kadavy.net

What Steve Taught Me

2011-10-06T03:13:01Z

Just hours after the official announcement, it’s probably not news to you that Steve Jobs has passed away. His family has lost a husband and father; Apple has lost their founder and leader; and we have all lost one of the greatest minds the world has known. I’ve lost one of my heroes.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I can’t quantify the number of ways that Steve’s work has made my life better. Besides the fact that he made incredible products that have inspired and enabled me to explore my own creativity, the way that he approached work and life has served as a roadmap whenever I doubted my own convictions.

I was first introduced to Steve’s famous Stanford Commencement Address around the time that I began my own creative journey. I had recently come to terms with the fact that I had such a burning desire to follow my own curiosities and passions that I couldn’t possibly – in good faith – work for someone else. I wasn’t quite sure what I would wind up doing, but – scary as it was – I was looking forward to finding out. I cashed out a bunch of Apple stock that I had made a healthy profit from (thanks for that, too, Steve), and vowed to obey whatever made my heart beat a little faster.

I honestly don’t recall the very first time that I saw the video, but I know that it rang true enough that I have watched it dozens of times since then. Any time that I doubted myself or felt frustrated with the entrepreneurial process, I watched the video. If a friend ever needed motivation, I told them to watch it. I was jealous of them for having, still ahead of them, the experience of watching it for the first time. Steve put into clear words what had been merely a high-volume murmur in my head.

If I were to quote every phrase that has echoed through my head at some point in the past few years, I’d end up transcribing the whole thing. Here are a few of the principles – which now inform my every action – that I’ve taken away from Steve’s wisdom.

You are already naked

Life is too short to not do what you love. You are here temporarily, and in the grand scheme of the universe, you are really less significant than a grain of sand. It sounds dramatic; and maybe by pure faith, you simply disagree. Your brain will try to trick you, filling you with “fear of embarrassment or failure.” People around you will off-load these fears onto you, trying to “drown out your inner voice” with doubts that are really of no consequence.

At the same time, life is long enough (if you’re lucky), that you should build something that matters to you. One little thing you do today, you may be thanking yourself for 10 years from now.

You can’t connect the dots moving forward

The world is constantly changing, with seemingly disparate subjects occasionally serendipitously colliding to create innovation. While the obscure topic that arouses your curiosity today may seem insignificant now, it may bring a new perspective in your approach to another challenge. The only way you’ll find out is if you heed its call.

The lightness of being a beginner again

Sometimes we become so familiar with our main domain of expertise that we can’t possibly see it in a new way. When you’re presented with something unfamiliar, embrace the lightness of being a beginner again. Seek out new things of which you have no knowledge. The new dots may later connect, after all.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

It’s easy to get too comfortable: to rest upon your past achievements, and stay the conservative course. This can be a nice reward for a job well done, but it’s a dangerous place to stay for too long. If you haven’t felt “hungry” for awhile, look hard for something to be hungry for – it’s out there. Don’t be afraid to be “foolish” – to risk what you’ve earned to once again follow your stomach.

That’s what Steve taught me. If you haven’t seen his talk, do yourself the favor of a lifetime and watch it. Live your life by these words, and you won’t regret a moment.

Thank you so, so much, Steve.

What did Steve teach you?

No related posts.

“Design for Hackers” available on Kindle

2011-09-16T20:29:15Z

As I was writing Design for Hackers, I didn’t think the Kindle version would really be worthwhile. So, naturally, I didn’t even think about it as I announced that Design for Hackers was available on Amazon.

Additionally, I didn’t even think to notice that it wasn’t yet available on Kindle. My publisher had shipped the epub to Amazon in August, after all.

But, many of you have asked about the Kindle version, and – thanks to giving Amazon a nudge – now it’s here. I went ahead and bought a copy myself just a couple of hours ago, and I’m very pleasantly surprised. The words are right there for reading (and there are LOTS of words in this book), and the illustrations (with the exception, of course, for the color chapters) serve their purpose wonderfully.

So, if you’ve been waiting for the Kindle version, or wondering if it would be any good – I’d have to say that this book could still be extremely useful this way. You could do the majority of reading on the Kindle itself, and supplement with CloudReader, iPhone, or iPad for color examples. I know how much lugging around extra stuff sucks. You can start reading Design for Hackers in minutes if you wish.

Update on ranking

After doing incredibly well on the Amazon best-seller list, the paper version is still standing strong at #108 overall on Amazon, and just dropped to #2 on the Computers & Internet category. Buying the paper version helps this ranking (and any hopes of a NYTimes ranking), but if you bought the Kindle version instead – I couldn’t say I would mind that at all.

Update on out-of-stock issues

Note that Amazon currently says that Design for Hackers will ship in “10 to 14 days.” From what I’ve been told by my publisher, this isn’t accurate. Amazon is it’s own beast, and unfortunately, we have very little control over what that page says. Amazon just ordered a bunch more books, and will be getting them shortly. However, (and amazingly) all of the first print run has now been sold to vendors (such as Amazon), so Wiley is printing a new batch right now.

Thanks again, so much, for your shocking enthusiasm and support. I can’t even process what is happening right now.

UPDATE: I’ve also been informed that the Kindle version is available in the UK, and in Germany (in English).

Design for Hackers (the book) is here!

Zero to Best-Seller in 4 Hours

2011-09-15T18:07:36Z

7:35 this morning I was awoken by a call from my Publisher, Chris Webb from Wiley. I wasn’t expecting to hear these words any time soon in my life:

Best-selling author, David Kadavy!

I was aware that yesterday Design for Hackers ranked as highly as #18 overall on Amazon, but I hadn’t really been called this before – especially not from one of the world’s largest publishers. This was for real.

Even Chris was surprised to be saying this. Weeks earlier, as I prepared for the launch, I asked him what was the ultimate, maximum thing I could possibly expect to achieve with this book.

“Usually, we try to go for top 100 on the Computers & Internet category.”

When I asked, timidly, whether I should go for NYTimes best-seller status, he said it was “not possible.”

Just a “Technology Book”

As I understand it, the reason was that Design for Hackers is what is referred to as a “technology book,” in the publishing industry. Everything about these books is designed to get them out quickly enough that they aren’t out-of-date by the time they are released. The timeline is breakneck fast (I had 6 months to write – long by “technology book” standards), and (maybe because of this?) the price tends to be much higher (around $40 cover price) than your typical paperback (around $15). Plus, the audience is much, much smaller.

Somehow, on launch day, my book easily burned through #1 in the Computers & Internet category, all of the way to #18 overall on Amazon (currently #32). Author Central says there are over 8,000,000 books being sold on Amazon. #18. Wow.

Design for Hackers blew past many mainstream titles: Go the F**ck to Sleep, Dick Cheney’s In My Time, and even past Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body. (It’s only sort of coincidental that “4 Hours” is part of the title of this post. I really admire, and have learned a lot, from Tim’s work. This book couldn’t have happened without many things I learned from The 4-Hour Work Week)

This despite nearly everything that usually comes along with a mainstream book release. I can hardly count the number of things that weren’t exactly how it “should” be done about this launch:

The release came earlier than I had expected, so I didn’t have time for the standard “pre-order push.” This helps determine how many books are printed and shipped, and helps with NYTimes best-seller status, so it was purportedly not that critical.
Probably somewhat due to the above, Amazon ran completely out-of-stock within about an hour. It currently says it “Usually ships within 7 to 13 days.” Who buys a book that is that back-ordered!? Apparently, you do, and I thank you for that. (my publisher has informed me that they are working with Amazon on getting the book back in stock)
There were ZERO reviews on the Amazon page. The book timeline has been fast, and this book is a pretty in-depth read, so there wasn’t time to get genuine reviews up. (There is currently a review up from an early reader)
Most physical bookstores don’t have the book on their shelves. Not that there are many left. But, the other day I wanted to drop by my local Barnes & Noble to sign some books, only to find out they still weren’t in stock.

Not to mention that I have no publicist, no literary agent, and no staff.

So, how did this happen?

I’m not going to pretend this is a complete mystery just for the sake of appeal. I worked with what experience, resources, and relationships I had to do the best launch I could. I, of course, want this book to do very, very well. I talked with friends like Noah Kagan (AppSumo), and Ramit Sethi (NYTimes best-selling author of I Will Teach You to be Rich) to see what advice they had. I made sure to keep an email list, and cherish its subscribers, and to try to coordinate a launch in which I get lots of people to all buy my book at once.

There are a few things that I can posit (besides a hunger for design literacy) contributed to such an amazingly successful launch: my email list, Hacker News, and Kickstarter.

The email list

This group of folks has by far had the most impact (though most of them come from Hacker News, which I’ll talk about next). I’ve built it up since I announced the book deal. I tried to give them content as it came along, though honestly, I didn’t get as much out as I had planned because the book-writing was just too intense. I’ve had plenty of unsubscribes, but many have stuck with me along the way. I’ve gotten to know many of them, gotten their feedback and support, and learned a lot about what they need to learn about design.

