Re: The shoemaker'c children: designers who produce lousy web pages

Dear Don and Simon and all,

Web  design problems can be more  'wrong design profession' rather than a
font size issue.

It occurs when web design is done by print-based graphic designers. An
indicator is  web fonts specified in 'points'. Quality web design layout and
fonts are specified in  'em' s.

The Davis design website specifies font sizes in *points*, see
http://design.ucdavis.edu/css/main.css 

The reference for specifying fonts for  quality web design  is the W3
consortium, see http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size  

<snip>' Units: avoid absolute length units for screen display
    Do not specify the font-size in pt, or other absolute length units for
screen stylesheets. They render inconsistently across platforms and can't be
resized by the User Agent (e.g browser). Keep the usage of such units for
styling on media with fixed and known physical properties (e.g print).
    Use relative length units such as percent or (better) em
    even better, if a base font-size is set for the document, use absolute
size ([ xx-small | x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large ])
or relative size ([ larger | smaller ]) when defining the font size for a
particular element within the document.<endsnip>

This is web design education 101  and basic web design practice.

A quick trawl through Phd-design list members' websites indicates their
websites typically adhere to W3 advice and occasionally drift into the use
of absolute pixel-based font specification (i.e. designing for a single
screen spec - which has much the same problems as point-based font
specification).  

Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI 

Senior Lecturer,  Design
Researcher, Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, t.love <at> love.com.au

Senior Lecturer, Dept of Design
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

Director, Design Out Crime Research Centre

Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN <at> JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Don
Norman
Sent: Thursday, 27 October 2011 10:29 PM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: The shoemaker'c children: designers who produce lousy web pages

Simon Sadler sent out a job announcement for UC Davis (California).
I've been advising another UC campus on design, but i didn't realize
Davis had a design department so i thought i would check out their web
page.

http://design.ucdavis.edu/index.html

Font Size:  Font size.  Font size.  (Gee, you mean soe one is supposed
to read the words? Nah.)

Wow: believe it or not Davis teaches communication design, but you
would never guess it from their website.

why do graphics and communication  designers love tiny, tiny type?
Especially communication designers, who one would have thought would
like their stuff to communicate.  I have never seen such small type on
a website for the main message.

There is one good side. Most graphical designers love to use gray
letters on a gray background, with small font.  At least here we have
black on white.  (Oh, another good side: maybe this can be my next
column for core77.)

Moral: Never send anyone to study at UC Davis.  That design department
doesn't get it.

Don

Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group
KAIST (Daejeon, S. Korea), IDEO Fellow
(UC San Diego, emeritus)
norman <at> nngroup.com   www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Latest book: "Living with Complexity"