ollowing the UX design process doesn’t just give users an intuitive and enjoyable experience, it provides an opportunity for designers to iterate and improve their designs.

The first step to designing an interface users will love is knowing exactly what that process entails.

Let’s take a look at the meaning of UX, how to break down the design process, and how you can apply this method to your next project.

What is UX design?

To understand UX design process, we have to understand the acronym.

“UX”, or “user experience”, is how a user feels when they use a specific product or service. It encompasses a variety of feelings including emotion, senses, and physical interaction.

The term was coined by Donald Norman, Apple’s former vice president of the company’s Advanced Technology Group, who said:

“I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual.”

UX design is the system designers create for that experience with the goal of having the user’s experience be satisfying and easy. The term UX is involved in a lot of different products and services, but typically refers to the digital design experience.

Why is UX design important?

Good UX design creates a positive experience for your user by anticipating, and fulfilling their needs.

Successful products or services, such as a website or app needs good UX design.

UX design will look different from product to product and brand to brand. That means each UX design solution is going to be much different than others, so don’t worry about what the other team is doing.

The 6 stages of the UX design process

Your business’s UX design process is going to differ from other businesses. That means the stages below may be slightly different, and that’s okay! What’s important is that you find out exactly what works for your company.

Researching, iterating, and testing is all part of a good design process.

Stage 1: Understand

Before you get started with any project, you need to get the basics down first. That means understanding two crucial elements:

• 1st Your Users
• 2nd Your Brand

Since designing for the user experience is all about addressing your user’s issues and goals, you need to answer the question: What are their issues?

What issue are you trying to solve for your user? What problem are you trying to solve? And why are you the one with the answers?

When you understand what the problems facing your users are and you’re able to come up with the questions you need to answer, you’re able to create a strategy for design success.

How does this project align with your brand?

Next, you need to know how this project aligns with your brand’s mission and goals.

What are your company’s values and mission? How does this project contribute to that goal? Is this the right time for your company to be pursuing this project?

Keeping in line with your brand’s core mission is crucial to the success of your project and business.

The dedication to your core mission is the power of keeping in line with your company’s brand in mission.

Stage 2: Research

Once you know the project is in line with your core mission, and you know what questions you’re trying to solve, you need to conduct research.

User research is going to be the life blood of your project. The things you discover and unearth during this stage lays the foundation for how your entire project will turn out.

As a designer, you must challenge your assumptions. Good user research challenges all your assumptions.

Below are good methods of user research:

1- Interviews

Sitting down with someone from your target audience and ask them pointed questions about their issues is key. What are they struggling with? What are they looking for in your product? Face to face interviews are preferred since you can gauge their verbal and nonverbal reactions. Video or phone call can work as well.

Some good tools to use:

• Zoom for video conference calls
• Lookback to record interviews
• Temi to transcribe calls

2 – User/Focus Groups

Organize a group of 3 – 5 target users and have them discuss their attitudes, emotions, and frustrations with an issue or product. It’s a discussion, not just an interview. Encourage a dialogue between the participants and yourself.

Some good tools to use:

• FocusGroupIt for easy group moderation
• Video camera for recording the the group
• Voice recorder for recording the group

3 – Surveys

Questionnaires you send out to your target users are good for finding out your users’ attitudes towards a specific topic with the added benefit of receiving the data as soon as the users are done with the survey. However, you have to be careful not to use leading questions that could disproportionately impact the results.

Some good online survey tools to consider:

• Wufoo
• TypeForm
• Google Surveys

4 – Usability Testing

This is the practice of observing your target audience using a program or product. For example, if you were a designer for the Uber app, you might ask your user to pull up the app and order a car. As they do so, you observe how the act and react to the app. When they’re done, you can ask them questions about their experience. This is a great opportunity to see how happy your user is with the app and if it adequately addresses their needs.

Some good tools to consider:

• User Testing to run a user test on your website
• Optimizely for good A/B testing
• maze for finding out what users are clicking on

Stage 3: Analyze

In this stage, you’ll be using all of the information you gathered in the previous two stages to analyze and distill the most important elements.

Here are two ways you can analyze your research:

User personas

User personas are profiles of your ideal customer

Designers use them to help understand a number of things about their customers including their:

• Goals
• Background
• Age
• Gender
• Behaviors
• Spending habits
• Pain points
• Needs

If you ever encounter a tough problem, you can always refer back to your persona and ask, “What design best services this person’s needs?”

You can create multiple personas to represent the varied users you have.

User journey maps

A user journey map is a representation of the user’s interactions with your product.

See example below:

According to Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences, the user journey map is crucial for:

• Building empathy
• Providing a common “big picture”
• Breaking down silos
• Bringing focus
• Revealing opportunities

Leveraging the things you learned in the research phase, create a user journey map to help you understand what your user will be going through when using your product or service. Only then can you build the best product for them.

Stage 4: Design

Now, you can start to build out your design.

