If you’re an AIGA member and you’re planning to attend SXSW Interactive, don’t miss out on the group rate SXSW discount for AIGA members.
Confirmed SXSW speakers include Doug Bowman, Joe Clark, Nick Finck, Jason Fried, Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, Bob Regan, Keith Robinson, Sharron Rush, Bruce Sterling, Jeff Veen, Malcolm Gladwell, Christina Wodtke, and Jeffrey Zeldman.
The Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) is starting up again and we need design teams. AIR Interactive pairs volunteer web design and development teams with area artists, musicians, and other arts-oriented non-profits in a competition to build the best, most usable, most accessible, rich media website. Check out last year’s winning sites:
Want free training in accessible website development? Think you can do better than the previous winners? The competition lasts about a month and culminates with the awards ceremony during South by Southwest. Register your team, today!
Font rendering and obsession for detail
A lot has happened in the past few months—I got a new job, my brother came back from Afghanistan, my sister went to Mexico, there was an “election,” ahem—but I’m going to tell you about one thing in particular that has taken a lot of my time: the new AIGA Austin site.
Most of the free time that I used to spend on my personal site (this one) now goes into building and updating the AIGA Austin site. We launched the current version on New Year’s Eve and put up an archived version of the previous site. There are some noted CSS bugs in Mac IE 5.0 (Not 5.1 or 5.2 though, go figure. Maybe I should just block it like Ethan) but, for the most part, the launch went really smoothly. I also set up a dev site where I can try out new ideas (currently a header change with search box, and a few other tweaks) before implementing them on the live site. The dev site is mainly there to keep me from having to debug CSS in front of the public; I’d hate to have my big red debug borders showing up while people were trying to use the real site.
Now, to the point of the post.
Perfectionism? Or just a waste of time…?
I’ve decided I’m not very effecient when it comes to free-time projects. Sometimes I fine-tune things when it doesn’t even matter… to the point that not even other designers would notice. Yesterday, I spent at least an hour on one bit of graphical text—not a design, mind you, just some tiny, simple text—I must’ve tried twenty-five or thirty different renderings.
I couldn’t (rather, wouldn’t) spend that much time on it if it were for work, but something about a free, budgetless project makes me blow the time budget ten times over. Here’s a brief run-down of why that graphic took so long.
Most typefaces come in a vector (outline) format. The edge of each letterform is detailed so finely that font size, large or small, does not matter. This is perfect for high-resolution printing, but it doesn’t quite translate to screen pixels. To illustrate, here is a graphic with the default rendering of 18-point Filosofia italic. (Filosofia was intended as a print typeface.)
Looks alright, but it’s kind of thin, and blurry. There is another type of anti-aliasing that sharpens up the readability of screen text by pushing the edges around to better line up with the screen pixels. Like this:
Pretty messed up, huh? Sure, it’s more readable if you’re used to reading text through a funhouse mirror. It looks like the type went through the spin cycle before stepping in front of a truck. Let’s try another:
Well, that’s better, but it’s still kind of fuzzy, and it’s a lot more bold than I wanted. What if we sharpen that up a bit?
Ugh. Now it’s all blocky.
You get the idea. I ended up rendering out the type 400 percent larger than I needed, sharpened the edges, reduced it to the right size, and then tweaked a few pixels by hand. Scrapped all that, re-kerned it, and went through the steps again. This is the final version of the new AIGA Austin title graphic.
Embrace the compulsion
All this for such a slight difference? I blame my design professors for the obsession, particularly the late, great Edward Triggs.
But this is not a random occurance. And it’s not just the fonts. I spent about half a day reworking the search box interaction over and over again. I spent months on variations of the layout. I launched the site about a year later than I originally planned.
This is why I quit doing freelance. If I’m going to obsess so much, it had better be over projects I enjoy doing. No more obsessing over the visual identity of “Bob and Donna’s Widget Emporium.”
Luckily at work, I have project managers breathing down my neck. I don’t really do the same kind of work there, but I have a certain allotment of time in the budget so I know when to quit. Understandably, the project always takes the full amount of the budget or timeline…
I think I need rehab. Who wants to join Obsessive Designers Anonymous with me?
Motivation to blog…
Jason Estes wrote:
Buddy, looks like you need to do a little updating on the ole’ website. Come on now, November? You can do better than that ;)
Heh heh. Yeah. I guess you could say I’ve been busy. Thanks for the push. I’ve got a 3-day weekend coming up, so this will be my incentive.
This is posted publicly now, so hold me to it… I’ve got a 3-day weekend though, so don’t start bitchin’ until Tuesday.