So, after posting on my blog, I emailed these amazing people and explained to them my situation: my book is out > I want it to do well on Amazon > please buy it.

Hacker News

Incredibly, there were not one, but two links related to Design for Hackers on the front page of Hacker News all day yesterday: the blog post (which wasn’t a gigantic surprise), but even the Amazon link (which was a huge surprise). The blog post alone got over 10,000 views yesterday. 10,000 views on a post that basically says “hey, here’s my book, please buy it?”

Since the Amazon link actually performed better on Hacker News (and is now on the Amazon best-seller list), I can only imagine it got much more traffic.

Kickstarter

A couple of weeks ago, I also had a successful Kickstarter campaign. Part of the reason I couldn’t coordinate a “pre-launch” was because it took nearly a month just to get my campaign accepted to Kickstarter. It got rejected twice, but I kept working on it. Honestly, it turned out much better because of it.

The Kickstarter campaign had a number of benefits. I also suspect it may have had the killer benefit:

I got to practice launching. I don’t have a ton of experience launching things (other than blog posts). It was good practice in trying to convey what I had to offer strongly enough that 138 people – many whom I didn’t know before – took out their wallets and gave me money to tour the U.S..
It built awareness. I was amazed at how much people rallied around the Kickstarter campaign. I’m sure many people who hadn’t heard of my book before did because of it’s success.
It built my confidence. When you spend most of your day behind a computer, in your apartment by yourself, you sometimes have no idea if anyone really cares about what you’re producing. It’s always nice to have positive feedback and be reassured that there will be some people who are interested in what you’re offering.

**And the killer benefit?**

I ordered the books for Kickstarter backers, in succession, on Amazon yesterday. It may surprise you that it was actually much easier (and just as cost-effective) to just send the books to my Kickstarter backers through my Amazon Prime account. Yup, I paid Amazon’s full price for each of them. One side-benefit was Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments, so I got to use my balance from that to buy the books (so, I didn’t have to pay Amazon Payments fees on that portion). I knew I was going to be busy with the launch, so I hired a contractor to do the ordering for me.

Not a ton of orders. “Only” 70 books. They were doing it so fast that Amazon’s fraud department called to make sure the activity was authorized. “Are you buying things today?” “Yes, I most certainly am.”

So, while my blog post was going viral, and many of you were kindly buying my books, my Kickstarter backers were also having their books ordered for them. This may have helped with the ranking.

I say may because Amazon’s rankings are a big mystery. The only thing I really know about them is that they are updated very rapidly – probably by the hour.

I was told through a couple of sources that if I ordered all of the books from the same account that the orders wouldn’t affect my ranking. Other sources said that it might. I suppose that it probably did.

That’s It?

Of course, these things didn’t materialize out of thin air. This is just what I did to make the best of what I had at hand. I still like to think that people have enjoyed my writing thus far around the Design for Hackers topic, and that they are generally amazingly hungry to learn more about design. It’s still incredible to me that something as seemingly mundane as fonts and colors is of such interest to so many people.

How far can this go?

In my conversation with my publisher this morning, he conceded that now, yes, it may be possible to reach the NYTimes best-seller list. Even with the lack of reviews, and out-of-stock woes, this little “technology book” could hit the mainstream. Could you imagine that?

Imagine a discussion on NPR about the hidden meanings of different fonts.

Imagine Conan O’Brien talking about design literacy.

Imagine Oprah talking about white space. (even if she hadn’t retired, this, admittedly, would be unlikely, but you get the idea.)

Furthermore, imagine the mainstream media using the word “hacker” for what it really means: someone with a thirst for solving problems, a passion for sharing, and a vision to reinvent his or her world.

Maybe I’m just dreaming, but you’ve already exceeded my dreams. So, thank you for that.

No related posts.

Design for Hackers (the book) is here!

2011-09-18T01:06:53Z

It was less than 10 months ago that I told you that I would be writing Design for Hackers. Less than 10 months, and the book is already available. In fact, I just signed a bunch of books for some of the amazing 138 backers of the Kickstarter campaign, and I’m also packing my bags and going on tour, starting (oxymoronically) with stops in Boston and NYC next week.

UPDATE (4:33pm CST): I just realized that Design for Hackers is now #36 #22 #18 on ALL OF AMAZON (screenshot below for posterity). Wow, I am so blown away – I never expected this. Thank you. -David

TL;DR

This is going to be a massive post, so here’s a little outline for easy skipping.

how this book came to be
the book
why I want you to buy today
teaming up with Hacker Monthly & KISSmetrics
questions?
I’m going on tour!

Such a fast timeline is typical of “technology” books such as this. There was actually merely 6 months of actual writing time allotted for this book. It was a long, cold, winter holed up in my apartment writing. I put everything on hold: my client work, travel plans (I turned down a free round trip to Hawaii using a friend’s extra airline miles!), and the majority of my social life. There was no time for distractions as I dug in for the biggest project of my life: condensing my entire understanding of what makes good design into 300-or-so short pages.

A lifetime, plus six months

Six months doesn’t seem long, but as I like to tell those who ask, the book took a lifetime, plus six months, to write. It all began with my childhood obsession with drawing. I passed many boring Nebraska days, alone in my room, drawing. I drew everything: I copied from “how-to-draw” books, I drew characters from my favorite video games, and I even drew lettering. My encouraging relatives would sometimes surprise me with $5 bill for drawing when visiting their houses – while my brother mowed the lawn.

When it came time to go to college, it naturally took only moments to choose what I wanted to study: I knew I wanted to do something artistic, and – coming from the fiscally conservative land of Warren Buffett – I also wanted to get a job. “Graphic design” was the clear choice. Honestly, I wasn’t precisely sure what I was getting myself into.

But it was a great fit. I found communicating visually to be challenging and stimulating – purposeful, yet nuanced and artistic. And typography. God, how I grew to love typography. It was rational in being bound to language, yet artistic and expressive.

This love was bolstered by an opportunity to study design in the ruins of Ancient Rome. “Why would you study design in Rome?” people would ask. I wasn’t sure at the time, but I soon learned how important Roman typography was to the history of design. The influence of the letterforms that were born during this time – as products of pen and ink, of chisel and stone – can still be seen in the latest typefaces. Furthermore, understanding this was a perfect conduit through which to understand the most important principle of design: that form is a product of a mixture of intention, culture, and technology. Pandora’s box had been opened, and I was seeing the world through new eyes.

I spent my final semester of college once again locked in my room. Aside from my usual classwork, I devoured every typography book that I could find in my Unversity’s vast library. I read Chappell, Tschichold, more Tschichold, and of course Bringhurst. I conducted experiments in typography, color, and geometry, repeatedly rearranging the words from a bottle of deodorant. I gained new sensitivity not only for letters, but even more so for the tiny bits of space that surrounded them. Seeing typography in a new way, I was forced to rebuild my entire portfolio.

A convergence

This obsession slowly converged with my love for computers and the internet. I drooled at my neighbors’ computer as a child, but it wasn’t until my brother left his college computer at home for a summer that I really got to spend quality time with a computer. I “broke” it countless times, having to reinstall everything. I used the web space that came with my AOL account to make my first website in 1996. It didn’t get updated much, but I got to dabble with HTML.

Then came writing. I never liked writing growing up. In fact, I hated it. I remember reading somewhere that Steven King had said that he was “constantly on fire to write” as a child. That made no sense to me. “That makes no sense to me,” I told my brother.

“You know how you feel about drawing? Well, that’s probably how he felt about writing,” he told me. At that point, it made some sense.

Responding to an irresistible internal force I started my blog in 2004. If you read the first post, it’s clear that I had no idea what I was doing. I think I mostly wanted a playground on which to improve my coding skills. A little more than a year later, I was whisked away to Silicon Valley by a startup.

Discovering the entrepreneur

What I found in California once again rocked my world. It was refreshing to be surrounded by optimism, technological savvy, curiosity for solving problems, and a culture based upon merit. This had not been my environment when growing up in Nebraska.

I was thirsty for the energy of The Valley. Coders got together for all-night software development parties (SHDH), and some startups consisted of a group of 12 guys crammed into a 3-bedroom apartment (Meetro). I rode CalTrain up to San Francisco to go to tech events – only to take the slow midnight train back to San Jose so I could go to work the next day. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people that made sense to me. I was beginning to discover: I was an entrepreneur, and there was nothing I could do to resist that.

Independence Day: starting the journey

Once I was free from employment, I vowed to never work for anyone else again. Working for VC-backed startups had taken it’s toll. I was tired at looking at my paycheck, asking myself “did I really generate that much value in the past week,” and knowing that I had not.

In the summer of 2007, I cashed out some Google and Apple stock that I had bought a few years prior, and began a long road of exploration. I wanted to remind myself that I was really good at something. I felt that if I really trusted my passions, I would eventually be able to create something of value. I wanted to recreate that feeling I had when I was alone in my room, drawing – so engrossed in what I was doing that I would skip meals.

