Timoni Grone is the senior visual designer at Scribd where she creates websites that blend responsible web practices with classic design & typographical philosophies. She also co-founded the monthly design MeetUp and work session Chromatic where Bay area designers meet to network share ideas and design challenges. It’s part of her effort to expand the reach of user-centric design and make your web experience just a little bit better. Timoni is interviewed here by Emily Goligoski.

Notes on Design: How did you get your start?

Timoni Grone: I was an English major in college but talked about art and design enough that a friend encouraged me to take an art class, and I’ve been making sites and designing for friends since 1999. I’m largely self-taught—I looked at course syllabi and taught myself design fundamentals.

My second job was as a web editor for the State Department creating mockups for sites to expand dialogue with the Arabic world. I didn’t expect that I’d ever work on security and public diplomacy, and it was eye-opening.

NoD: Wow! Not your typical design gig. Where did you go from there?

Timoni Grone: I ultimately left to work at a DC branding agency in the research sphere before moving to San Francisco, where I’d wanted to be since I was using early social media tools in Nebraska while still in college.

NoD: And in San Francisco you began working at Scribd where you are now the Senior Visual Designer and have been largely responsible for their redesign effort. What other sites that you frequent are you itching to redesign?

Timoni Grone: Twitter, no doubt about it, so that people wouldn’t have to use third party applications to have a good experience. I’d improve the leading on Facebook, but on Tumblr I wouldn’t change much beyond the implementation.

NoD: Can you expand on your comment regarding third party apps and how Twitter could improve if it did not require them? Isn’t Twitter improving because of third party apps..and is that built-in flexibility not what makes it, in part, so hugely popular? Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This is part 5 in an 8 part series by design instructor and NoD author Dave Holston. To view Dave’s previous entries please click here.

Strategy guru Michael Porter states that the underlying idea behind strategy is alignment, that is, getting employees to make good choices based on a common value proposition. The reinforcement of the proposition is critical, and must be expressed through every aspect of the organizations culture, in particular the design of its communications, products and services.

For designers, the client’s business strategy is an essential ingredient in making design decisions. Through business research designers answer the question, “how do we articulate the client’s strategy through design?” Design’s role in supporting strategy takes on many forms, including bringing efficiencies to the design process and Read the rest of this entry »

Sheri L Koetting speaks at Spark Boot Camp Event on issues relevant to small design studios

Spark — an Organization Offering a Support System for Independent Designers

In the spring of 2003, a handful of independent graphic designers got together for drinks to discuss our businesses. All of us had one thing in common; we were either working completely alone or aided by a small number of support staff, creating design solutions for clients. Not only did we crave the professional insight from other designers, but we also faced the new challenges of running a business. The responsibilities of an entrepreneur were far greater than the tools and skills we had previously learned as designers.

Six years later, the specific, yet important, needs of small design firms we defined in those first meetings led to the establishment and growth of a niche organization, Spark. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This is part 4 in an 8 part series by design instructor and NoD author Dave Holston. To view Dave’s previous entries please click here.

The proverbial “seat at the table” has always been a coveted spot for designers. The price of an invitation is the ability to show accountability in design decision-making and a return on design investment. Design research is the foundation of these two areas. Without it, design decisions cannot be made, and success cannot be measured. However for most designers, research takes a back seat to the familiar and comfortable creative side of the design process.

The goal of a designer’s work is to influence a target audience’s thinking, and ultimately their behavior. We know that the craft of design has great power in determining the success or failure of these outcomes. Consider how the nuances of typography can change peoples understanding of words, or how a powerful image can touch people in meaningful ways. Yet there is little rigor for design decision-making. Most decisions are made on the designer/client level, often based on intuition, past experiences and assumptions.
Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This is part 3 in an 8 part series by design instructor and NoD author Dave Holston. To view Dave’s previous entries please click here.

The term “professional designer” can apply to anything from a service provider to a strategic partner, depending on a person’s individual experience, their approach to problem solving, and their relationship with a client. At one end of the scale, a design vendor simply responds to a specific request made by a client and provides them with a commodity. They perform tasks that can be easily replicated by others. Competition at this level is based primarily on cost. In the middle of this scale are design professionals who offer direction and some degree of specialization. They bring not only expertise to the table, but also a degree of professionalism. At the far end of the scale stands the design consultant. They are able to serve in an advisory role, guiding the client through the design problem solving process. As design problems become more complex and require broader collaborative thinking, advisors provide not just solutions, but actually lend insight and depth, and help synthesize information amassed or created by collaborators.
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When designing for multilingual content there are a number of factors that will affect your composition and typographic choices. Knowing these ahead of time allows for a smooth transition of content from one language to another. Whether it is print or web, it is best to know exactly which languages you will be working with, and how the viewer will encounter these language options before you begin with the layout. We will go into web-specific issues later, but first, here are a few key universal points to keep in mind when determining the layout and typography for your composition. Read the rest of this entry »

By Eric Benson

Part III: Sustainable printing and the graphic designer

“The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem.” – Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA. (From the book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Penguin Books. 2005.)

It is fairly simple to call a few printers in your local area and find one that gives you the best price on paper and printing and also meets your busy schedule. It’s a job well done as soon as you drop off your CD packed full of files at your chosen printer and take a breather before starting your next big design job. But what if price and deadlines weren’t the only variables that led a designer to choose a printer? What if we paid more attention to the printer’s business practices? Could this improve our overall quality of life? In general, when we design something the idea is to make things better. Whether we are improving the economy (through advertising and sales) or making things easier and simpler to accomplish (via products or better designed instructions/communications), the design intention is to create a catalyst in our society for positive economic growth or social change. Read the rest of this entry »