That means building things like:

• Site map
• User flow
• Mockups
• Images
• Icons
• Colors

One of the most important things you can create at this stage is the wireframe.

A wireframe is like the prototype of your product, a bare essentials representation of your product.

It’s a sample of what your product will eventually look like. They’re typically notable for the block layouts and “X” placeholders to represent future images, and help accomplish three things:

1. Presents information that will be displayed on the page
2. Gives an outline of the structure and layout of the page
3. Conveys overall direction and description of the user interface

Like a user journey map, this will give you a comprehensive look at your users’ experience with your product.

This is an iterative process. That means you won’t get it all done in the first go. You’ll have to design, redesign, get feedback and edit your wireframe content, design and layout.

Stage 5: Launch

After designing and redesigning, you’re going to reach a point where all your assets are ready to ship.

That means it’s time to implement; pass everything to the development team who will create a working version of the user interface.

Once it’s delivered, there are several ways you can go about making sure that the product is perfect and what your clients wants:

• User testing. Like the usability test, this involves you observing your target audience using the actual program.
• Beta launch. This is a limited release of your product to a small amount of people with the goal of finding issues and cleaning them up before you launch it to the world.
• Internal testing. When your own team uses the product and tests out each facet of it.

Feedback with the development team is crucial at this stage. You want to make sure that you clearly communicate any issues that arise and make sure that they are addressed before your product launches.

Stage 6: Analyze (again)

Once your product launches, it’s time for another round of analysis.

Instead of looking at the results of your research, you’ll be taking a look at the overall final product.

Some questions you might ask yourself:

• Where did our process go right? And why?
• Where did we struggle? And why?
• How are our users responding to the product?
• Did it solve their issues and pain points?
• Where can we improve the product?
• What lessons can we take away from this process for future products?

By thoroughly analyzing the product and the UX process, you’ll be able to get more out of the experience than just a product. You also gain invaluable knowledge you can leverage for the future.

What next?

Your UX process is going to be entirely unique to your business and product. This means the UX stages may look a lot different for you compared to another company and product. The important thing is that you find a process that works for you, your team, and your users.

s of September 2024, people using mobile devices contribute to 63.38% of all website traffic. There are approximately 4.32 billion active mobile internet users worldwide.

So if you’re not designing for mobile, you and your users are in trouble. That’s why mobile-first design is a great strategy to employ for all digital products, websites, apps, and software.

Key Points for Mobile-First Design

• Defining mobile-first design
• Why is mobile-first design important?
• The connection between mobile-first design and accessibility
• Mobile-first design best practices, plus examples

What is mobile-first design?

Mobile-first design is a design philosophy that aims to create better experiences for users by starting the design process from the smallest of screens: mobile. Designing and prototyping your websites for mobile devices first helps you ensure that your users’ experience is seamless on any device.

For example, if a mobile-first designer sits down to prototype or sketch out a website layout, they wouldn’t start sketching a desktop layout. Instead, they’d sketch out how it’d look on mobile, then move onto bigger and bigger screens.

The mobile-first design concept first came into the limelight in 2010 when Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google in 2010, announced at a conference that the company would be focusing more on mobile users in their design practices.

Eric Schmidt said:

“What’s really important right now is to get the mobile architecture right. Mobile will ultimately be the way you provision most of your services. The way I like to put it is, the answer should always be mobile-first. You should always put your best team and your best app on your mobile app.”

The reasoning behind this is simple: Mobile design is more limited. After all, you’re designing for a smaller screen and can only fit so many elements into it. That means you choose only what’s most important — what your users need the most — while ignoring everything else.

As you expand your design, you can provide them with other elements, but you know exactly what you need to bring to the forefront.

Why is mobile-first design important?

It’s a matter of numbers: The number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions worldwide reached almost seven billion in 2023, according to Statista. It’s forecast to exceed 7.7 billion by 2028. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone mobile network subscriptions. This means the majority of people are using their phones to find the content they need. There’s a big need for mobile-friendly websites out there, and so it’s your job to supply it for your users.

If you’re keeping your eyes on website traffic stats, Google’s algorithm favors mobile-friendly websites.

“Getting good, relevant answers when you search shouldn’t depend on what device you’re using. You should get the best answer possible, whether you’re on a phone, desktop or tablet. Last year, we started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal on mobile searches. Today we’re announcing that beginning in May, we’ll start rolling out an update to mobile search results that increases the effect of the ranking signal to help our users find even more pages that are relevant and mobile-friendly.”

That means by providing a good user experience on mobile devices, you increase your discoverability, and potentially your conversion rates.

Mobile-first design offers a wealth of opportunities for accessibility experience. See details below…

The connection between mobile-first design and accessibility

Here are a few ways mobile-first design and accessible design overlap:

• Small-screen friendly. Mobile-first design pushes you to make your digital products more readable on smaller screens, and therefore more accessible to people who might be hard of seeing. When your designs help people with limited vision, they’ll also help everyone else.
• Hierarchy of information. So mobile-first means content first. That means, putting your most important content assets (i.e. the ones your users want) at the top of your page. This also makes your content accessible to anyone with cognitive disabilities.