I met up with other entrepreneurial wanderers at cafes in SF, where I now lived. We would explore random projects, helping each other with what we could, for 12 hours a day. I remember many times, leaving a cafe with the realization that I had not made a penny all day – but feeling great about the work I had done.

After a year of this, I had found enough of my entrepreneurial voice that I knew that The Valley wasn’t necessarily for me. I had met amazing people, and had learned a lot about myself, but I knew I didn’t want to raise money for a startup. I knew that the value of paying $1,000 a month for a tiny bedroom (with no job, mind you) had reached the point of diminishing returns. I wanted cheap rent, my own space, and a few cold winters to force me to really dig into my psyche, and hopefully find something good. Chicago was the logical choice.

At this point, I had gotten enough personal projects (and my savings) out of my system that I was ready to do some client work. I set up Kadavy, Inc., and – thanks to the great connections I had made in The Valley – I had some great clients.

Entrepreneurs who make money

Additionally, I was sharing space with entrepreneurs that actually made money. The Valley had taught me to believe in myself, and had unlocked creativity; but finally I was learning the nuts and bolts of business. I learned how to incorporate, invoice clients, and really how to earn my keep.

But I couldn’t stop working on side projects. Eventually, I gained enough passive income (more about that in the future), that I could comfortably pursue my creativity without being too concerned about keeping steady client work. It wasn’t much, but – after a year with no income – I was a master at living small.

This freed me up to explore the love for writing that had developed over the years. There was something exciting to me about packaging concepts into approachable and entertaining bits – like a chef mixing together unlikely ingredients to present bites with an overarching flavor, underlying notes, and a surprising finish.

As always, I wrote about what I knew: a problem I had recently solved, or something so basic that I took it for granted. Eventually it dawned on me that the one obsession that had persisted throughout my life was probably the subject on which I was best equipped to write. One blog post later, I had a book deal.

The book is here today

So, here it is, a lifetime and six months later. Everything that I know about what really makes great design great has been condensed into a few hundred pages. There are few life experiences that haven’t informed this book: from drawing in my room as a child, to studying the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii; from working with architects on typographic installations, to working with back-end developers on Django dash or Rails Rumble; from meticulously experimenting with typography, to producing designs at breakneck pace at a startup; from designing just because I loved to, to designing for economic efficiency – it’s all in here.

This is the product of my journey, and I’m proud to present it to you. Here it is, printed brilliantly in full color.

In it, you’ll find:

Color Theory: How can you enliven your designs by understanding how colors interact?
Proportion and Geometry: How can you establish a grid that is suitable for the device on which your design with be displayed?
Size and Scale: How can you create clean design just by choosing the right type sizes?
White Space: How can you use it elegantly to communicate clearly?
Composition and Design Principles: How can you use them to make your designs more compelling?
Typographic Etiquette: What tiny typographic details can make a huge difference in what you’re communicating?

Spreading design literacy

I see this book as much more than the product of lifelong obsession: I hope that it will be part of a turning point for mankind. It sounds crazy to type that, but really, that’s what I hope for. I hope that it will contribute to the revolution of design literacy.

What do I mean by design literacy? When Gutenberg invented the printing press, very few people knew how to read or write. Just a little over 500 years later, most of us are literate. We learn how to read and write in school. Clear communication is necessary for success.

Now we have tremendous publishing power. We create our own flyers, our own PowerPoint presentations, and we even tweak our Tumblr themes. We’re armed with a dizzying array of fonts – enough to make Claude Garamond blush – and most of us have no knowledge of how they really differ, or how to use them to facilitate clear communication.

I believe it naturally follows that the ability to use design to communicate clearly will eventually be as widespread as the ability to use language to communicate is today.

Starting with the Hackers

So why start with the Hackers? Because they’re the ones who are reinventing the world, one line of code at a time. They break down oppressive business models, and create markets from resources that were previously untapped. They can do this so much more effectively with good design.

Hackers have all of this power because they come from a sharing culture. If they run across an error while programming, a quick Google search or RTFM will likely lead them to a solution. This isn’t true when learning design.

Many designers try to share what they know, but since many of them truly are naturals, they have trouble articulating the decisions that they make. You can’t tell someone to “use white space,” and expect a great result.

In this book, I break down all of the factors that make a design great. I explain how different typefaces convey different moods, and why. I explain how different color arrangements convey different feelings, and how specific colors can communicate specific things in certain contexts. I’ll explain how tiny bits of white space, or tiny typographic details, can change what it is that you’re communcating.

Buy books, get bundles

Today – September 14th, 2011 – is the day I’d like for you to buy this book, so I’ve teamed up with a couple of partners that I know you Hackers will like, plus, I’m offering some of my own time and attention to help you with design. If you aren’t interested in my book, I don’t expect that you’ll buy these bundles just for the extra stuff (though sometimes, the value of what you’ll get is as much as that of the books themselves). Consider these giveaways a “thank you” for buying (from Amazon) ~~today~~ nowish.

What’s in it for me (and other people)

You’ve seen similar promotions from other authors such as Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, or Eric Ries. These great authors do promotions like these because they want as many of you to buy at one time as possible. They’re shooting for the New York Times bestseller list, so they want you not only to preorder lots of copies of their book, but it’s not important to them where you buy the books from. All of the booksellers count towards the New York Time bestseller list for that eek.

But, I’m not expecting to be on the New York Times bestseller list. The genre of my book is far to niche for that: it’s a small but elite group of people who are not only building cool stuff with code, but who also want to build their design skill.

So, I’m shooting for a good Amazon rank. Things have been going well so far. I haven’t really actively asked anyone to buy my book yet, and it’s already an “Amazon bestseller,” ranking as highly as #13 in the “Hacking” sub-sub-category.

If you really look at that rank in context, it looks as if my book is dangerously close to being #1 overall.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, Amazon updates their sales rankings pretty rapidly. So, the more people who buy today, the higher the ranking for Design for Hackers will be.

The higher the ranking for Design for Hackers, the more people who will discover the book while randomly browsing Amazon. The more people who randomly discover the book, the faster design literacy spreads. (I won’t B.S. you either: this helps me out, too: in the form of hopefully paying out my advance, and eventually earning a small royalty per book sale).

What’s in it for you? Hacker Monthly & KISSmetrics

If you’ve enjoyed my writing so far, simply buying my book benefits you. First of all, you get a great book: a full-color, exhaustive breakdown of everything visual. But, the better my book does, the more I can dedicate myself to teaching you about design. Beyond this book, I hope to continue developing content that entertains and informs. I want to teach you how to do my job – as if it were my job.

Hacker Monthly

As an added bonus – as a “thank you” for buying ~~today~~ before Saturday, you’ll get a free 3-month digital subscription to Hacker Monthly (for new subscribers only).

Hacker Monthly condenses the best articles from Hacker News for each month in one easy-to-read issue. I know what it’s like to lose a whole day hitting “refresh” on Hacker News, reading every article that comes through. Hacker Monthly eliminates all of that, and ensures that you see the very best content that comes through Hacker News – all laid out beautifully, on any device you want (PDF, MOBI, EPUB format). Since I really have the Hacker News community to thank for the opportunity to write this book, I’m especially happy to be working with Hacker Monthly as this book launches.

Even if you buy only one copy of the book (which is plenty, really!), you get the Hacker Monthly subscription.

KISSmetrics

For those of you who buy at least three copies of the book, I’ve teamed up with KISSmetrics. In addition to the Hacker Monthly subscription described above, you’ll get a free subscription to KISSmetrics, good for as many as 55,000 “events” per month. KISSmetrics doesn’t even offer a free plan, and normally starts at $29 per month. This plan is lined up just for you guys, and is good for life.

For those unfamiliar, KISSmetrics helps you track and improve the stuff that matters about your customers. Instead of needing to wade through tons of confusing web stats, KISSmetrics keeps you focused on the metrics that will actually help your business grow.

Bootstrapper Bundles

Time remaining for Bootstrapper Bundles: These offers have expired! “Design Baller” packages below are still available.

For those individual Hackers, or small teams, I’ve wrapped up the above into a few “Bootstrapper Bundles.” These bundles can be redeemed ~~today~~ before Saturday only. Buy extra copies of the book to give to your co-founder, your teammates, or even donate a copy or two to your local library.

1 book: get a free 3-month digital subscription to Hacker Monthly. Forward your Amazon receipt to 1book@designforhackers.com
3 books: get the Hacker Monthly subscription, and a free KISSmetrics subscription, good for 55,000 actions a month, for life. Forward your Amazon receipt to 3books@designforhackers.com
5 books: get the Hacker Monthly & KISSmetrics subscriptions, plus an email consultation of one screenshot. I’ll give you at least 3 tips to improve your design. Forward your Amazon receipt to 5books@designforhackers.com
10 books: get the Hacker Monthly & KISSmetrics subscriptions, plus a 2-minute, publicly posted design consultation screencast. This will be just like the ones I did for my Kickstarter backers. Forward your Amazon receipt to 10books@designforhackers.com

If any of this interests you, please buy the book on Amazon »

Design Baller Bundles

Time remaining for Design Baller Bundles: 139 days, 7 hours, 54 minutes, 13 seconds ago

Understanding design isn’t just valuable for small companies and teams. I know some of you have entire departments of giant companies – or entire giant companies themselves – that are in need of design literacy. Or, maybe you just like to build forts out of books. Maybe you just hate trees and want to wipe them off of the planet. While you need a ton of books for any of this, I know you also probably need a little time to get budget approval to buy that stack of books. So, I’m giving you guys a whole week to redeem any of these bundles, which also include the Hacker Monthly & KISSmetrics subscription.

25 books: HM & KM, plus a 1-hour Skype consultation. We can talk about whatever you want! Forward your Amazon receipt to 25books@designforhackers.com
50 books: HM & KM, plus a 1-hour Skype presentation for your company. It will be just like I’m there! Forward your Amazon receipt to 50books@designforhackers.com
250 books (damn, playa!): HM & KM, plus I’ll come talk at your company, anywhere in the lower 48. Forward your Amazon receipt to 250books@designforhackers.com

If any of this interests you, please buy the sh*t out of this book on Amazon »

Already bought a book?

Some of you, of course, already bought a book. Or, maybe you’re one of the amazing people who backed my Kickstarter campaign at a level that got you a book. If this is you, or you already bought a book from a retailer other than Amazon, then just forward a screenshot or image of your receipt to the appropriate address above. (if you’re a Kickstarter backer, I’ll just recognize your name – we’re cool)

Does it have to be Amazon? What about Kindle & other ebook formats?

If you’re dead-set on buying from a retailer other than Amazon, or on buying in Kindle or some other electronic format, I still really, really love you; but none of these purchases are eligible for these bundles. Only paperback copies bought from Amazon will count towards the Amazon rank of the book. Thanks a ton for your interest!

Catch me in your city

Thanks to $5,827 raised from 138 amazing Kickstarter backers, I’m going on a U.S. tour. Not to waste any time at all, I’m going to be hitting Boston on the evening of September 19th, and NYC the evening of September 22nd (yes, next week, that’s how fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants this is). I’m still working out details on venues, but sign up for updates for your city here.

“Design for Hackers” available on Kindle

Designing with White Space: Why 1+1=3

2011-09-02T16:57:19Z

One of the most often overlooked factors of design – by beginning and even professional designers – is that of the delicate use of white space. By really considering the way that white space works, you can communicate more elegantly, and create design that has a more “clean” look. By really considering the way white space works, you’ll be less likely to use extraneous ornamentation such as rule lines, and you’ll be less likely to change fonts and colors just to differentiate pieces of information in your design.

The most powerful concept in really understanding the way white space works is that of 1+1=3. My introduction to this concept was in the book “Envisioning Information”, by information design guru Edward Tufte. If you like what follows, go read his books.

White Space is Something

When we think of white space – or negative space – many of us think of nothing. But to understand that 1+1=3, you have to understand that white space is, in fact, something.

If I put the words “dogs” and “furry” right next to each other, you can hardly distinguish the words, but for your knowledge of the English language. You probably have yet to be introduced to the word “dogsfurry.”

Because there is no white space between them, the words 'dog' and 'furry' look like one word.

But, just by separating those two words by a piece of white space, they are now perceived as separate pieces of information.

Because there white space between them, the words 'dog' and 'furry' look separate. But, they still seem to be related.

But, since they are still relatively close to each other, and lined up with one another, we see them as belonging together in some way. This phenomenon is described by Gestalt theory, which posits that we view things as more than the sum of their parts.

If we divide up this white space with a simple rule line, we now have not one, not two, but three design elements separating our information: the rule line, and the two pieces of white space that flank it.

Because there is a rule line dividing the white space, there are now three elements, that separate the words.

Most tabular data is laid out this way by default. Supposedly these rule lines help guide our eye the navigate the table and see which column and row with which each data point is associated. So, you often see tables that are designed like so:

These rule lines hold no information. This table may seem fine at first glance, until you learn that you could have an equally (or more, as I’d argue) effective table with no rule lines at all:

Our brains connect these pieces of information without the aid of rule lines. Because these things are lined up, we can make the proper associations. Note, also, that I have italicized the values to further differentiate them.

Of course, not every table is this simple. With exceptionally wide tables, it can be truly difficult to keep track of which row of data you are scanning. This is where alternating dark and light backgrounds can come in handy.

This has the added benefit of making the table a little more visually interesting, which – alone – is not a good reason to do this.

Notice that the shaded backgrounds do not have rule lines to signal where they begin and end. The end of the shaded background alone is enough to signal this. Also notice what a beautifully crisp appearance the left and right side of the table has: because the shaded rows line up, we perceive this as a crisp edge.

Taking it Further

Understanding white space in this way won’t only make your tables cleaner. This table is just a small petri dish within which you can see at a very detailed level how white space, information, and our perception all interact.

The white space in this error message is poorly managed, and too many factors are being used.

This little error message looks laughably bad. Here are some of the problems it has:

Too many factors are being used: font, a colored background, a rule line. The (imaginary) designer wasn’t sure why it didn’t look right because he didn’t know how to manage white space.
There’s no rational relationship between the amount of white space between the elements, and the sizes of the elements themselves.
There’s no rational relationship between the sizes of the various elements, so it’s communicating unclearly. What is more visually important, the icon, or the main “hey you!” message?

The white space is well-managed in this error message. It communicates clearly, with fewer factors.

This one looks much nicer. Here’s a few reasons why:

There are few factors being used. The white space is managed well, so the designer can get away with this.
There is a rational relationship between the amount of white space between the elements, and the sizes of the elements themselves. For example, the white space between the “hey you!” heading and the smaller message is about the same height as the smaller message itself.
There is a rational relationship between the sizes of the various elements. For example, the icon is about the same height as the main “hey you!” message. The icon is clearly the dominant element, and anchors the eye.

Next time you’re designing something, before you throw in a rule line, or a shaded background, or even a font change, think about the white space first. Doing so can make a big difference in what you communicate, and make your designs look cleaner.

——

If you liked the above, I’m very glad! If you liked the above, and love the SXSW Interactive conference as much as I do, please vote for my panel: “White Space: Shaping Nothing for Clean Design.” Voting closes at midnight CST (this) Friday night!

I’m already working hard on this talk, so I’ll be trying it out on my book tour, for which I’m raising money (with surprising success!) on Kickstarter. If you’re in any of the cities on my tour, get updates on the status through email.

No related posts.

Why You Hate Comic Sans

2011-09-13T19:42:28Z

Everyone loves to hate Comic Sans. The child-like handwriting font is so infamous, there is a movement to try to ban it. Mention its name to the common layman (aside from a preschool teacher), and you will likely get a chuckle, mention it to a trained designer, and you’ll get a look of disgust. But what exactly makes Comic Sans so horrible?

I recently gave a talk at IgniteChicago – with less detail than what follows – about just why it is that Comic Sans is so hated:

Comic Sans vs. Helvetica

To illustrate the poor fundamentals of Comic Sans, I will compare it to Helvetica, which is such a beloved font, that there’s a movie – about typography – named Helvetica.

First of all, I should acknowledge that comparing these fonts is a bit apples to oranges (which are both fruits, mind you), in that they both convey completely different moods: Helvetica looks strong and serious, and Comic Sans is usually used in situations where one wants to look playful and casual.

Both Have Unmodulated Strokes

Comic Sans and Helvetica both have unmodulated strokes, unlike Garamond.

But they have their similarities as well. They both have a relatively unmodulated stroke, meaning that the thickness of the strokes on the fonts don’t change throughout the stroke. This sample shows how Helvetica’s form differs from that of Garamond, which has a modulated stroke. Comic Sans also has an unmodulated stroke.

Scribed lettering had modulated strokes - a result of drawing tools - which later influenced the first printed fonts.

This modulation is a result of Garamond’s form being derived from that of scribed letters. Before printing was available in the West, scribes lettered Bibles beautifully and patiently by hand, using a flat-tipped pen, held at a fixed angle, which influenced the form of those letters – resulting in a modulated stroke. As printing was developed, the letters created mimiced scribed letters, and – while they eventually developed their own forms – printed letterforms almost exclusively had modulated strokes until sans-serif type was popularized in the early 1800′s. The forms of most sans-serif fonts are not influenced by drawing tools.

Helvetica Manages Weight Better

Helvetica manages the visual weight of its letterforms more delicately than does Comic Sans.

Though the strokes of Helvetica’s letterforms are unmodulated, some adjustments are made to improve its legibility. For example, notice how the stroke on Helvetica gets thinner where the shoulder meets the stem on this letter n. This helps to give the letter a more even visual weight. Notice how Comic Sans is not this way. If you squint your eyes, you’ll notice that there is a disproportionately heavy area where these strokes meet on Comic Sans, while Helvetica’s weight is more evenly distributed. The ironic thing about this distinction is that Comic Sans is actually influenced from a drawing tool: a round, felt-tipped pen or marker; but, the stroke of this tool is unmodulated. Meanwhile, the letterforms of Helvetica are rationalized from predecessors, without apparent influence of a drawing tool.

