{"database": "24ways", "table": "articles", "is_view": false, "human_description_en": "where author = \"Andy Clarke\", author_slug = \"andyclarke\" and topic = \"design\"", "rows": [[149, "Underpants Over My Trousers", "With Christmas approaching faster than a speeding bullet, this is the perfect time for you to think about that last minute present to buy for the web geek in your life. If you\u2019re stuck for ideas for that special someone, forget about that svelte iPhone case carved from solid mahogany and head instead to your nearest comic-book shop and pick up a selection of comics or graphic novels. (I\u2019ll be using some of my personal favourite comic books as examples throughout). \n\nTrust me, whether your nearest and dearest has been reading comics for a while or has never peered inside this four-colour world, they\u2019ll thank-you for it.\n\nAside from indulging their superhero fantasies, comic books can provide web designers with a rich vein of inspiring ideas and material to help them create shirt button popping, trouser bursting work for the web. I know from my own personal experience, that looking at aspects of comic book design, layout and conventions and thinking about the ways that they can inform web design has taken my design work in often-unexpected directions. \n\nThere are far too many fascinating facets of comic book design that provide web designers with inspiration to cover in the time that it takes to pull your underpants over your trousers. So I\u2019m going to concentrate on one muscle bound aspect of comic design, one that will make you think differently about how you lay out the content of your pages in panels. \n\nA suitcase full of Kryptonite\n\nNow, to the uninitiated onlooker, the panels of a comic book may appear to perform a similar function to still frames from a movie. But inside the pages of a comic, panels must work harder to help the reader understand the timing of a story. It is this method for conveying narrative timing to a reader that I believe can be highly useful to designers who work on the web as timing, drama and suspense are as important in the web world as they are in worlds occupied by costumed crime fighters and superheroes.\n\nI\u2019d like you to start by closing your eyes and thinking about your own process for laying out panels of content on a page. OK, you\u2019ll actually be better off with your eyes open if you\u2019re going to carry on reading.\n\nI\u2019ll bet you a suitcase full of Kryptonite that you often, if not always, structure your page layouts, and decide on the dimensions of those panels according to either:\n\n\n\tThe base grid that you are working to\n\tThe Golden Ratio or another mathematical schema\n\n\nMore likely, I bet that you decide on the size and the number of your panels based on the amount of content that will be going into them. From today, I\u2019d like you to think about taking a different approach. This approach not only addresses horizontal and vertical space, but also adds the dimension of time to your designs.\n\nSlowing down the action\n\nA comic book panel not only acts as a container for its content but also indicates to a reader how much time passes within the panel and as a result, how much time the reader should focus their attention on that one panel. \n\nSmaller panels create swift eye movement and shorter bursts of attention. Larger panels give the perception of more time elapsing in the story and subconsciously demands that a reader devotes more time to focus on it. \n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis use of panel dimensions to control timing can also be useful for web designers in designing the reading/user experience. Imagine a page full of information about a product or service. You\u2019ll naturally want the reader to focus for longer on the key benefits of your offering rather than perhaps its technical specifications.\n\nNow take a look at this spread of pages from Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.\n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nThroughout this series of (originally) twelve editions, artist Dave Gibbons stuck rigidly to his 3\u00d73 panels per page design and deviated from it only for dramatic moments within the narrative. \n\nIn particular during the last few pages of chapter eleven, Gibbons adds weight to the impending doom by slowing down the action by using larger panels and forces the reader to think longer about what was coming next. The action then speeds up through twelve smaller panels until the final panel: nothing more than white space and yet one of the most iconic and thought provoking in the entire twelve book series.\n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nOn the web it is common for clients to ask designers to fill every pixel of screen space with content, perhaps not understanding the drama that can be added by nothing more than white space.\n\nIn the final chapter, Gibbons emphasises the carnage that has taken place (unseen between chapters eleven and twelve) by presenting the reader with six full pages containing only single, large panels. \n\nWatchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Diamond Comic Distributors 2004)\n\nThis drama, created by the artist\u2019s use of panel dimensions to control timing, is a technique that web designers can also usefully employ when emphasising important areas of content.