3 tips for good mobile-first design

Tip #1: Mobile-first = Content-first

When it comes to mobile-first design, you need to remember one thing: Content is key.

You need to give your users all the content they’re looking for, and only that. Anything else might clutter and distract from your users’ experience.

With the big constraint in screen sizes, designing for mobile devices can be a challenge . That means you need to take a look at all of your content and present it in a visual hierarchy depending on how important it is to your user. Only then can you fit the most important elements.

Key Points:

• Companies title at the top. This is key in the visual hierarchy. It lets the users know where they are and orientates them to the specific company website and content. Your brand’s logo and name will likely always go on top of any mobile design you create.
• Users see the most important info right away. Leading news agencies goes all-in on content-first. Most users aren’t coming to their website to check out the about page or privacy policy. They want to read the news, so the newspaper gives it to them.
• Easy-to-reach navigation buttons. The news agencies website stores any extraneous (or less important) content in the hamburger menu up top. That way, if there’s something the user wants to see that isn’t offered right away, they can easily find it there.

This is ultimately a great example of knowing your website’s visual hierarchy and using it to create a great mobile-first design.

Tip #2: Make it easy to navigate

Condense your secondary elements into easy-to-reach navigational buttons. One tried-and-true method of doing this is by using a hamburger menu. Hamburger menus are recognizable ways for your user to attain access to secondary elements. If you don’t have one on the page already, chances are your users know to go to the hamburger menu to find what they’re looking for.

This does come with a catch though: low engagement. According to a study by the user design research firm Nielsen/Norman Group, hidden navigation buttons like hamburger menus decrease content discoverability by 21%. Not only that, but it also increases the time it takes to use the navigation by an average of two seconds.

Unfortunately, offering all of your possible links at once is unfeasible. Luckily, there’s a way you can get the best of both worlds.

Joe Toscano, an experience design consultant, recommends using combo navigation.

Toscano writes… “Combo navigation allows the user to see the options they need the most and makes the rest accessible in a hamburger menu or something similar. […] The site’s content is laid out so well that I don’t need nav buttons. I can scroll the page and get where I want very easily. 

One great example comes from Apple’s mobile page where, instead of implementing a hamburger menu that hides options, Apple utilizes combo navigation to present the most important links (“Buy” and TV”) as buttons at the top of the page.”

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always go to the navigation button on the top to see more options.

Tip #3: KISS (Keep it simple, stupid)

Successful mobile design is simple.

You never want to concern your users with extraneous elements like ads, pop-ups, and other content they don’t want to see, but especially not on mobile. Limit your compact visual real estate to only including the things they’re on the page for.

Consider adding a clear call-to-action that makes sense with the rest of the article. It’s also unobtrusive and adds even more value for the user.

Keep the user in mind

In the end, the most important thing to remember when approaching mobile-first design is that you’re designing it for your user, and only your user.

If it doesn’t add value to their experience, you can probably leave it out.

Design better with DesignBetter.co

Discover the world’s best design practices — DesignBetter.Co

DesignBetter.Co is the essential guide to the best design practices from top design experts. Learn how to build a world-class design organization and more.

Design Systems Handbook

Design Thinking Handbook

DesignOps Handbook

Design Leadership Handbook

Enterprise Design Sprints

The Design Better Podcast

Design Better Workshops

Plus much more at designbetter.co.

he History and Future of Adobe Flash

On December 31, 2020, the Adobe Flash Player was officially discontinued. Adobe finally stopped updating and distributing the Flash Player plugin, a.k.a. Shockwave Flash and blocked Flash content from running in the player starting January 12, 2021. Flash actually was done and finally died. Before the end of Flash, let’s give credit where credit is due. Flash was miraculous. It enabled new possibilities on the web, helped bring video and video sharing to the internet, and most importantly, it got some people interested in designing for the web.

Flashback

As a college student in the 1990s, being a graphic designer mostly meant creating graphics, logos, magazines, books, posters, album art, T-shirts… basically the print world. There were no online experience and courses. When the internet came along, and everyone and anyone seemed to need a website, many designers were stumped since this web thing required code.

Most designers never had to code and didn’t need to since Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, Freehand, and QuarkXPress did the work for us. Import elements, place objects, move them around, scale them, change their color or size, it happened easily thanks to “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) software.

Print Alone…No Longer

Why learn to code? Designers just left the web to computer scientists, computer engineers, and software developers. They understood the matrix of letters, numbers, and symbols that made up Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). They were also much faster typists. A lot of graphic designers didn’t care about HTML. “Let the coders deal with coding,” we thought, “and we’ll stick to print.”