This mismanagement of visual weight is the main issue that makes reading Comic Sans an unpleasant experience. Evenness of weight, or “texture” is important to the legibility and readability of typography. Letters or blocks of text that are free from disproportionately light or heavy spots allow the letterforms themselves to shine through and be read easily.

Helvetica yields a more even texture in body copy than does Comic Sans.

This example shows how a block of text set in Helvetica differs in texture from a block of text set in Comic Sans. I’ve blurred both blocks of text and bumped up the contrast so we can all collectively experience an objective form of squinting – to identify areas that are excessively light or dark.

First, notice the general variation of lightness and darkness in the lines of type. The Helvetica is a more uniform grey, while the Comic Sans varies widely, with some very dark spots scattered throughout the body of text. The most obvious anomolies are the letters “e” and “t,” the former of which appears like a blood stain a number of times in the example, and the latter which sticks out like a dead tree.

The stroke modulation of Garamond allows for it to have a small eye & large aperture.

The Comic Sans “e” appears more dark than the other letters because it’s overall visual weight is mismanaged. When compared to Garamond and Helvetica, we can get some idea of why. Garamond’s “e” features a very large aperture, and small eye, but its stroke modulation keeps it balanced. The extreme heaviness of the stroke towards the bottom left of the “e” is balanced out by the large aperture, and the tiny eye is balanced out by the very thin bar that closes out the eye. Helvetica maintains balance by compensating for its absence of stroke modulation by having a larger eye and a smaller aperture. Comic Sans, however, by virtue of its handwriting-based style, has a tilted – incidentally “Venetian” – eye to its “e” giving it both a small eye, and a large aperture. Since there is no stroke modulation to Comic Sans, it can’t compensate for this lack of balance and thus utterly fails.

Comic Sans Has Poor Letterfit

But poor management of visual weight within the letterforms themselves isn’t the only characteristic that makes Comic Sans uneven in body text. The “letterfit” – or consideration given to the letterforms to allow them to be set together in an even manner – of Comic Sans is very poor. The letterfit of Helvetica allows for it to inherently have decent kerning tables. Kerning is the distance between two letters, and good fonts have parameters set for just about every letter combination (or “kerning tables”) in which the font may eventually be set; but if the letters themselves aren’t designed with consideration given to how the letters will relate to one another, then producing good kerning tables is impossible.

The poor letterfit of Comic Sans makes it nearly impossible for it to be kerned properly.

You can see that Comic Sans has an awkward gap between the “f” and the “o,” but this pairing can’t simply be more tightly kerned, as it would create an area of tension – from too close proximity – between the crossbar of the “f” and the “o.” You can see similar problems throughout the font, but this is one of the better examples. This problem could have been avoided if the leading portion of the crossbar of the “f” weren’t so long (notice that it is shorter on Helvetica). One way to compensate for these poor pairings would be to space the letters out a bit on the whole, to allow for relatively tighter pairings for problem areas such as I’ve described; but, this isn’t feasible in most computer applications, and it would do little to make up for the other blunders of Comic Sans.

So, the typographic fundamentals of Comic Sans are very poor as used in high-resolution situations, but Comic Sans was never intended to be used in this manner, and that is part of why its considered such a bad font.

Comic Sans isn’t Used as Intended

Comic Sans was designed to be used in these talk bubbles in Microsoft Bob.

Comic Sans was originally designed to be used in the talk bubbles of a program called Microsoft Bob. The font wasn’t completed in time to actually make it into the program, but it lived on to eventually ship with Windows 95; and that’s when the font really got ugly.

Once the font was in the hands of Windows 95 users, there was no telling how people would use it. Now, it was going to be printed out on bake sale flyers, birthday party invitations, and even business cards. But remember, this font was designed to be used on-screen, and in 1994, when the font was designed, most computers for personal use – and Windows 95 – didn’t have anti-aliasing.

Comic Sans was originally designed to be displayed aliased.

Anti-aliasing is the technology that makes fonts looks smooth on-screen. Without ant-aliasing, fonts look jagged – as if they were made of LEGOS®. This isn’t the end of the world, as long as the font is designed accordingly. Notice how much better the “e” of Comic Sans distributes its visual weight when aliased.

When aliased at 12px, Comic Sans is more readable than Garamond.

In fact, when compared to Garamond, which wasn’t originally designed for the screen, Comic Sans fares quite well in terms of readability.

Where the Hate Comes From: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

So, the story of Comic Sans is not that of a really terrible font, but rather of a mediocre font, used incorrectly on a massive scale. Windows 95 was the first operating system to really hit it big. Just as computers were starting to pop up in nearly every home in America, Windows 95 was finding itself installed on all of those computers, and with it, the font Comic Sans. So now, nearly every man, woman, child, and bake sale organizer find themselves armed with publishing power unlike civilization had ever seen; and few of them really had any design sense.

Comic Sans Rode a Wave: Desktop Publishing

It used to be that if you lost your kitten, and wanted to make a poster, probably the most efficient way to make a flyer would be to draw one up with magic marker, cut out a picture of the cat, and go down to the nearest supermarket to make copies of it at 15 cents apiece. Then, you would post them up in your neighborhood; and – like a caveman – you would pick up a phone, call the newspaper, and place an ad to help find your kitten.

But now that you had Windows 95, a personal computer, and a printer, you could use Word to make your lost kitten poster, and print it out at home. And, wow! You could use any font you wanted. What’s that? You don’t know anything about fonts? Of course not, because you’ve never had this power before. So, guess what font makes you think about your lost kitten?

This is a monumental moment in history – right up there with the invention of printing – for common people to suddenly have the power to typeset and print documents. No big deal for awhile: some people got to enjoy making their own Christmas cards, birthday party invitations, etc. for awhile, and the small audiences of their families and coworkers suddenly had to put up with some ugly, clip art riddled Christmas cards.

But then, gradually, over the next 10 years or so, the internet got more and more popular. Now, that publishing power got even stronger: instead of flyers posted in break rooms, Comic Sans was showing up on websites, and even as the default font for many people’s emails. Now, any one person could write a message that could potentially be read by millions, in Comic Sans. This actually happened when Cleveland Caveliers owner, Dan Gilbert wrote a letter regarding the dramatic departure of LeBron James, in Comic Sans – resulting in a media storm over the poor font choice.

Dan Gilbert's usage of Comic Sans was the height of the font's infamy.

The Rise of the Graphic Design Degree, & The Formation of an Army of Haters

But where did all of this hatred come from? Well, while grandmas around the world were printing birthday invitations in Comic Sans, the field of Commercial Art (now known as “Graphic Design”) was enjoying the revolutionary typesetting power that the Macintosh provided. No longer did they have to blindly “spec” out type, not knowing what the final result would look like until their work got back from the typesetter. This made the production of high quality print design much cheaper, and much more viable for businesses to spend money on. So, with the increased demand for Graphic Design services, Design schools started churning out graduates at an unprecedented pace. Who doesn’t want to just sit and draw stuff for a living, right?

At this point – the late 90′s – all of these young people are suddenly seeing the world through new eyes. Having been through it myself, words cannot describe the jarring experience of Pandora’s box being opened up to reveal that 95% of every designed thing you see is ugly. Terrible font choices, poor kerning, haphazard color choices, and stupid concepts suddenly assault your eyes once you learn about design principles, color theory, typography, and concept development. A large portion of conversations between myself and other self-righteous design students were – and still are – about how terribly designed everything is: campus wayfinding signage, the t-shirt for the latest toga party, and yes, lost kitten posters.

But most of these design students were – and still are – blind to what a monumental, mammoth, incredible, revolutionary, huge thing was occurring. Their grandmother could typeset and print out as many lost kitten posters as she wanted. She can even make a website about her kitten, and someone in Tanzania can read about it (this is probably only remarkable to you if you don’t live in Tanzania). This makes Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible look like the non-self-inflating Whoopie cushion!

The Clash of Knowledge & Ignorance

Eventually, regular people got more familiar with this publishing power, desktop publishing applications – like Microsoft Publisher – became more widely available, and more people started to get the hang of publishing on their own. This really started to encroach on the territory of these fresh design graduates, many of whom were finding being a Graphic Designer to really suck: a client may have her nephew design a brochure, and hire you to clean it up, or worse yet – take a stab at it herself.

Meanwhile – this is the last decade or so – the same invention that made Graphic Design easier was making it way harder: print was dying, and the web was growing. Now, clients are trying to direct designers themselves, and the designers need to learn how to code web pages just to stay relevant. This doesn’t sit well with most designers.

So, you see, Comic Sans is an archetypal enemy of the Graphic Designer. Its not only an unattractive font, but it also represents the invisible, evil force that is making the “print” designer less and less relevant. A natural reaction to being threatened is violence, and the hatred for Comic Sans is arguably violent.

