RonJohn.net » Design

Career Evolution: Advertising

Ron Johnson — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:03:26 +0000

Target for charting excellence

Ron Johnson — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:58:02 +0000

From the always excellent Flowing Data

UX Design explained

Ron Johnson — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 05:40:00 +0000

This elegant video does an excellent job of illustrating what a User Experience designer does. An excellent reference to share with people unfamiliar with UX!

ILUVUXDESIGN from lyle on Vimeo.

Who doesn’t love a good UX design, and who doesn’t get totally frustrated with bad experience design.
Hail to all the great UX designers of the world. Spread the love for UX design !!!

Creating sunbursts in Illustrator (easy!)

Ron Johnson — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 06:32:19 +0000

Quick trick I discovered to create sunbursts in Illustrator:

1. Using the star tool, create a new star with a large difference between radius 1 and radius 2. I’ve used a 100:1 ratio. Points will set the number of streams of your burst, divided by 2 (if you want 5 streams, use 10 points. Even numbers work best.

Your star will look something like this:

2. Zoom into the center of your star (cmd+spacebar) to see the points of your inner radius. It should look like this:

Using the pen tool (delete anchor point tool), delete every other point on this inner radius. In progress, it will look like this:

And here it is completed (zoomed out):

You can vary the look of the sunburst by changing the number of points:

Add a radial gradient, and it’s a pretty useful little trick!

On design

Ron Johnson — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:59:15 +0000

“Design”, as a practice, can be defined as ‘problem solving.’ This is a useful shorthand, not only for communicating your role to people unfamiliar with design, but also to help other members of an organization understand what value you bring to projects. A designer is a person whose primary task is problem solving. Design, as a function, is obviously not restricted to just ‘designers’ – many roles employ design as a component of their work. Processes can be designed, experiences can be designed, etc.

What is bad design? Why is there so much bad design?

Design is bad when it doesn’t solve the problem. Bad design is wasteful. It’s usually the result of bad decisions. Bad design can exacerbate the problem, or creates new problems.

There are a number of factors that contribute to bad design:

The designer is engaged to solve a poorly defined (or undefined) problem. Without correctly knowing the problem, time spent on solutions is usually wasted.
The problem is misrepresented, so the designer is tasked with creating a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.
The designer is unwilling or unable to create effective solutions to the state problem.
Insufficient time for the project means the designer can’t

Design should be considered “good” when it effectively solves a problem. Design can be “great” with that solution is elegant, when it appears so simple that, in retrospect, the solution is seen as a foregone conclusion. It’s right. It fits. Really good design is invisible, unless the solution required the design itself to be visible [In my experience, this is rare indeed].

What are the attributes of a good (or great) designer?

A good designer creates effective solutions to an established problem. A great designer phrases the problem in a way so it can be solved. This requires understanding of the pertinent details of the project: the objectives, the limitations, and resources that can brought to bear. A great designer often creates solutions that are unexpected; taking the broad view of a problem can mean tackling it from different directions.