\n\nThink back for a moment to the home page of Apple Inc., during the launch of their iconic iPhone, where the page contained nothing more than a large image and the phrase \u201cSay hello to iPhone\u201d. Rather than fill the page with sales messages, Apple\u2019s designers allowed the space itself to tell the story and created a real sense of suspense and expectation among their readers.\n\nBorders\n\nWhereas on the web, panel borders are commonly used to add emphasis to particular areas of content, in comic books they take on a different and sometimes opposite role. \n\nIn the examples so far, borders have contained all of the action. Removing a border can have the opposite effect to what you might at first think. Rather than taking emphasis away from their content, in comics, borderless panels allow the reader\u2019s eyes to linger for longer on the content adding even stronger emphasis.\n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis effect is amplified when the borderless content is allowed to bleed to the edges of a page. Because the content is no longer confined, except by the edges of the page (both comic and web) the reader\u2019s eye is left to wander out into open space. \n\nConcrete by Paul Chadwick (Dark Horse Comics)\n\nThis type of open, borderless content panel can be highly useful in placing emphasis on the most important content on a page in exactly the very opposite way that we commonly employ on the web today. \n\nSo why is time an important dimension to think about when designing your web pages? On one level, we are often already concerned with the short attention spans of visitors to our pages and should work hard to allow them to quickly and easily find and read the content that both they and we think is important. Learning lessons from comic book timing can only help us improve that experience.\n\nOn another: timing, suspense and drama are already everyday parts of the web browsing experience. Will a reader see what they expect when they click from one page to the next? Or are they in for a surprise? \n\nMost importantly, I believe that the web, like comics, is about story telling: often the story of the experiences that a customer will have when they use our product or service or interact with our organisation. It is this element of story telling than can be greatly improved by learning from comics.\n\nIt is exactly this kind of learning and adapting from older, more established and at first glance unrelated media that you will find can make a real distinctive difference to the design work that you create.\n\nFill your stockings\n\nIf you\u2019re a visual designer or developer and are not a regular reader of comics, from the moment that you pick up your first title, I know that you will find them inspiring. \n\nI will be writing more, and speaking about comic design applied to the web at several (to be announced) events this coming year. I hope you\u2019ll be slipping your underpants over your trousers and joining me then. In the meantime, here is some further reading to pick up on your next visit to a comic book or regular bookshop and slip into your stockings:\n\n\n\tComics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner (Northern Light Books 2001)\n\tUnderstanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (Harper Collins 1994)\n\n\nHave a happy superhero season.\n\n(I would like to thank all of the talented artists, writers and publishers whose work I have used as examples in this article and the hundreds more who inspire me every day with their tall tales and talent.)", "2007", "Andy Clarke", "andyclarke", "2007-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "https://24ways.org/2007/underpants-over-my-trousers/", "design"], [311, "Designing Imaginative Style Guides", "(Living) style guides and (atomic) patterns libraries are \u201call the rage,\u201d as my dear old Nana would\u2019ve said. If articles and conference talks are to be believed, making and using them has become incredibly popular. I think there are plenty of ways we can improve how style guides look and make them better at communicating design information to creatives without it getting in the way of information that technical people need.\nGuides to libraries of patterns\nMost of my consulting work and a good deal of my creative projects now involve designing style guides. I\u2019ve amassed a huge collection of brand guidelines and identity manuals as well as, more recently, guides to libraries of patterns intended to help designers and developers make digital products and websites.\nTwo pages from one of my Purposeful style guide packs. Designs \u00a9 Stuff & Nonsense.\n\u201cStyle guide\u201d is an umbrella term for several types of design documentation. Sometimes we\u2019re referring to static style or visual identity guides, other times voice and tone. We might mean front-end code guidelines or component/pattern libraries. These all offer something different but more often than not they have something in common. They look ugly enough to have been designed by someone who enjoys configuring a router.