Good Stuff from Zeldman

May 01, 2003 | 0 Comments

Jeffrey has been pretty active lately. The last few days have brought some very insightful posts. I guess now that his book is getting close to being publish he has more time for his site. Maybe A List Apart will kick up some dust soon — that would be great.

Anyway first of is Rules-based design. Here he talks about some of the differences between print and Web design, something that I often think about. He relates the use of the grid in print to the use of “rules” in Web. From the post:

Instead of basing size and positioning according to an inflexible grid, rules-based design takes the environment of each element into account before determining how that element should be displayed. As a simple example, a header may have one margin when preceded by an image, and a different margin when preceded by a paragraph.

It’s an interesting read. He follows it up with an enlightening bit about the difference between Art Direction and Design. I think, not surprisingly, that these are often confused when it comes to the Web, especially with folks who might not have any previous design background. I hear the term “art direction” bandied about quite a lot and often feel that it is essentially misused.

Filed under: Web General