C.R.A.P.

I found this week at college really enlightening regarding how I approach design. We were given a lecture on designing a business card which, at first, seems like a straight forward and simple task.

As I later discovered this was not the case, and there were more things to consider than I had expected.

The lecture was broken down in to smaller sections and the next section wasn’t revealed until the previous was completed, this gave the task an added element of fun, in addition it allowed us to concentrate on the task at hand and not concern ourselves with the end product.

What I learned from this task today is that when given a rectangle in which to produce a design I fill it right up to the edge, which is not necessarily a good thing. What I will concentrate on in future is using negative space as an element of my design. The basic principles we learnt were 1. Contrast 2. Repetition 3. Allignment and 4. Proximity

In the afternoon I used the time we were given to work on our projects to look in the college library and read some books. I am glad that I did this as I came across a book called ‘don’t make me think’ I immediately thought this sounds like my kind of book, and as it turned out, it was.

The book makes some really useful points and basically talks a lot of common sense and although I only got through the first chapter it is a book I plan to finish. I has some really useful tips, and points out in a really simple way the pit falls of designing a website, it really brings home how important usability is.