\nOK, that was mean, not everyone\u2019s going to think an unimaginative style guide design is a problem. After all, as long as a style guide contains information people need, how it looks shouldn\u2019t matter, should it?\nInspiring not encyclopaedic\nWell here\u2019s the thing. Not everyone needs to take the same information away from a style guide. If you\u2019re looking for markup and styles to code a \u2018media\u2019 component, you\u2019re probably going to be the technical type, whereas if you need to understand the balance of sizes across a typographic hierarchy, you\u2019re more likely to be a creative. What you need from a style guide is different.\nSure, some people1 need rules:\n\n\u201cDo this (responsive pattern)\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t do that (auto-playing video.)\u201d \n\nThose people probably also want facts:\n\n\u201cUse this (hexadecimal value)\u201d and not that inaccessible colour combination.\u201d\n\nStyle guides need to do more than list facts and rules. They should demonstrate a design, not just document its parts. The best style guides are inspiring not encyclopaedic. I\u2019ll explain by showing how many style guides currently present information about colour. \nColours communicate\nI\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree that alongside typography, colour\u2019s one of the most important ingredients in a design. Colour communicates personality, creates mood and is vital to an easily understandable interactive vocabulary. So you\u2019d think that an average style guide would describe all this in any number of imaginative ways. Well, you\u2019d be disappointed, because the most inspiring you\u2019ll find looks like a collection of chips from a paint chart.\n\nLonely Planet\u2019s Rizzo does a great job of separating its Design Elements from UI Components, and while its \u2018Click to copy\u2019\u00a0colour values are a thoughtful touch, you\u2019ll struggle to get a feeling for Lonely Planet\u2019s design by looking at their colour chips.\nLonely Planet\u2019s Rizzo style guide.\nLonely Planet approach is a common way to display colour information and it\u2019s one that you\u2019ll also find at Greenpeace, Sky, The Times and on countless more style guides.\n\n\n\n\n\nGreenpeace, Sky and The Times style guides.\nGOV.UK\u2014not a website known for its creative flair\u2014varies this approach by using circles, which I find strange as circles don\u2019t feature anywhere else in its branding or design. On the plus side though, their designers have provided some context by categorising colours by usage such as text, links, backgrounds and more.\nGOV.UK style guide.\nGoogle\u2019s Material Design offers an embarrassment of colours but most helpfully it also advises how to combine its primary and accent colours into usable palettes.\nGoogle\u2019s Material Design.\nWhile the ability to copy colour values from a reference might be all a technical person needs, designers need to understand why particular colours were chosen as well as how to use them. \nInspiration not documentation\nFew style guides offer any explanation and even less by way of inspiring examples. Most are extremely vague when they describe colour:\n\n\u201cUse colour as a presentation element for either decorative purposes or to convey information.\u201d\n\nThe Government of Canada\u2019s Web Experience Toolkit states, rather obviously.\n\n\u201cCertain colors have inherent meaning for a large majority of users, although we recognize that cultural differences are plentiful.\u201d\n\nSalesforce tell us, without actually mentioning any of those plentiful differences. \nI\u2019m also unsure what makes the Draft U.S. Web Design Standards colours a \u201cdistinctly American palette\u201d but it will have to work extremely hard to achieve its goal of communicating \u201cwarmth and trustworthiness\u201d now. \nIn Canada, \u201cbold and vibrant\u201d colours reflect Alberta\u2019s \u201cdiverse landscape.\u201d \nAdding more colours to their palette has made Adobe \u201crich, dynamic, and multi-dimensional\u201d and at Skype, colours are \u201cbold, colourful (obviously) and confident\u201d although their style guide doesn\u2019t actually provide information on how to use them.\nThe University of Oxford, on the other hand, is much more helpful by explaining how and why to use their colours:\n\n\u201cThe (dark) Oxford blue is used primarily in general page furniture such as the backgrounds on the header and footer. This makes for a strong brand presence throughout the site. Because it features so strongly in these areas, it is not recommended to use it in large areas elsewhere. However it is used more sparingly in smaller elements such as in event date icons and search/filtering bars.\u201d\n\nOpenTable style guide.\nThe designers at OpenTable have cleverly considered how to explain the hierarchy of their brand colours by presenting them and their supporting colours in various size chips. It\u2019s also obvious from OpenTable\u2019s design which colours are primary, supporting, accent or neutral without them having to say so.