0 as they call it, is people taking their ideas and innovations and moving them on to a web platform. Most of these ideas and sites go unnoticed and have a short life expectancy. But many of these sites are well designed and right on track with the latest design trends.
So if you’re a designer looking for ideas, especially 2.0 trendy looking ideas. Try the site gotoweb20.net for web 2.0 sites both big and small.