Quality of design: Thoughtfulness and processes that lead to user delight, that make it likely that someone will seek out a product, pay extra for it or tell a friend.

Found it while reading an article by Zen Master Seth Godin, make sure you read the whole thing.

I believe the term comes from the print world which makes it all the more bizarre. I don’t intend to post all my thoughts on this matter right now but feel compelled to share with you an email I got from a fellow designer Haraldur Þorleifsson. This is what he had to say:

1. First of, what is the fold?

- around 20% of users on a desktop computer in the US have 1024×768 which is normally defined as the lowest resolution designed for.

- on a 1024x768px display the fold for a full screen browser is 578px. Many people see this as the fold.

2. What is your target audience?

- the around 20% of the users that have 1024×768 displays are by definition not likely to be high spending individuals – so even though the website should definitely be usable on that resolution it is questionable if those users should be a high priority.

- Around 4 in 5 of your users will have larger displays. And those individuals are much more likely to be big spenders.

3. What other people are doing:

- Almost no website has nothing below the fold (google.com is probably the only real example)

- Based on this, people are not just used to scrolling down for their content, you could argue that they expect it.

Apple.com (probably the most widely cited example of a well designed website):
- every product overview page is basically the same (see iphone.com as example). It has a menubar, logo, CTA button and a large image/text area. With the image, this takes up around 750px, which means about 170px higher than the fold cited for 1024x768px.
- This area is purely marketing, almost purely look-n-feel.
- The reason for the large image area is not that nobody has seen their products, on the contrary, their products are almost ubiquitous . The reason (in my opinion) is that when it comes to actually buying something (or signing up) a strong visual message is key for that final kick over the line. That visual message will be much more effective than not having to scroll down.

-If you add in the first few lines of the boxes below this area you can add about 150px giving it a total of around 900px high. All “real information” is below this area and the complete site can be up to a few thousand pixels high if the content demands it.

4. Questions?
- If you still want to aim for the fold, what px height should you go for? Should it be the 578px? Should it be the Apple 750-900 px high line?
- and once that px height has been set, what information should necessarily be in that area? Should it be a visual message or hardcore data?
- These are not minute details. The answer to these questions will probably significantly improve the impact of your website.

Kosmos & Kaos, our new web agency, has a client in the Bay Area that needs a new website and consulting on business development. This is one of our strong suits, design and business development.

The whole trip has been a joy, work went great, the client loved our proposal and now we are heading back to Iceland to finish the design and do programming. Stjáni has had more meetings than me on business development and has of course done a great job. We’ve met with old friends and made some new ones. Seen the City, the hills and ate some great food. We’ve also hooked up with our good friends from Clara, soon to be Birdcore as they’ve just opened offices here in SF, we will also be doing a new site for their Birdcore project, more on that later.

So I loved San Francisco especially China Town cause of all the tea in China but I cant wait to get back home to my beloved wife and kids, give them all loads of hugs and kisses. See you when I get there.

Namaste
g

PS, I leave you with some fantastic shots done by my good friend and San Francisco guide Gúndi the photographer

This time it was for best design or interface for the www.gitargrip.is site. It’s such a great joy since I got to do whatever I wanted on this one and the site is really “me” so to speak. Hopefully I will be able to do equally good work for other clients Some people seemed to think so cause Gítargrip and another site I designed and produced got nominated, that one for a local law firm called LS Legal.

After they had announced the awards in all the categories that were nominated I had ruled out winning anything this year. So when they announced this one it was a really good surprise. I had already sent my wife an SMS saying I hadn’t won anything this year, a short while later I had to send another one.

I just want to thank the judges and SVEF for the great gala they had and for hosting the awards every year, must take a lot of work I can imagine.

This award really makes me want to continue to push the envelope and do greater things, it’s always great to get a pat on the back for doing good work. Let alone if it comes from your pears. Hopefully next year I will win again, but that time round it will be through my newly formed web agency Kosmos & Kaos, but more on that later.

PS, I’ll add photos as soon as I get some

I’m having my favorite sunday morning right now, tea and my laptop on the kitchen table. I came across a great video on where apple draws it’s inspiration, by a german industrial designer Dieter Rams.

This is my first introduction to Mr. Rams and I’m feeling very inspired and excited, this guy knows his design and is very sober and honest about his work. His approach can easily be translated to web design as can any design principles, all design resides of a canvas of sort, be it an actual canvas, computer screen or your home. Design must interact with various elements to be considered successful. In web design you design the content, make the content accessble and beautiful.

Good design is emotional.

Mr. Rams has an excellent list of 10 principle of good design, I think we can all take this to heart and sharpen our design skills.

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is obtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long lasting
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

Design should not dominate people, it should help people – Dieter Rams

Be sure to check out the front page with christmas ornaments.

