Matt Heerema

A List Apart redesigns

A List Apart has gotten a ground-up rehaul. Everything except for the most important thing: it’s amazing content.

Bravo, A List Apart. Thunderous applause from the stands.

Color Schemer Online

A handy little tool for helping you come up with a good color scheme.

Color Schemer Online (free version)

Survey on Web site appearance: Gender differences in preference

An interesting survey was done at a University in Wales recently:

Web site’s appearance matters (from CNN news)

In a recent study at Glamorgan University Business School in Wales, test subjects rated the personal Web pages of 60 people for usability and aesthetics. Not surprisingly, male subjects tended to assign higher ratings to pages designed by men, and females preferred sites made by women. But the researchers said they gleaned important tidbits by looking more closely at the ratings. Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures. Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of “self-propelling” rather than stationary objects.

While these findings seem to make sense, it is important to note that this is only a survey and not a definitive study. One can say that the things mentioned above might be the case universally, but that is not necessarily so. A larger scale investigation is necessary to say that, in all cases, women prefer more color and a three-dimensional look, etc.

What I do think this survey bolsters is that it is necessary to know your target demographic, and design for it.

Philly Emergent Cohort Blog

My task here was to design a quick and dirty Wordpress Theme for Todd Hiestand. It made me fall in love with WordPress’s theme system.

Dreamhost. Lives up to it’s name.

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