\nArt directing style guides\nFor the style guides I design for my clients, I go beyond simply documenting their colour palette and type styles and describe visually what these mean for them and their brand. I work to find distinctive ways to present colour to better represent the brand and also to inspire designers. \nFor example, on a recent project for SunLife, I described their palette of colours and how to use them across a series of art directed pages that reflect the lively personality of the SunLife brand. Information about HEX and RGB values, Sass variables and when to use their colours for branding, interaction and messaging is all there, but in a format that can appeal to both creative and technical people.\nSunLife style guide. Designs \u00a9 Stuff & Nonsense.\nPurposeful style guides\nIf you want to improve how you present colour information in your style guides, there\u2019s plenty you can do.\nFor a start, you needn\u2019t confine colour information to the palette page in your style guide. Find imaginative ways to display colour across several pages to show it in context with other parts of your design. Here are two CSS gradient filled \u2018cover\u2019 pages from my Purposeful style sheets.\nColour impacts other elements too, including typography, so make sure you include colour information on those pages, and vice-versa.\nPurposeful. Designs \u00a9 Stuff & Nonsense.\nA visual hierarchy can be easier to understand than labelling colours as \u2018primary,\u2019 \u2018supporting,\u2019 or \u2018accent,\u2019 so find creative ways to present that hierarchy. You might use panels of different sizes or arrange boxes on a modular grid to fill a page with colour.\nDon\u2019t limit yourself to rectangular colour chips, use circles or other shapes created using only CSS. If irregular shapes are a part of your brand, fill SVG silhouettes with CSS and then wrap text around them using CSS shapes. \nPurposeful. Designs \u00a9 Stuff & Nonsense.\nSumming up\nIn many ways I\u2019m as frustrated with style guide design as I am with the general state of design on the web. Style guides and pattern libraries needn\u2019t be dull in order to be functional. In fact, they\u2019re the perfect place for you to try out new ideas and technologies. There\u2019s nowhere better to experiment with new properties like CSS Grid than on your style guide.\nThe best style guide designs showcase new approaches and possibilities, and don\u2019t simply document the old ones. Be as creative with your style guide designs as you are with any public-facing part of your website.\n\nPurposeful are HTML and CSS style guides templates designed to help you develop creative style guides and pattern libraries for your business or clients. Save time while impressing your clients by using easily customisable HTML and CSS files that have been designed and coded to the highest standards. Twenty pages covering all common style guide components including colour, typography, buttons, form elements, and tables, plus popular pattern library components. Purposeful style guides will be available to buy online in January.\n\n\n\n\nBoring people\u00a0\u21a9", "2016", "Andy Clarke", "andyclarke", "2016-12-13T00:00:00+00:00", "https://24ways.org/2016/designing-imaginative-style-guides/", "design"], [325, "\"Z's not dead baby, Z's not dead\"", "While Mr. Moll and Mr. Budd have pipped me to the post with their predictions for 2006, I\u2019m sure they won\u2019t mind if I sneak in another. The use of positioning together with z-index will be one of next year\u2019s hot techniques \n\nBoth has been a little out of favour recently. For many, positioned layouts made way for the flexibility of floats. Developers I speak to often associate z-index with Dreamweaver\u2019s layers feature. But in combination with alpha transparency support for PNG images in IE7 and full implementation of position property values, the stacking of elements with z-index is going to be big. I\u2019m going to cover the basics of z-index and how it can be used to create designs which \u2018break out of the box\u2019.\n\nNo positioning? No Z!\n\nRemember geometry? The x axis represents the horizontal, the y axis represents the vertical. The z axis, which is where we get the z-index, represents /depth/. Elements which are stacked using z-index are stacked from front to back and z-index is only applied to elements which have their position property set to relative or absolute. No positioning, no z-index. Z-index values can be either negative or positive and it is the element with the highest z-index value appears closest to the viewer, regardless of its order in the source. Furthermore, if more than one element are given the same z-index, the element which comes last in source order comes out top of the pile. \n\nLet\u2019s take three
s.\n\n
\n
\n
\n\n #one { \n position: relative; \n z-index: 3;\n }\n\n #two { \n position: relative; \n z-index: 1;\n }\n\n #three {\n position: relative; \n z-index: 2;\n }\n\n\n\nAs you can see, the
with the z-index of 3 will appear closest, even though it comes before its siblings in the source order. As these three
s have no defined positioning context in the form of a positioned parent such as a
, their stacking order is defined from the root element . Simple stuff, but these building blocks are the basis on which we can create interesting interfaces (particularly when used in combination with image replacement and transparent PNGs).\n\nBrand building\n\nNow let\u2019s take three more basic elements, an