A Well-Designed Future

Comic Sans is at the disposal of nearly everyone with a computer; but that doesn’t mean that we will always have to be subject to its awkward forms. The spread of Comic Sans – a pretty bad font – is the result of the spread of an inarguably good technology. Just as the advent of movable type eventually lead to a spread of literacy, the advent of personal publishing should lead to the spread of design literacy; and with it, a populace too informed to stoop to using Comic Sans.

——-

I’m hoping to help with the spread of this design literacy – starting with software developers – with my book, Design for Hackers. If you’re interested in learning more and getting a few email updates for me, sign up for the email list.

Also, I’ll be doing a reading from my book at SXSW Interactive, if you’ll be around.

Until then, you can follow me on Twitter here, if you’re into that.

No related posts.

Design for Hackers: THE BOOK!

2011-06-15T01:30:32Z

Last week, I signed a contract to publish Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty with John Wiley & Sons. I still have plenty of work left to get this book onto shelves – and to exist at all – but I’m extremely excited about it, and wanted to share the news with everyone, especially visitors coming from Hacker News (more on that in a bit).

What is Design for Hackers?

My goal for Design for Hackers is to help Software Developers and Entrepreneurs (Hackers) – who are interested in design – see the world the way a designer does. Hackers are used to teaching themselves whatever is necessary to achieve their vision; and for most things this is relatively straightforward. If they are learning to program, and come across an error, they can do a quick Google search. If they want to know how to do their own bookkeeping, they can learn about this easily with a book or by looking around on the web. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix found when you Google “my design sucks.”

The problem with most advice given by designers is that it usually consists of rules (“use no more than two fonts”) that are often conflicting and easy to forget. Naturally, the decisions made by designers are difficult to put into words, and many designers are better with images than words. Rather than teaching you to fish, they give you a fish. When you’re still confused, they may shrug their virtual shoulders and explain that its just their natural talent that makes them able to design. This is usually true, but I believe natural talent is not a requirement for understanding design – especially not for naturally curious people who can teach themselves nearly anything, given the right information.

There are some very consistent principles behind what makes a design visually compelling, and these principles are as important on the screen of your iPad as they were on the streets of ancient Rome. My goal is to weave these principles into your brain using examples from today, as well as from the history of art, architecture, and design. I will tell stories and present examples that will infect your brain, make you look smart when you retell them at parties, and change the way you see the world around you. I’ve been telling my friends, “it’s like Freakonomics, for Design.”

How did this book deal come about?

The way this book deal came about just affirms my beliefs about Inviting Serendipity. I started with a very strong desire to present at SXSW. I love the conference, I love to share knowledge, and I really wanted to contribute. But, I wasn’t sure what I had to offer. I brainstormed for a couple of weeks, bouncing ideas off of friends, amongst them that of Being Yourself for a Living. Nothing really stuck.

Then I remembered the talk that a friend encouraged me to give at BarCamp Chicago a couple of years ago, Design for the Coder’s Mind: Reverse-Engineering Visual Design. I at least had something to start with, but the title needed more pop. Since I also love the community on Hacker News, and that community overlaps with that of SXSW, I settled on Design for Hackers.

But 30% of SXSW’s panel selection process is based upon votes on their Panel Picker; and, unfortunately, I am not famous enough to get a considerable amount of votes. Fortunately, I had previously had some luck in getting some articles on the front page of Hacker News, so I set out to do that again, with the hopes of directing the community to vote on the Panel Picker.

Hacking the System

The plan was to write sample content related to my topic and get on the front page of Hacker News – which isn’t necessarily easy to do at will. So, I spent a couple of weeks drafting, refining, and crafting Design for Hackers: Why You Don’t Use Garamond on the Web. The topic felt great to write about, and the words came easily, tickling my brain on the way to my fingertips; but just when I thought the post was good, I would iterate again, digging as deeply into the details as possible. The goal was to to make it so brain melting that the HN community couldn’t help but love it.

And it worked! The article made it to #1 and brought in over 20,000 views within a couple of days. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing how many votes it was bringing in on the Panel Picker.

To get a SXSW panel, I tried writing posts that could make it to the top of Hacker News.

Serendipity Knocks

Then I got an email from Chris Webb of Wiley & Sons, saying he loved the idea, and wondered if I had thought about writing a book about it.

I said I most certainly had. Writing a book has been a nebulous sort of “wouldn’t that be nice” goal; but I wasn’t sure about what I would write. I had thought of writing about Being Yourself for A Living, but I didn’t have much with which to work. Since Goals are Bananas, I figured I would just keep swinging through the trees and see what happened.

Convergence

But this idea really made sense for me to write about at this point – making it The Perfect Salad. My childhood obsession with drawing, which grew into an adulthood obession with design and typography, which melded with a fascination for the internet and knowledge sharing; the itch I scratched with that first post on my blog, which brought me to Silicon Valley – all were melding with my experiences of studying typography in Rome and working at an architecture firm, to create what I really felt like was a unique point of view. This was Being Myself for a Living.

So it felt like the right idea, but author friends of mine warned me what a huge undertaking – with little immediate reward – writing a book is. After a few months of weighing all of the considerations, and getting the right agreement together, it still felt like the right thing for me to do at this point. It might not make me rich, but the satisfaction of having people tell me “[I] blew [their] mind” is enough.

What about that original goal?

The funny thing is, after two rounds of selections, my panel hasn’t yet been accepted to SXSW – maybe the book deal will help. UPDATE: SXSW has accepted me into their book reading program! I’ll be presenting about my book on Monday, March 14th. Sign up for the email list for further updates. See you at SXSW!

So, here we go

Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty is due out in September of 2011, in all major book outlets: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc..

Be a part of it: sign up for updates

To start off the book writing process, I want to start getting closer with my most loyal readers. So, I am starting an email newsletter, where I’ll share with you some of the techniques I developed to turn my passion for designing and writing into a book deal. I’ll be testing out some of the content I’m working on for the book – seeking your feedback; but I’ll also be sharing some of my most closely-held secrets I’ve used to get this book deal. I plan to send out about an email a month, and have already started drafting some sample content. Find out:

How 6 of my last 9 blog posts made it to the front page of Hacker News, and what my writing style has to do with good design.
How I turned my blog into a passive revenue stream (including over $20,000 in one year from *one* blog post), freeing myself to follow my creativity all the way to a book deal.
How I have turned my blog into a virtual R&D department, providing me valuable data to tell me what “spin-off” sites to develop for more passive revenue.

Since the book is Design for Hackers, the newsletter will of course be filled with more brain-liquefying observations on design-related things I’ve seen around the web, and sneak previews of content that won’t be seen otherwise until the book launches in September 2011. Some things I’m kicking around for the book:

Why designers should stop whining about crowd-sourcing, and cash in on the revolution
Why even the ugliest “lost dog” poster is beautiful
Why SEO is Design

I’ll also be asking for your help in developing content for the book, asking questions about what great design you’ve been seeing, and what challenges you face as you learn about design.

(YOU) Sign up for the email list here. (NOW!)

I’ll, of course, still be exploring the topic right here at kadavy.net.

Pardon me now, as I had better get writing.

Design for Hackers (the book) is here!

Be Yourself for a Living: How to Reach 100,000 Pageviews Per Month (in “Only” 6 Years)

2011-04-25T05:47:31Z

I’ve been writing on kadavy.net since May 31, 2004 – 6 years and a few months. Last month was the first month that kadavy.net reached 100,000 pageviews, which is a modest achievement, but at least I know that there are many blogs that will never reach this milestone. Even more gratifying is just looking at how traffic has grown over the years (Google Analytics has only been available since November of 2005).

Sure, many sites grow much bigger, and much faster, but I think the value of slow, steady, growth like this is often overlooked, and is at the core of Being Yourself for a Living. Here’s how its done:

Stay true to yourself

This sounds incredibly trite and cheesy, but its really true. Its easy to get distracted by the latest trends, and spiral into writing useless “top 10″ posts about how to create the coolest Twitter background, but you have to follow your passions, interest, and experiences. The things that are really hot at any given point do have plenty of importance, but nothing is more important to focus upon than the unique perspective that you can provide. Fortunately, there’s only one you, complete with things that have happened to you, things you think about, and things you can’t help but do. While you are unique, you’re probably just unique enough that there are plenty of people who are interested in the same things that you are, and are interested in what you have to say.

Be patient, be committed

I was talking to an elderly man in my neighborhood the other day. He has been living in Lincoln Park, Chicago since he bought his house more than 50 years ago. A lot has changed in the neighborhood since then, and – as you can imagine – his house is worth much more than when he purchased it (even when adjusted for inflation).

It’s stories like these that have caused many people to seek real estate as an investment – often to their own financial peril. “God only made so much dirt, and there will always be more people,” they say. The problem is, the time to lay claim to your piece of dirt has mostly passed, and the way we interact with information has altered the way we interact with “dirt.” But information – and experiences – are not like dirt. There are always more.

What is 10 years, really, in the grand scheme of your life? If it takes you 10 years to build something great, there’s plenty more life to live; and if you’ve stayed true to yourself, you’ve had a lot of fun building it. Many entrepreneurs dream of starting a company, giving up most of it in exchange for funding, building said company, and cashing out 3 years later for millions. There is so much fervor around the success stories that have worked this way, sometimes its hard to recognize whether that is, in fact, what you really want from your career and life.

I once wanted this, too; but I can say with certainty today that I no longer do. I don’t love money enough, I’m not interested enough in such bragging rights, to muster enough motivation to put up with what a personal drain I imagine that to be. I don’t know if those are the things that motivate such founders, but I’ve definitely met some for whom money and acheivement are their driving forces. Why would you work so hard on something if you didn’t love it? If you loved it so much, why would you sell it? After 6 years of tinkering around, I’m finally making a very modest living off of the Kadavy, Inc. family. Most of this happened in the last year (I hope to share more about that in future posts). I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 4.

When you’re true to your curiousities, and accept that something will take a long time, you can more easily enjoy the whole process. By using only the resources you have at hand, whatever it is you build is yours the whole way.

Write with SEO in mind

Most posts on kadavy.net have come from answering this question: what do I know that I could teach someone else, and how would they search for it? When I had a lump in my mouth, and agonized over just what it might be, once I finally knew what the issue was, I set out to help inform other people who might be searching for the same thing. Instead of writing about mucoceles (whatever those are), I wrote about mucoceles using the language someone would use to search for them. This experience has paid for its own medical bills and then some. By using SEO best practices, you can make sure the people who are looking for what you have to share – actually find it.

Find an audience

Whatever websites there are that you like to read, those are probably the ones where you can find your audience. The first breakout post for kadavy.net was Eight Life Hacks for Health, Wealth, & Happiness. It was during the budding days of “Lifehacks,” and Lifehacker, naturally was a good place for such content. I thought of the post while in the shower, wrote it and published once I got out of the shower, and sent it in a quick e-mail to Lifehacker, who then published it on their site. I’ve had good luck being covered by Lifehacker a number of times over the years, and lately I’ve had good luck with the (amazing) community on Hacker News. You have to find out where your audience reads, and get in front of their eyeballs – usually, this will take some effort on your part (like sending an e-mail). Guest posts are another great way to reach an audience, though I’ve never actually done one.

Build upon your successes

Not every blog post is of use to a lot of people. Unsurprisingly, not that many people are looking for the meaning behind the movie “swimming pool,” or trying to figure out how to set proper book margins. But, a surprising amount of people have lumps in their mouths, or want to transfer their itunes library. Aside from poking around on Google Keyword Tool, its hard to know if many people will really care about a given blog post; but when you do have a successful post, build upon it. Write related posts, research related keywords and incorporate them into the post, or build a whole separate site. If you have a post that goes viral, try to think about what elements made it interesting to your particular audience. I’ve found that explaining design principles by using popular examples is apparently as much fun for others to read about as it is for me to write about.

So, take it or leave it. I’m not rich. I’m not famous. But, I got 100,000 page views last month and I’m happy about it. It may have taken a long time, but I’m not stopping any time soon. Hopefully some of my advice can help you reach 1,000,000 page views.

No related posts.

Design for Hackers: Why Monet Never Used Black, & Why You Shouldn’t Either

2011-04-25T05:40:41Z

Monet’s paintings evoke a sense of energy and life, they leap off the canvas with color and contrast, but Monet somehow managed to avoid using the color black for nearly his entire painting career. By avoiding black in your own designs, you can replicate some of this dynamism.

Monet and Other Impressionists Explored Their Medium

Even when creating dramatic shadows, Monet avoided black, and instead manipulated the powerful relationships between colors

Monet, and other impressionists, experimented obsessively with their medium: paint, some brushes, and a canvas. So just as pixels prohibit the use of Garamond on the web, the characteristics of the impressionists tools shaped their work. The inherent qualities of oil paint (thick and viscous), paint brushes (just a bunch of hair on a stick), and sometimes the texture of the canvas itself, lent themselves well to paintings being much more – put simply: blurry – than the more realistic paintings that were popular at the time. Photorealistic painters strived to make these qualities invisible, but the impressionists (like pixel fonts did for pixels) embraced them.

In the course of this experimentation, impressionists had to experiment with color to create the desired effects. Much like a rich-colored image is dithered when restricted to a 256 color palette, the impressionists experimented with creating the illusion of a color by placing colors next to each other which would create the illusion of the color they desired for the viewer.

The Impressionists Became Masters of Color

This effect was experimented with further until it became the major focus of some impressionist painters as a technique called pointillism – which involves painting dots of color next to each other to create the effect of a different overall color. Georges Seurat is credited with developing the technique, and one of his paintings close-up doesn’t look all that different from a dithered GIF image, as you can see in this example of a close-up of one of Seurat’s paintings next to a blown-up GIF image with a palette of only 8 colors and a pattern dither.

Because he experimented with the juxtaposing colors, the pointillism of Georges Seurat is similar to a dithered GIF image

By experimenting this way, the impressionists were doing much more than simply trying to replicate reality: they were analyzing the area between the subject of a piece of art, and the eye of the viewer. They were exploring just what makes ripples on water, with light bouncing off of them, glimmer the way they do. They analyzed what collection of colors make up the shadow of an object to give it dimension, and black wasn’t one of those colors.

Color Theory Explains What the Impressionists Discovered

Why this is can be explained by color theory. You’ve probably seen a color wheel before. Here’s an extremely basic refresher:

The color wheel is made up of warm and cool colors

One half of the color wheel: from yellow through red, is made of what is called “warm” colors. The other half of the color wheel: from green through purple, is made up of what is called “cool” colors. Because these colors are completely saturated, I’ll go ahead and call them hues from now on. I’ll explain a little later what I mean by that.

Also, of note later on: colors that are opposite of each other are called complementary. Complementary colors contrast each other strongly, and any two complements, when mixed together as paint, result in a brownish-grey color.

Warm Colors Pop, Cool Colors Recede

As a general rule, warm hues pop out at the viewer, giving the appearance of being closer; while cool hues recede, or give the appearance of being farther away.

The red (warm) square pops, the blue (cool) square recedes

As you can see on the left side of this example, the blue block recedes, looking as if it is a hole in the center of the red block. On the right side of the example, you see the opposite effect, with the red block looking almost as if it is a tower extruding towards you from the blue block. The warm hue – red – pops out at you, and the cool hue – blue – recedes from you.

The hue is the pure base color – as taken from the color wheel. To create a more sophisticated color, a hue is tinted or shaded. A tint of a hue is basically a lighter version of that hue. If you were mixing paint, you would just be adding white. A shade is a darker version of the base hue. If you were mixing paint, you would essentially be adding black to create a darker version of the hue.

Tints Pop, Shades Recede

Its probably no surprise to you that – much like warm hues pop, and cool hues recede – tints pop, and shades recede, as you can see in the example below. With the same color of blue as the backdrop, a tinted square of that blue pops, while a shaded square recedes.

The tinted blue square pops, the shaded blue square recedes

Context is Important

But will that tinted blue square always pop? Of course not: context is important, too. In this example, that exact same square is barely noticeable on a backdrop of slightly less tint, while it really pops on a heavily shaded backdrop.

The tinted blue square pops more off of a shaded blue field than a tinted one

Temperature is Stronger than Tint

This same phenomenon of context applies to the relative position of two hues on a color wheel as well. While neither of the middle squares of both sides of this example have any tint nor shade, their appearance relative to the blue backdrop differs drastically. The square that is purple – a color which is adjacent to blue on the color wheel – almost blends in completely, while the square that is orange, which is blue’s complement, leaps violently off of the blue field. The contrast between these two hues is so great that there is a sense of vibration where they meet. Also note that while purple is a cool hue, it is still slightly warmer than blue, which causes the purple square to pop very slightly.

Even though none of these colors are tinted or shaded, the orange square pops more off of the blue field than the purple square does

The effect caused by the relative color wheel position of two hues is so strong that it nearly overpowers the effect caused by tint or shade. Even when laid over a shaded purple backdrop, the tinted blue middle square on the left side of this example recedes. Contrast that with the tinted purple square on the right side of this example, which rockets towards you off of the shaded blue backdrop.

Even when tinted, a blue square (left) recedes into a shaded purple field, while a tinted purple square pops off of a shaded blue field. This is because blue is a cooler color than purple.

The impressionists avoided black not only because it nearly doesn’t exist in nature, but because the effects caused by changes in hue are so much richer than those caused by changes in shade. When you use pure black to create contrast, you miss out completely on the powerful effects of changes in hue.

Even though a tinted purple square pops off of a black field, it appears more natural on a heavily shaded blue field

The left side of this example is the exact same color combination as the right side of the previous example. Notice how the dark blue backdrop recedes away from the light purple square, lifting it toward the viewer. The black backdrop certainly contrasts with the purple square, but since it has no hue relationship with the purple square, the purple square seems to just float around, while the edges between it and the black backdrop give an unpleasant effect of vibration.

Now You Know, Now What?

