#35 - The laws of UX

Hey folks,

Here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this week.

CSS Documentation Best Practices #

I enjoyed reading these 8 Best Practices for Perfect CSS Documentation this week. Writing good CSS is hard, working with inherited CSS is even harder, especially when the documentation sucks.

Gestalt principles #

“Gestalt (form, shape in German) is a group of visual perception principles developed by German psychologists in 1920s. It is built on the theory that ‘an organized whole, is perceived as greater than the sum of its parts’.”

Gestalt principles in UI design is a great read on how to use a bit of design theory to improve the user experiences you design.

For more on this stuff I highly recommend checking out The Laws of UX. It’s a collection of the maxims and principles that designers can consider when building user interfaces designed by Jon Yablonski. He’s built a bunch of other cool things too, including Swiss in CSS.

Mailchimp’s content style guide #

The Mailchimp Content Style Guide is an awesome resource for anyone regularly working with copy. Also worth looking at is their Voice and Tone guide. What they make most clear is the importance of putting the reader first.

For more on writing content, I read a book a while back called Everybody Writes by Ann Handley which is well worth reading. Here are my notes and Kindle highlights from the book if you’d rather not buy it.

More on Variable Fonts #

I talk about Variable fonts a lot, but for good reasons, they’re going to be big. A few days ago listened to Shop Talk: Variable Fonts with Jason Pamental which is a great introduction on the technology.

To get going with variable fonts in your projects definitely read One File, Many Options: Using Variable Fonts on the Web and also How to use variable fonts in the real world. Both articles are super helpful.

For your ears #

Here’s Christian Löffler playing live in a castle ruin in Fontaine de Vaucluse in the south of France.


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