,
and

, all inside a branding

which acts a new positioning context. By enclosing them inside a positioned parent, we establish a new stacking order which is independent of either the root element or other positioning contexts on the page.\n\n
\n

Worrysome.com

\n

Don' worry 'bout a thing...

\n

Take the weight of the world off your shoulders.

\n
\n\nApplying a little positioning and z-index magic we can both set the position of these elements inside their positioning context and their stacking order. As we are going to use background images made from transparent PNGs, each element will allow another further down the stacking order to show through. This makes for some novel effects, particularly in liquid layouts.\n\n(Ed: We\u2019re using n below to represent whatever values you require for your specific design.) \n\n#branding {\n position: relative;\n width: n;\n height: n;\n background-image: url(n);\n }\n\n #branding>h1 {\n position: absolute;\n left: n;\n top: n;\n width: n;\n height: n;\n background-image: url(h1.png);\n text-indent: n;\n }\n\n #branding>blockquote {\n position: absolute;\n left: n;\n top: n;\n width: n;\n height: n;\n background-image: url(bq.png);\n text-indent: n;\n\n }\n\n #branding>p {\n position: absolute;\n right: n;\n top: n;\n width: n;\n height: n;\n background-image: url(p.png);\n text-indent: n;\n }\n\nNext we can begin to see how the three elements build upon each other.\n\n\n1. Elements outlined\n\n\n2. Positioned elements overlayed to show context\n\n\n3. Our final result\n\nMultiple stacking orders\n\nNot only can elements within a positioning context be given a z-index, but those positioning contexts themselves can also be stacked.\n\n\nTwo positioning contexts, each with their own stacking order\n\nInterestingly each stacking order is independent of that of either the root element or its siblings and we can exploit this to make complex layouts from just a few semantic elements. This technique was used heavily on my recent redesign of Karova.com.\n\nDissecting part of Karova.com\n\nFirst the XHTML. The default template markup used for the site places
and
as siblings inside their container.\n\n
\n
\n

\n

\n
\n
\n
\n\nBy giving the navigation
a lower z-index than the content
we can ensure that the positioned content elements will always appear closest to the viewer, despite the fact that the navigation comes after the content in the source.\n\n#content { \n position: relative; \n z-index: 2; \n }\n\n #nav_main { \n position: absolute; \n z-index: 1; \n }\n\nNow applying absolute positioning with a negative top value to the

and a higher z-index value than the following

ensures that the header sits not only on top of the navigation but also the styled paragraph which follows it.\n\nh2 {\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 200;\n top: -n;\n }\n\n h2+p {\n position: absolute;\n z-index: 100;\n margin-top: -n;\n padding-top: n;\n }\n\n\nDissecting part of Karova.com\n\nYou can see the full effect in the wild on the Karova.com site.\n\nHave a great holiday season!", "2005", "Andy Clarke", "andyclarke", "2005-12-16T00:00:00+00:00", "https://24ways.org/2005/zs-not-dead-baby-zs-not-dead/", "design"]], "truncated": false, "table_rows_count": 336, "filtered_table_rows_count": 3, "expanded_columns": [], "expandable_columns": [], "columns": ["rowid", "title", "contents", "year", "author", "author_slug", "published", "url", "topic"], "primary_keys": [], "units": {}, "query": {"sql": "select rowid, * from articles where \"author\" = :p0 and \"author_slug\" = :p1 and \"topic\" = :p2 order by rowid limit 101", "params": {"p0": "Andy Clarke", "p1": "andyclarke", "p2": "design"}}, "facet_results": {}, "suggested_facets": [], "next": null, "next_url": null, "query_ms": 17.034053802490234}