Namaste very much
gummisig

I used to create the pattern myself by creating a square pattern and saving it by going, Edit / Define pattern. This method works of course but it´s a drag doing and not all that efficient.

There are a bunch of tutorials around the web on how to do this with the brush. But I find that method to suck somewhat when your doing typical web designer work. It´s very inflexible.

Enter the styles palette
So the quick and easy method is just to use the styles palette. It comes with built in styles and some variations on dotted strokes.

Definitely not rocket science but a much faster and more elegant way to do this. Easy to copy stuff around and change as needed.

There are several versions to chose from, stroke weight, pixel spacing and other stuff. Be sure to try this out and save your self some valuable mouse moving time.

This is a list of the designers, graphic, web or other kind of designers.

Egill Harðar

An icelandic fellow designer and friend. I remember starting out designing stuff and he was very prominent at the icelandic web design stage in particular.

Alli Metall

The story behind Alli is pretty similar as Egill, was really doing remarkable (and still is) stuff when I was starting out. And we used to play golf together when we were younger. If I remember correctly I used to beat him consistently.

Jonathan Gerlach

Similar story as with Alli and Egill, Jonni is just a great designer. Make sure you swing by his site and look at all the juicy stuff. He works mainly in web design.

Jeffrey Zeldman

Can you really call Jeffrey a designer or just an amazing css nerd? Anyway his book designing with web standards changed the game for me

Jason Santamaria

Heard about this guy from Mr. Zeldman and thankful for it. Really helped me appreciate typography and attention to detail. Be sure to check out typedia while your at it.

Rob Morris

An australian bloke  which I´ve sent a few mails to and he´s always responded with kind words. His site greatly influenced the design of mine. I love his stuff.

James White

Those flares and diagonal lines just captivate me. And his use of subtle colors always make me happy

Tim Van Damme

This guy is just amazing. I heard of him through Elliot Jay Stocks whos another great designer. Tim designed the 24ways site that is one of my all time favorite sites to look and read.

There are probably more guys and gals that I cant remember at the moment. But man, these are some great ones, dont you think?

No designer is an island, or a designer island for that matter

The title of this entry can mean different things to different people. To me it means that no designer is an island. I´ve wanted to write something along these lines for some time, so here goes.

I was driving home from a gig I had one day and a thought occurred to me of how strange it is, as a designer, to say “I designed this”. It´s not really true. When you give it some thought it´s quite impossible to design something by yourself. We are totally dependent on other people and our environment for everything, absolutely everything.

If we take a very narrow view of it and only look me, Gummi, we will see that I cant even get up on time without the help of a cellphone manufacturer. Sony Ericsson made my cellphone. Then only looking at the design part, try to imagine all the people that made Photoshop. And then all the people that affected the people that made Photoshop and so on. None of them would be able to get to work without the help of other people, get food, be inspired, love or just be alive. I think is was the Buddha that said something like: “this is because that is”. It was called the law of co-arising.

Ubuntu, not the operating system, but the philosophy is also all about this. People are fully dependent on each other and would not exist unless the other person excised. There is no up unless there is a down, no black unless there is white & no designer without Photoshop There is no musician unless there is a listener and so on.

Or as the Zulus would say, “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu”, which means that a person is a person through other persons. We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others.
Quote www.buzzle.com

So the next time I open Photoshop I´m gonna try and remember that things are not as they seem. Try to feel appreciation for the opportunity of being a designer, and be thankful for the incredible “fact” that I am here and now doing what I´m doing because of the help of all the people that ever existed and the fact that a star sometime exploded to make this moment possible.

My mind can never comprehend the complexity of this world, but I sometimes feel like a real part of it. Like this world is part of me and I am part of it.

No one or no thing is here by accident.

That´s me, sitting in half lotus

There is not end to the fun it seems. Smashing Magazine, one of the best if not the best design and web design magazine´s on the web, featured gummisig.com in their article about best practices for effective design of about me pages. So it seems I got something right when designing this site.

It´s funny they picked that page especially and mentioned the photo. The photo was taken by my wife in the kitchen on my cellphone. It was always meant to be a temp image until I got a real picture taken. The publicity the site has gotten has caught me somewhat of guard and I haven’t gotten round to taking a new photo yet. One friend said about the photo, “ok, you are a pale Icelander but you really should get a better photo” , what can I say, I´m not that photogenic.

Much love to Smashing Magazine for featuring me, they are the coolest and I´ve been reading their stuff for years. So this is fantastic to say the least. But I´d better stop bragging about being featured here and there and start writing some real blog articles. I just looked at my blog and it´s almost only featured stuff. I really want to finish my writing for the making of gummisig.com, that will be a fun read.