Writing
Stories about how we design and how we work, written for anyone who runs a business and wonders why things are done the way they are.
How we work ·
Don’t wait months to see it work
You shouldn’t have to buy a plan before you’ve seen anything work. We build a small piece of the real thing, show it to you working on a date agreed at the start, and you decide what happens next.
Read →Method ·
Canonical Presence
Every business is described in a dozen places, and most of them are out of date. Why that isn’t a new problem, why an artist feels it like a winery does, and how one record on your own website keeps them all telling the truth.
Read →Speaking of reputation ·
Before you pay for a logo
If you’ve been quoted for a logo and brand guidelines, three questions are worth answering first: who the company is, who the guidelines will guide, and what you’ll promise. We share a $300 job of ours where we skipped them.
Read →How we design ·
A study of our type
Every piece of type on goodcitizens.us, set live and explained: the three typefaces and why we chose them, the one golden-ratio scale every size comes from, the rule that sets the space between lines, and the reason behind each setting.
Read →How we design ·
Everyone’s a critic
A usability score from a panel of experts sounds like science. The evidence says experts rarely agree, and the certificate that makes someone an expert is a receipt for one company’s courses. We trust that expertise without testing it, when the work itself can be checked.
Read →How we design ·
The golden ratio, without the legends
Most of what people say about the golden ratio is legend. The true story is stranger and better: a cut Euclid needed for a pentagon, a name invented in the 1700s, sunflowers, crystals that could not exist, and why we build our pages on it anyway.
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