Many of us did, until we saw new opportunities for our clients who had to be on the web and it became a matter of evolve or be left behind. Fortunately, web layout software had arrived that promised to make getting a website designed quickly and easily. GoLive CyberStudio (later acquired by Adobe), Adobe PageMill, and HoTMetaL helped you design for the web since the software’s backend rendered the necessary HTML. Imagine Microsoft Word, but instead of a page with images and text that you can print, it makes a page you can put on the web. (Even older versions of Word let you convert documents to HTML for the web, and today’s versions still let you do this.)

Even with these early web design tools, designers had mixed feelings. The typography was so limited. One of my university professors was appalled that you couldn’t layout a site with Univers or any other specialty font that a company might have as part of their corporate identity branding.

On top of the expensive software we already needed, if we did not want to learn coding we would have to pay for another tool? Art supplies, computer peripherals, digital camera equipment, etc., etc., it was already expensive and especially for those on a budget.

On the other hand, design educator Ken Hiebert, author of Graphic Design Sources and Graphic Design Processes, found software such as GoLive to be a real blessing. The story from Hiebert’s perspective: we had been using PostScript fonts on a daily basis as well as PostScript laser printers, but that didn’t require us to read and write PostScript. GoLive handled HTML in a similar way: design what you needed, let it spit out the code, and upload it when you’re ready, without really needing to know HTML. If you wanted to get on the web without knowing code, GoLive or PageMill were a small price to pay. And if you were a visual thinker, those programs were right up your alley.

One Plugin, One Solution (Almost)

By the late 90s, and even with the advances in web design, things were limited. Software could take care of most of the work, but you still needed to have some basic knowledge of HTML to make sure everything displayed properly. Additionally, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) were on the horizon, and that was a whole new thing you would have to learn to make your site look and function as it was designed.

To complicate matters, Browser Wars as well as slow internet speeds caused other challenges. Designers just wanted a better web, an experience that was designed rather than coded. Better typography!! Sound! Animation too! Why not? For starters, it wasn’t easy to achieve. Even Macromedia’s Dreamweaver a program that promised a better web, was still a challenge and some coding was needed.

Then everything changed with the release Flash, first named FutureSplash Animator, later acquired by Macromedia. Text, vector graphics, and images could be composed in a layout and uploaded to the web, with many if not all of the refinements designers had become accustomed to. For example, if you wanted to use a particular font on the web, especially as a headline or button, you needed to make that text into a bitmap image that often looked rough. Today text as image is not done due to Google and SEO technology.

Flash to Make Them Dance

When Macromedia acquired FutureSplash and released it as Macromedia Flash, a world of possibilities arrived. Yes, you had to pay for the Flash software to make a Flash site, but it was worth it. Visually, new possibilities emerged. Artists and designers pushed the web into new and unforeseen directions.

Flash appealed to a certain audience, a creative one. “Flash was the internet that we thought we were going to get. Make things look more digital and less like documents. HTML and CSS websites were simpler then, but Flash was for visual artists, it was something you could relate to. With Flash, code was secondary, and the elements were visual.”

If you wanted to make your own digital art or online experiment or website, you could quickly and easily learn Flash by reading a how-to books, taking classes, or you could learn with Lynda tutorials. I started making my own custom Flash work, focusing on websites and motion graphics.

Flash Giveth, Flash Taketh Away

In the early 2000s, design was undergoing an identity crisis. Maybe the animated logos weren’t needed? Maybe Flash is not the best way to go for the whole site? You could design your layout and slice it up using Macromedia Fireworks, with or without Flash content. Add all the features and animation and sound and Flash headers you want. The sky was the limit and many designers and clients wanted to push the limits.

“I want my website to my creative thoughts and design!” Creating unique, thought-provoking artistic experiments with Flash was one thing, but using Flash to make an eccentric website for users who wanted and/or needed something simple, seemed difficult for users. Approaching web design like a kid in a candy store, some would put every and any tasty ingredient into a bowl, mix it around, and offer it up as a super, special, flashy treat. So much to see and explore with this new technology! Some designers thought it was their duty to challenge conventions, going so far as to “hide buttons” so the user had to work to find them. At the time, this was considered pushing the creative limits!

In 2001 Apple didn’t require the Flash plugin to use their site, but they did use bitmap images to render type. Captured via the web.archive.org.

As designers and non-designers packed more and more effects into their web content using Flash, or chose to hide web content, sites became complicated and/or unusable. Some clients wanted the complex, but larger sites with more content resulted in longer load times, meaning longer wait times, especially if you had an animated logo that required many seconds to minutes of your patience before the website even loaded.

These long Flash Intros, became the norm. In order to let a site fully load in the background, a short introduction, animation, video, or game would keep users busy and/or entertained, which really just annoyed people. In time a solution would come in the form of a button. Users who didn’t want to wait and watch an intro could jump ahead by clicking Skip Intro.

