Lessons
Why Design Matters
05:50 2Design Vs. Aesthetic
06:27 3Impact Of Design
07:01 4The Design Process: Understand Your Audience
09:17 5The Design Process: Understand Your Content
05:21 6Design Principle: Alignment, Grids, And Spacing
05:47 7Design Principles: Contrast
02:55 8Design Principles: Repetition
03:20Design Principle: Hierarchy & Proximity
05:37 10Principle Scale And Balance
02:48 11Design Principles: Typography
04:29 12Design Principles: White Space
01:11 13Design Principles: Color
06:09 14Design Principles: Graphics, Icons, And Photos
02:51 15Design Principles: Layouts And Focal Points
01:53 16Design Principles: Color-Blind Accessibility In Design
01:41Lesson Info
Why Design Matters
Why does design matter? So this is at a coffee shop close to my house, in Manhattan, in New York City. I go here far too frequently. They already have my coffee made when I walk in. I know them all by name. But this door. So I'm normally sitting right up against this wall. And all day long, well, sometimes all day long, I watch people come to this door. And what do they do? They try and pull that door. And what you're not seeing, it got cropped off, but the hinge at the top indicates that the door pushes out. It's not a pull door. It's a push door. The problem, when you look at this door, you naturally think it's a pull because there's a handle. There's something to grip. It's a visual indicator that this is something for your hand to go to and then you pull it. But you don't and so people approach this door all day long. And there is actually something called the Norman Door. In the world of design, there's a gentleman whose name is Don Norman. And he is kind of a legend in the design...
world. He wrote a book called "The Design of Everyday Things." And that book really came about because years ago he spent I believe a year living abroad in London or just outside of London. And for that whole year, he started to notice all these poorly-designed things, doors that he thought were pushes but were pulls, faucets, things like that. I've been in hotels in London where it's very confusing, all the faucets. And he just kind of started to notice in his own life all these problems with everyday things. So he wrote this book and that's where this term the Norman Door came from, which is a door where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you are supposed to do. Just like the door in my coffee shop, we don't pull that door. We push it even though there's a pull handle. Now, this door is a little better. This is actually here at Creative Live. And I searched all week for a good door. And it wasn't until I got here that I finally found a door that needs no instruction because it's a flat panel with a silver area and there's only one option. There's no way you could pull it. So you have to push it. So this is a good door. And then just for fun, to my surprise we also have just a fun door that I had to throw in because when I arrived here, there's a special door with a cocktail sign. So just for fun, this is now my new favorite door. I love it. I've yet to be greeted at the door with a cocktail though. But design has the power to instruct, educate, inform, and influence what we're thinking and what we're doing as we saw with all those door examples. And now, this afternoon, when you are going out to do whatever you're doing, you're going to notice these. And I apologize but you'll now be a door critiquer for the rest of your life. Now, also in New York City, I'm not sure if you've ever visited there but the subways, thank goodness they exist but I also cannot stand them because here's why. At rush hour, you try to get on the subway. And what do people do? Everyone stands right here. And I noticed on the subway, I really took this picture. We have these arrows now to finally tell people, "Move inside." And I don't know if it's actually working. But I was reading about it and the impact of people crowding the doors and outsiders thinking they cannot get onto the car has this giant domino effect where then cars are moving, people aren't getting on, and you've got crowds of people waiting for the next train. So it creates a big, big problem. It's not just that people are hogging the space. But if you think the whole thing through, they're trying to solve this major problem of delayed trains and things like that. So we'll see if those work but I thought it was really interesting. Another example of design and how it really can influence us and our behavior, if you think of the stop signs. So we are trained just by the power of a shape and by color. So we know, even if we are in a French-speaking country or a Spanish-speaking country, just the presence of the shape and the color, even if we didn't have these words, we would know that this means stop. And finally, maybe in your everyday job, design can be used to influence what people are thinking and what people do when it comes to your resume. When someone looks at your resume, people are going to form an impression, what they think about you, immediately. Like it or not, that's the world we live in. It could help you influence what people think when they open up that spreadsheet you send them. The initial impression they get can be engaging or they can look at it and think this is the most complicated thing I've ever seen. I'm not gonna look at this. Design can help us influence what people think about a website and have them take action or not take action. And even just receiving email, I'm sure there has been a time when you received an email from a colleague or a friend and you open it up and it's just paragraphs. It's like they wrote you a 3,000-word essay. And you just think to yourself, I can't. Like, I don't have time for this. I don't know where to start. You get stressed out. And you could still send an email of that length. Just designing it differently could change the first impression of what people think about it and hopefully get them to actually read it.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase