Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in.
Jeffrey ZeldmanRead
Content informs design; design without content is decoration.
Interpretation
The essence of good design lies in its content; design without purpose is merely decorative.
Jeffrey Zeldman's quote emphasizes that effective design must be rooted in its content. It suggests that aesthetic elements should serve a purpose and convey meaning, rather than existing solely for visual appeal. In the realm of design, functionality and substance are essential; without the guiding influence of content, design risks becoming superficial and lacking in true significance.
In practice
In a design workshop, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of integrating content into web design projects.
Usability is like love. You have to care, you have to listen, and you have to be willing to change. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s where growth and forgiveness come in.
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration.
Don't worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.
Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.
Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential.
Goal we've always had for design at Apple is to create solutions that are inevitable.
We won't do something different for different's sake. Designers cave in to marketing, to the corporate agenda, which is sort of, 'Oh, it looks like the last one; can't we make it look different?' Well no, there's no reason to.
Design principle: Take things away until the design breaks, then put that last thing back in.
Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.
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