On the plus side, Flash brought people from all walks of life to web design, but we had been led astray by wanting to create one shiny thing after another. Eventually it was too much and a change was needed. We saw what the web could be, and what it shouldn’t be. Many designers and non-designers realized that the flashy animations didn’t matter as much as the content and the users. Fancy sites shouldn’t corrupt the experience. It’s all about people and usability matters.

Usability is less about flashy sites, and more about function. Create simple sites and, Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). Books like Skip Intro: Flash Usability and Interface Design by Duncan McAlester & Michelangelo Capraro taught readers to design for users. If that meant learning code in order to be a better designer, better artist, and a better web developer, then so be it. Some Flash designers did just that. As each new version of Flash gained abilities and ultimately ActionScript, which required learning more code to create Flash sites and features.

Flash Blows Up, for Better and Worse

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia and all of their products, including Flash. By that time, it seemed like everyone and anyone used Flash, even an startup named YouTube. Entertainment could reach the masses, video had evolved, and so did the internet. As design and development for the web advanced, you could do more than ever before with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They were lightweight and did not require a fancy Flash plugin that might crash your browser. You did have to learn more detailed code though, and for some visual designers that was difficult.

Better yet, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript did not require you to purchase a piece of pricey software to get the job done, provided you were somewhat fluent with those web development platforms and had a text editor such as TextWrangler or BBEdit. In terms of web content, or content itself became king and blogs had blown up. Content Management Systems (CMS) became the way to get on the web quickly and easily.

Flash was beginning to look especially outdated and threatened, when Steve Jobs critized it, keeping it off the iPhone. To make matters worse, Flash had become a pathway for criminals who would use it to attack your computer, as routinely reported by security experts such as Brian Krebs.

Turns out, most of us don’t miss Adobe Flash, especially if you own an iPhone, iPod, or iPad. Some miss Flash now that it’s completely gone because it changed the way we look at web design and think about the web. Flash was the original engine that helped make YouTube work. Now that Flash is officially dead, doesn’t it deserve some respect? Some credit? Who really knows? Like the opening animations and videos that Flash spawned during its glory days, we’ll have to wait and see.

This was my first visit to Glacier NP and it was during the Sprague Fire.

The Sprague Fire was reported the evening of August 10th and was located southeast of Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. By August 15, 2017, the fire was estimated to be 100 acres (40 ha) in size and situated in steep terrain. Burning along the Gunsight Trail, the primary trail access to the Sperry Chalet. The fire encompassed 16,982 acres and nearly destroyed the historic Sperry Chalet.

By September 23rd, officials lifted the mandatory evacuation order for the Lake McDonald region but the Going-to-the-Sun Road remained closed to tourism due to ongoing fire activity. The fire was creeping and smoldering but no increase in burned acreage had been noticed during the third week in September. On September 28 the fire was determined by infrared flight to encompass 16,926 acres (6,850 ha).

With the arrival of October and a combination of factors such as cooler temps, light snow and shorter days led to a vastly reduced fire threat and the Sprague Fire was 75 percent contained by the beginning of the month.

About Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is a wilderness area in Montana’s Rocky Mountains, with glacier-carved peaks and valleys running to the Canadian border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres (4,000 km2) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals.

It’s crossed by the mountainous Going-to-the-Sun Road with a route to photogenic Hidden Lake accessed from Logan Pass. Other activities include backpacking, cycling and camping. Diverse wildlife ranges from mountain goats, big horn sheep, black bears, grizzly bears, moose, cougars, lynxes, elk, mule and white tailed deer, coyotes, wolves and many varities of birds.

This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the “Crown of the Continent Ecosystem,” a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km2).

Please find links to some websites about Glacier National Park.

National Park Site

Visit Montana – Glacier NP

Glacier Park Collection

Glacier NP Lodges

10 ADVENTURES

rt is the only serious thing in the world, and the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for homosexuality, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.

In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017. The Act is known informally as the Alan Turing law.

A few of his famous Quotes…

ON GOD

“I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”

ON THE WORLD AS A STAGE

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

ON FORGIVENESS

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

ON GETTING ADVICE

“The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.”

ON HAPPINESS

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

ON CYNICISM

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

ON SINCERITY

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”

ON MONEY

“When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.”

ON LIFE’S GREATEST TRAGEDIES

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

ON HARD WORK

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

ON LIVING WITHIN ONE’S MEANS

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”

ON TRUE FRIENDS

“True friends stab you in the front.”

ON MOTHERS

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”

nyone who is an experienced graphic designer knows how important designing with a grid is. You can create a visual and structural balance within your design using a grid system. Basically designing with a grid is a way of organizing content on a page, using any combination of margins, guides, rows and columns. It has been used for years in newspaper and magazine layouts with columns of text and images and is now commonly used in web design. You can use a combination of grids throughout an entire project to achieve a consistent look and feel. Designing with a solid grid structure will help in creating successful design layouts in both print and web design.

There is no limit to the layout options using a grid system. Grids can range from 3 columns to 16 columns to 24 columns or more. All depending on the framework you are working with for your design. These building blocks, the variation of column widths, borders, page size and other features of the grid will lead to unique page design. Using a grid system will help to position the elements of your design on the page. Once the grid is established, it is up to the designer to decide when and how to break out of it. This doesn’t mean the grid system will be ignored, but elements may cross over from column to column, extend to the end of the page, or extend onto adjacent pages. Breaking out of the grid can lead to the most interesting page designs.

I have found many great resources, blogs and sites related to the Grid System in design. Below are a few of the top links with more detail information about the grid system and using it in graphic and web design.

Reference Links for Grid System in Design

www.thegridsystem.org

960px-grid-templates

www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/04/14/designing-with-grid-based-approach

five-simple-steps-to-designing-grid-systems-part-1

960.gs

gridness.net

here’s nothing more nourishing than spending time in nature. Nothing that is more nurturing to our spirit and soothing to our soul than being in the natural world. Our creative expression becomes more instinctive when immersed in the stillness of a forest or the invigorating seascape of a beach. Just as creativity is a natural part of being human, spending time outdoors is the most effortless and beautiful way to inspire your innate creativity.

Our fragile and immaculate earth is rich with inspiration. Many people feel more creative and free from restraints in nature. Even the most resistant of writers and artists find that their creativity is enhanced, passion reignited, and insight awakened by spending time in natural world.

Just as we are part of nature, our bodies and their internal rhythms are tuned to the rhythms of our earth. The sights and sounds, scents and feel of being outside – whether in a humble garden or a grand national park – can rejuvenate and inspire quite unlike anything else. If you’re feeling uninspired or a little disconnected from your own adventure, reignite your passion and purpose by stepping outside.

“Nature is the great visible engine of creativity, against which all other creative efforts are measured,” said Terrance McKenna in a talk in the early nineties. “Nature’s creativity is obviously the wellspring of human creativity. We emerge out of nature almost as its finest work of art. The productions of nature. And human creativity emerges out of that.”

Creative Inspiration

One of the strongest forces of inspiration is the natural world. The delicate balance between spirit, mind and body can get disrupted in our demanding, on-call society. Leaving manmade environments to linger in natural ones reconnects us to our deeper selves, grounds us, and centres us, which is healing for our entire being. Disengaging yourself from your daily routine and taking time to observe the cycles of nature naturally inspires creativity.

In the same way your body needs to be nourished with healthy foods in order to function optimally, think clearly and create, your spirit can feed on beautiful landscapes, from the stillness of forests, to peaceful mountain treks and the splendour of the ocean. Taking a moment to pause and contemplate while outside also teaches us to be more loving and peaceful, and is as invigorating for our being as it is for our writing and art.

No matter how tethered we are to the demands of our lives, looking far away in the distance can make us feel free. Observing the beauty of nature led humans to develop and reveal their spirituality in the form of art. From painting cave walls to writing haiku poetry, we have always searched for and found inspiration by observing our earth, its seasons and natural wonders.

Creativity and Problem-Solving

Great authors and artists have always been drawn to natural surroundings though aside from their obvious loveliness, it’s been shown to have a massive effect on our ability to be creative.

A study conducted by the University of Kansas found that just four days of disconnecting from technology and spending time immersed in nature increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50 percent. So taking your writing or art outside may help your process and projects too.

“There’s a growing advantage over time to being in nature,” said Ruth Ann Atchley, associate professor of cognitive/clinical psychology at the University of Kansas, who led the study. “We think that it peaks after about three days of really getting away, turning off the [mobile/cell] phone, not hauling the iPad and not looking for Internet coverage. It’s when you have an extended period of time surrounded by that softly fascinating environment that you start seeing all kinds of positive effects in how your mind works.”

Ruth goes on to say that the constant distractions and stimulations of modern life a threat. “They sap our resources to do the fun thinking and cognition humans are capable of — things like creativity, or being kind and generous, along with our ability to feel good and be in a positive mood. Nature is a place where our mind can rest, relax and let down those threat responses. Therefore, we have resources left over — to be creative, to be imaginative, to problem solve — that allow us to be better, happier people who engage in a more productive way with others.”

Reconnection to Our Environment

Everything we know was learned by carefully observing nature around us, yet we enclose ourselves deeper and deeper inside towns and cities, further cutting our already slender and fragile connections with nature. Wild and undisturbed environments are becoming more vulnerable and we too are feeling the effects of being cut-off from the natural world.

In this video Loving Life, Loving Earth Tara Brach echos the Kansas study and states that like many countries in the Western world, Americans spend too much time inside with 90% of their time disconnected from nature. Of that inside time, Brach wonders how much is spent behind a screen, and notes that living in this ‘alternate reality’ affects us in profound ways. We become separated from the earth as we’re often living in a ‘trance’ in which we deny our true nature.

