Looking Good, Getting Used

More from Design Observer on the revival of American Typewriter! I*NY!

Screw 100% of anything.
Congrats to Typographica.
But we knew it all along.

hhp

Interesting that a layout that can't even spell Jakon Nielsen's name correctly (NOT Neilsen) still won.

Didn't even see that, Fazal. Wow.

By the way, it's Jakob Nielsen, not "Jakon"... (the silkscreening on my Toshiba laptop keyboard is wearing out, and I am not a touch-typist).

Ah, Jakob Usability is so boooooooring. And I think his "new" lay out sucks and looks 4 years old. I guess he still assumes 80% runs 56k6.
Typographi.ca is a blog so it suits (and I actually like the lay out, i think it's better than Jakob's) but .. never mind, waste of space..

;)

I think it’s a nice balance of form and function. Typographically speaking, I’m liking the use of American Typewriter, but hating the straight apostrophe in “Jakob's Column on Web Usability.”

I question the opinions – usability, design, whatever – of anyone who has a page like this on their site.

I've become a regular reader here in the past few weeks. I enjoy the content. But I don't know what's so great about a layout that makes such poor use of the screen, and let's be honest, is not all that unique. (Is it some kind of 'blog' template with token modifications? off the top of my head, wrongsideofhappiness.blogspot.com and andrewdavidchamberlain.com are both nearly identical to this site.)

There is a world of difference between Michael Pick's winning design and this site's. A quick 'view source' will show you that. A two-column format is about the only thing you have in common. Appropriating Mr. Pick's 'high marks by useability experts' for yourself is indeed silly.

Ouch. Yes, we did start from a blog template. I guess my point with this post was that we hope our "token modifications" were genuine improvements and judiciously integrated.

No, we're not super fancy. I'm glad you enjoy the content. My goal with this site's design is to do everything I can to make the content clear and readable. If it's working for you, I'm happy.

There is a world of difference between Michael Pick’s winning design and this site’s. A quick ‘view source’ will show you that.

I would never suggest that our code is advanced, clever, or even clean. That's why I asked for help with it. Michael Pick himself - along with some other excellent people - answered the call to make those improvements.

"not yet as famous as Elvis" but surely on his way to be.
(I didn't even know about him until now, but anyway...)

This is usable? Pretty much the only reason I use CSS at the moment is to get away from relative font sizes.

Oh, and the spelling mistake (which I noticed right away) is inexcusable, not to mention shocking that it hasn't been fixed. But I suppose that's what Nielsen gets for holding a contest to redesign his site, rather than hiring a designer.

I should clarify my last post: I don't mean to slam the winning design; it's certainly far better than most of the entries I saw (and Nielsen deserved every last crappy one of them for doing this as a contest -- in fact, I think he should have been forced to use one). Pick's icons are even pretty cute. But Typographica wins hands-down for simple, elegant presentation.

A LETTER TO JAKOB

Dear Jakob,

Congratulations on your position as worldwide Emperor of usability. Could be so presumptuous as to offer one piece of advice? You should stick to usability, because you sound very credible, and I for one would never question your research and your assertion that every site should acommodate everybody's browser and condition.

However, when you start telling people how to design or how to market, or what kind of photography to use, your underclothes really begin to show. (I'm referring to numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 in your Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines.) *wink*

Signed,

Your humble subject

PS - Jakob, I'm using sarcasm since it's the lowest form of humor. In other words, it's the most accessible. Thought you'd appreciate that.

Paraphrasing someone (maybe Kottke?) remarking recently about Virginia Prostrel, "Someone who rants on about design should be able to make something a little less ugly." Worth a note that Jakob is violating rules 1 and 5 on his own homepage. (I'm sure he'd argue that Useit.com is not a 'corporate' website, despite its shameless, self-promotional client-groping focus).

A LETTER TO TYPOGRAPHI.CA

Dear Stephen et al.,

While I like the layout of Typographi.ca, unfortunately, I find it completely non-usable. It's mostly because you encode font sizes in pixels. On my Dell notebook that runs 1600x1200 at 133 dpi, the type is just too small. In order to read Typographi.ca, I always have to start Opera and use its zoom feature -- I can only read your website at 120%, better 150%.

I'd recommend that you try implementing a zoom feature server-side. Please take a look on how I have done it at http://www.1200.ffomedia.de/ -- it's not hard if you have all the site in PHP.

Except not being able to normally read your site, I find it a great place! (Pun intended) ;)

Best,
Adam

http://www.alistapart.com - also uses a two column layout with a header image, is there a wry smile towards Mr. Zeldman everytime its contents are downloaded into your browser.

With the advent of blog software, compliant css and valid markup - standards will finally throttle the life out of design.

I like the typographi.ca design. It is simple. It is reminiscent of an old blog template even I used, but it's form and function serve me well.

The content is quality, and honestly - I spend more time hitting refresh to see if there are any new banners.

Stephen, I'd be more than happy to help out with any form of a redesign. (And personally, I'd love to crawl into your backend and do some restructuring.)

Ew. Ever since the backend jokes from Joe and Jared at TypeCon I'm a bit sensitive to the term.

But I thank you very much for the offer. Right now we're covered, but it helps to know we've got extra help if we need it.

crikey, what have i done? following the discussion on this thread, i recently emailed my friend paul a link to a useit.com page. i have just received this from paul...

'Oh my GAWD! I don't know WHAT'S going on. When I started my computer this
morning, a massive grinning Jakob Nielsen flashed for a split second across my screen. He's in there. I don't know how, but he's in there.'