So, how can you use this knowledge to make your web designs better? By understanding how colors interact with one another, you can more strongly establish a heirarchy of information in your typography. Web conventions have made it widely acceptable to use black on white for text on web pages, but this is neither the most readable, nor most aesthetically pleasing option.

Enrich Your Typography

In the example below, the main text is 16px and pure black, or #000000, while the secondary text is 12px and #888888, or a neutral (neither warm nor cool) grey. You can see that there is a pretty clear heirarchy here.

This second example uses the same fonts and text sizes, but this time, a warm, dark gray is used as the base color. The main text is #503e2b, a very dark orange (a warm hue). The secondary text is a lighter version of this base color – #9e948a – found with w3school’s handy color picker. There is still enough contrast as to be readable, but the contrast isn’t as harsh as black vs. white. Overall, it’s visually pleasing, and, well – warm.

The main text in this final example uses the same dark orange from the previous example, but this time – instead of simply using a tint of this color, a complementary (cool) grey is used for the secondary text – #808094. This adds extra dimension to the hierarchy we’re establishing. The secondary text is not only smaller and tinted, but now it’s a cooler color, thus causing it to recede even more. Now there is a color relationship between the two pieces of information, which intensifies our intended hierarchy while still creating a sense of harmony and realism.

Add Life to Your Graphics

Skillful manipulation of color relationships is at the crux of creating engaging and lifelike interface graphics, such as buttons. The example below, created in Photoshop, features two buttons that are created by vector masks sharing the exact same base color (#cc6666), but the highlights and shadows are treated differently. The highlights and shadows for the button on the left are created using a “Gradient Overlay” layer effect featuring a simple black-to-white-to-black gradient, a “Linear Burn” blend mode, and a 26% opacity. The drop shadow on this button is composed of black, at a 75% opacity. This is a generally attractive button, but it doesn’t have quite the richness of the button on the right, which is created using a green-to-yellow-to-green gradient (green being cool, and the complement to red, and yellow being warmer than red), and a dark blue drop shadow – for more harmonious contrast, the text on this button is also a very light yellow. The color swatches adjacent to each button illustrate clearly how the resulting color palettes of these buttons differ.

Skillful manipulation of color relationships result in a more engaging button, with a more sophisticated color palette

Don’t be so quick to use black: if you really master manipulating color relationships to create dimension, you can really add freshness and life to your designs.

Check out my previous Design for Hackers post: Why You Don’t Use Garamond on the Web.

No related posts.

Design for Hackers: Why You Don’t Use Garamond on The Web

2011-04-25T05:40:50Z

Amongst designers – especially print designers - Garamond is considered one of the best fonts in existence. It’s timeless, and very readable. But, because of the limitations of current display technologies, it’s not a good font to use in web copy – even with the advent of font embedding methodologies such as TypeKit and Google Font API.

One of the most important principles behind every good piece of design is that the designer has to master his or her medium. With any medium – whether it’s pencil and paper, steel and glass, or pixels – the designer has to work with strengths and limitations. Work with these characteristics, and the design stands a chance to be good – work against them, and there is no chance.

Apple’s lead designer, Jonathan Ive knows this. He recently said

The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material – the material informs the form…

Medium and Form in Type History

Typography is the perfect vehicle with which to illustrate this concept throughout history. From the beginning, the forms of our letters have been influenced by the tools we used to create them.

This cuneiform inscribed tablet is an early example of how medium influenced form in written communication. You can see, looking at these pictograms, that they are made up of a series of indentions that are pretty much identical. This is because they were formed using a wedge-shaped stylus.

The characters on this cuneiform tablet are similar to one another because they were created with the same tool

As this language was replaced in the west by our current roman characters, and the tools which we used changed, so did the form of our letters. Some of the best examples of early typography using roman characters are from – you guessed it – the Roman empire.

This is graffiti from the ancient city of Pompeii. It was created using a brush, and this is apparent in the letterforms. You can see there’s a great deal of variation in the strokes that make up the letters, and they all terminate with a soft point, just like you would expect from a brush.

This graffiti was clearly created with a brush

Here’s a picture I took from Pompeii that I blogged about several years ago – dating back to the same time (remember, this city was frozen in time when it was buried under volcanic ash in 79AD). Only this time, the sign was chiseled in stone – and you can see how this has influenced the letters: all of the strokes of the letters are uniform in width, and to make the ends of those strokes looks nice – serifs were added. You can see little spur serifs from where the chisel was applied perpendicular to the stroke of each of these letters.

The forms of these letters were influenced by the chisel that they were created with

Now, moving more quickly through history, we have letters from the column of Trajan (which inspired today’s Trajan font), which were formed first by brush, then by chisel (it would have been awkward to chisel letters like the brush-drawn ones in the earlier Pompeii example). Then we moved on to lead and wood-cut printing, which first imitated work done by scribes with pens.

The lettering on the column of Trajan were brushed on, then chiseled

The letterforms of Bodoni are geometrically rationalized

Once actual drawing tools were a smaller part of the design equation, typographers started to get more theoretical with their designs – creating constraints of their own – fonts like Bodoni are geometrically rationalized, as they were created in a medium (cast metal) with relatively few restrictions.

A Little Too Much Freedom?

In modern web typography, we still have the restriction that the letters of our alphabet take certain forms, but many restrictions have been removed. Rather than only having a couple of fonts available in our typecases, there are thousands. So, this makes it easy for bad habits to develop, such as trapping our information in images, or using fonts that just aren’t good for the web.

So, what makes a font bad for the web? There’s the widely-known issue of availability of fonts on the computers of our audience members – this, of course, is why we’re usually using widely-available fonts like Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman etc.. Now there are some pretty feasible ways of using whatever fonts we want – methods like SIFR, Typekit, and Google’s new Font API, but that still doesn’t mean you should use just any font. Even great classics like Garamond can be a disaster on the web, so its better to use a modern font that has been drawn with the screen in mind.

What a 12px Garamond character looks like, blown up

And the reason behind this is that our display technology isn’t up to par with paper. You can see here a comparison of the great classic font, Garamond, blown up (as it might look on paper), next to a detail of what it would be anti-aliased at 12px height on a modern computer screen. You can see that it doesn’t look so good on-screen, because it’s just made up of a bunch of blocks of color.

Working With the Screen

So, the popular web fonts (Arial, Verdana, Georgia, and Times New Roman) are such not only because of their wide availability, but because they are drawn with the screen’s limitations in mind.

This Flash animation that I created illustrates how pixels distort curvilinear form – such as that of typography. It’s the same series of concentric rings, but as it changes sizes, you can see that a moiré effect results from trying to draw these rings out of mere pixels. So, the most web-appropriate fonts are drawn with these limitations in mind.

Georgia is more readable than Garamond on-screen because of its larger x-height

This illustration shows just what I mean by that. Georgia reads better on screen than Garamond primarily because it has a higher x-height (the height of an “x”), and – as a result – a larger eye. This prevents letters such as “e” from becoming muddled and unreadable, and overall makes the letters actually look larger. The notes on this illustration are in 9px Verdana with no anti-aliasing; and you can see those letters read very crisply, as this font was made for such an application.

The sharp edges of the serifs on Georgia make them display more crisply on-screen

Georgia has a huge advantage over Garamond on-screen because it was designed to be displayed as such from the very beginning, when it was designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft in the mid-90′s. This has manifest itself in sharp serifs on Georgia, rather than more subtly modeled ones on Garamond. Look at little curve on the bottom of Garamond. This gets blurred at smaller sizes, and hurts the legibility of Garamond.

This limitation of screen technology has been embraced, and taken to extremes, though.

Some type designs, like these from miniml.com, embrace the limitations of the pixel

Starting in the late 90′s and early 00′s, we saw lots of pixel fonts being used in Flash, such as these from Craig Kroeger’s miniml.com, which are designed to be used at specific sizes, with no anti-aliasing.

The limitations of the pixel spawned design methods, such as the dithering used in this design

When it was more common for computers to have only 256 colors, which caused dithering, designers embraced that constraint to inform their designs. Though ostensibly created to minimize bandwidth (another constraint of medium), designs that were created for the5k embraced dithering and lucidly used every pixel.

The “Web 2.0″ design trends of the last five years or so, are thanks to display quality and bandwidth improving, removing some of this constraint. In 2000, 12% of web users had only 256 colors on their monitors – in 2010, 97% have over 16 million colors (the number of colors available has a big impact on how crisply type, images, or *gradients* are displayed). This has put into the hands of designers a color palette beyond that of CMYK printing, with increased bandwidth to push it through.

Additionally, displays are cramming in more pixels per inch (ppi). The cheap Dell monitor I’m typing this on is displaying at 100ppi, and my MacBook Pro is displaying at about 115ppi. Compare that to the iPhone 4, which displays at an impressive 326ppi. Now, we’re starting to get some display technologies that are approaching the quality of paper when it comes to displaying letterforms readably.

So, maybe some day Garamond can make its comeback.

Pompeii graffiti photo from virtusincertus
Trajan’s Column photo from Silver Tusk

No related posts.