“We feel separate, inadequate, and unworthy. To defend against these feelings, we look outside ourselves for something to dull the pain. And our culture is all to happy to help. Buy more. Eat more. Get a bigger house, a bigger car… All of this over-consumption provides us a short-term fix (just like a drug) but causes long-term damage to our planet.”

Instead of filling this void with unhealthy habits or over consumption, spending more time outdoors can soothe this modern epidemic and make us more mindful of earth. Seeing the beauty of the planet also makes us want to protect it.

Mood-Enhancer and Stress-Relief

Nature was once our home and this seems to be embedded in our being. Returning to nature can feel like returning home. Although our lives are vastly different, our soul still resonates with that of the outside world. Allow your spirit to feel nurtured and inspired by the presence of natural settings by disconnecting from your daily routine and taking time to observe and follow the cycles of nature.

Even if you only have five minutes, just being outside lifts your mood and releases tension, allowing stress to drop away. “Nature is a huge healer,” says natural health expert and author, Jane Alexander. “There can be nothing more soothing than simply lying down on the earth and visualizing all your negative thoughts and feelings oozing out of you and into the earth.”

A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health echoed this: being around nature can lower stress levels and boost your mental health too.

The American study showed that those who lived closer to trees, grass or flowers had less stress, anxiety and depression than those who lived in neighbourhoods with less than 10 percent tree canopy, who were more likely to report symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression.

If you cannot get outside, you can still benefit from simply looking at images of natural scenes. A study by Berto (2005) found that just viewing pictures of natural scenes had a restorative effect on cognitive function. People’s performance was restored by picture of trees, fields and hills, but not by streets, industrial units or even complex geometric patterns. Filing your workspace with plants, photographs of our beautiful world, and natural objects are all calming to the spirit and nurturing to your creativity.

Innovative Thinking

More recent research in the Journal of Environmental Psychology has shown that feeling connected to nature is related to innovative thinking. Exploring the link between connectedness with nature and cognitive style, Carmen Lai Yin Leong at Victoria University of Wellington, found that being connected with nature was associated with innovative thinking – the ease with which we can break free of convention and think about things in novel ways.

“Venturing into the natural world often involves physical demands (such as hiking), risks (such as getting lost) and opportunities for uplifting experiences (such as the viewing a sunrise from a mountain summit),” says Carmen. “To connect with nature, therefore, people often must be open to new experiences and embrace a sense of adventure. Similarly, innovative thinkers must be open-minded to embrace novel ideas.”

They also found that it enhanced holistic thinking, which takes into account the interconnectedness of all parts of a creative problem. “An understanding of nature also teaches us that all things in the natural world (including life cycles and ecosystems) are interrelated. Similarly, holistic thinkers emphasise the interconnectedness of ideas within a system.” Both of which unsurprisingly enhance creative thinking.

Early Morning Inspiration

Often writers and artists use nature’s wisdom for creativity. Many choose to wake up early in the morning to experience the serenity and fresh creativity that arises at this beautiful time of the day. The rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds and pattering of raindrops are some of the inspiring sounds of nature.

As you observe the darkness seeping away and the world coming to life, you become at one with the miracle of all life. There are also many health benefits from rising early in the day, which are only enhanced by stepping outside.

If you are blessed with the use of your legs, use them. Taking walks in the morning and seeing the sun’s first rays embrace the flowers is immaculate and undiscriminating in its creative inspiration.

Nature Walking for Creativity

A study conducted by University of Kansas found that those who hiked through nature and were peaceful and calm in their approach scored a full 50 percent higher than the other test groups. “Taking a walk, especially out in nature, among trees, can release a great deal of stress,” says Taoist practitioner, author and teacher, Stuart Alve Olson.

“Taoists developed very specific techniques for walking as a method to improve health. They developed what they referred to as ‘walking like a cat’ because they considered cats, especially the tiger, to be the most adept walkers.” Alternatively, taking your tai chi, chi kung or yoga practice outside as the sun rises is a beautiful way to start your day. It leaves your body and mind rejuvenated, allowing you to start your writing and creative work with renewed clarity and calm.

Connection, Spontaneity and the Tao

In the Taoist philosophy, an emphasis is put on the duality of the natural forces and the microcosm within our bodies reflecting the macrocosm around us in our world. “Nature and Silence, suggest ways in which Tao is observable every day. Just as the ancients were inspired by nature to seek Tao, so too can we begin to understand Tao through the world around us,” says Ming-Dao Deng, author, teacher and martial artist.

As we discover more about the world we leave in, and can explore the infinite of possibilities, igniting our creativity and spontaneity. “Those who follow Tao have always considered humanity to be a part—and a subordinate part at that—of nature. Therefore, to begin on the path of Tao is to observe nature and understand that we are a part of it. Nature is not wholly synonymous with Tao but it is completely a part of Tao and thus a perfect way to glimpse Tao. They love nature and spend time in the wilderness learning from the seasons, studying animals, and absorbing the lessons of nature’s creativity.”

Authenticity

Every spiritual path can only be enhanced and our connection to ourselves and our world liberated by being in nature. When we journey into the wilderness, we connect with our inner wilderness and discover our true nature, who we are when we strip away all facades that we wear to please others, be accepted or protect our tender souls.

“Take a moment and look at the world around and inside you,” says author and teacher of the Taoist arts, Ralph Wahlstrom. “Consider the natural elements: the quality of light, the temperature (warm or cold against your skin), and the weather; and consider the textures, plants, colours, and all the qualities of your surroundings. Now think about your inner workings: the flow of blood through your veins, the beating of your heart and rhythm of your breathing. Jot down your observations of the natural inner and outer worlds.”

Staying in nature reconnects you with your true, authentic self, allowing you to live with more integrity and sincerity towards others. As each of us individually wake up to our own unique being and be true to ourselves, acting in accordance to our real and authentic values.

“In nature nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful.” ~ Alice Walker

Mindfulness

Nature has a way of revealing some of its most spectacular faces only when few eyes are watching. Whether you’re in a local park or in a vast rainforest, it has the ability to transform feelings of melancholy into bountiful creativity that always enhances your writing and art. “Natural writing can rise from our interaction with and the inspiration of the natural world,” says Wahlstrom.

To draw inspiration from nature, you need to be mindful. While taking a walk in a garden, field or park, observe the flowers that are blooming around you, the delicate flutter of a butterfly’s wing; the tranquil chorus of songbirds; the gentle wind that caresses your face can all help your body relax, your spirit soak in the beauty that surrounds you, and your mind liberated creatively.

Capture these moments in your heart and when you are alone, think of them. The more you get involved with nature, the more you can draw inspiration from it. Nature brings us back into the moment, that place of tranquil contemplation, allowing us to simply be, unruffled or swayed by the relentless demands of our hectic world. In full presence our ability to express ourselves creatively is magnified and our true voice as writers and artists liberated too.

he standard way to get from Telluride to Ridgway in southwest Colorado is a semi-circular route on highways 62 and 145. However, those with a little more time take a must-see detour winding diagonally between these paved highways — the rustic Last Dollar Road.

Last Dollar Road isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime trip — it’s more like a three-times-in-one-year necessity. Go during summer for lush greenery as far as the eye can see; again in the fall for unparalleled red, yellow and orange foliage; and in spring, when grassy fields are blanketed with alpine wildflowers.

When this road was a mining supply route in the 1800s, the workers probably weren’t too enthusiastic about its sharp turns and bumpy patches. But today, travelers have a whole different attitude. Thrill seekers (and confident drivers) boldly take on Last Dollar with enthusiasm.

Like the infamous Road to Hana in Hawaii, Last Dollar Road can be a bit of a challenge (even impassible after a heavy rain), but is completely worth the trek. Most off-road experts in the area would classify this road as a beginner to intermediate trail. Four-wheel drive is not required when the road is dry, but we recommend utilizing one of the many ATV and jeep operators in the area. This is one adventure where you’ll want nothing keeping you from the scenic sights and fresh mountain air.

Getting There

From Telluride: Take CO 145 west approximately five miles and turn right on Last Dollar Road. You will pass the Telluride airport on your right when the road is still paved.

From Ridgway: Take Highway 62 west until you see a sign for Last Dollar Road. Turn left off of the highway and continue left when you hit a fork in the road (a right turn will take you to the town of Sawpit).

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here are many different styles and trends used throughout the design world. One of the recent trends in design is minimalism. The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture where in the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalist design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. In addition, the work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for this kind of work.

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adopted the motto Less is more to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes (such as designing a floor to also serve as the radiator, or a massive fireplace to also house the bathroom). Designer Buckminster Fuller adopted the engineer’s goal of Doing more with less, but his concerns were oriented towards technology and engineering rather than aesthetics. A similar sentiment was industrial designer Dieter Rams’ motto, Less but better adapted from Mies. The structure uses relatively simple elegant designs; ornamentations are quality rather than quantity.

Using sometimes the beauty of natural patterns on stone cladding and real wood encapsulated within ordered simplified structures, and real metal producing a simplified but prestigious architecture and interior design. May use color brightness balance and contrast between surface colors to improve visual aesthetics. The structure would usually have industrial and space age style utilities (lamps, stoves, stairs, technology, etc.), neat and straight components (like walls or stairs) that appear to be machined with equipment, flat or nearly flat roofs, pleasing negative spaces, and large windows to let in lots of sunlight.

This and science fiction may have contributed to the late twentieth century futuristic architecture design, and modern home decor. Modern minimalist home architecture with its unnecessary internal walls removed probably have led to the popularity of the open plan kitchen and living room style. De Stijl expanded the ideas that could be expressed by using basic elements such as lines and planes organized in very particular manners.