Here are some ideas I found especially interesting in Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Design in the first chapter, which gives insights into the birth of modern design in around 1900. This period of 1880–1930 was a fascinating and turbulent time for the arts (the influence of Modernism).

The first visual symptom is the departure of ornament, and the recognition that machinery can be beautiful without ornament:

All machinery may be beautiful, when it is undecorated even. Do not seek to decorate it. We cannot but think all good machinery is graceful, also, the line of the strength and the line of the beauty being one.

It’s surprising that the above quotation is attributed to Oscar Wilde, also known for writing particularly florid poetry. His argument is that ornamentation isn’t necessary for beauty, as “the line of the strength” (its functionality as a machine) and “the line of the beauty” (its aesthetic) are one.

Machinery can be beautiful without ornament: it is beautiful because it works well. In the same chapter, Pevsner quotes Van de Velde, who asks if the engineer should be on equal footing as the architect:

Why should artists who build palaces in stone rank any higher than artists who build in metal?

Engineers are architects, then, who use a different medium/materials. (On the flip-side: why can’t the product of an architect, a building, be a piece of machinery? A house a machine for living in…)

Van de Velde raises engineers to the level of architects: engineers are “the architects of the present day”. He requests “a logical structure of products, uncompromising logic in the use of materials, proud and frank exhibition of working processes”. This is sounding like highly relevant (and inspirational) advice for web designers and developers. Designers especially: we do like our working processes, our user testing, and a synthesis of other disciplines such as psychology in our craft, after all.

Adolf Loos, like Van de Velde, calls our engineers “our Hellenes” (meaning the Greeks: the culture which inspired the Roman Empire). So from the engineers, “we receive our culture”. Culture – previously the exclusive realm of poets and painters – received from engineers and technologists. Nikolaus Pevsner points out that Loos consistent enough to call the plumber “the quartermaster of culture, i.e., the kind of culture which is decisive today”.

Of course, there are different circles of culture. If we believe Doris Lessing, computer scientists, web developers, and web designers would be those complicit in propagating the “inanities” of the internet. One of the best things about the internet is that it’s an open platform for people to make of it what they will, high and low. Typophile and LOLcats (and people who like both).

Finally, a timeless design principle from Otto Wagner in 1894:

All modern forms must be in harmony with [...] the new requirements of our time.

I came across this really interesting article on mobile typography at the Ministry of Type blog. It spells out the difference between the iPhone and the average mobile phone.

It’s also the only phone that’s been advertised purely on its UI, because that’s what the whole thing is about. The adverts for the Samsung D840 showed you the hardware buttons and how the glossy front of the phone is so reflective it can be used as a mirror, but with no showing off of the UI. The Motorola RAZR had a similar set of ads – you’re invited to gawp at the thin, sleek hardware, but you’re not shown the UI. Same for most of the Nokia ads in fact. That’s because the default UI is at best workable, at worst, hideous.

Why is most mobile UI design unusable, unresponsive, and ugly? Here’s one theory: “If the UI of these other phones was usable, responsive and beautiful, there’d be little need for themes and a big source of revenue (from advertising on the theme sites alone) would disappear.”

I’m not sure if this is a serious theory, but there might be some truth in it. Desperate to upgrade their poor interface experiences to a superior one, users purchase a new theme, hoping it’ll solve their problems. Unfortunately, themes are superficial solutions to mobile interface problems. Anyway, I don’t think this theory works, though it does highlight a problematic approach to interface design.

Manufacturers need to address the deeper problems with interface design on the mobile phone. They must focus on making software and hardware more powerful in order to accommodate users’ needs, as the mobile phone becomes a web-browsing device as well as a phone. Manufacturers will, and are, shifting from seeing a mobile phone as a mobile phone, to seeing it as a mobile internet device as well. Nokia admitted in May that they’re now competing with Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Mobile’s restrictions are frustrating both for users and for designers. One of the most frustrating things for me right now, to use one example, is working with antialiased outlines on mobile phone graphics. For those unfamiliar with the term, antialias means, in plain English, the smoothing process between the object and the background, whether font or graphic element. (Here’s a simple illustration.)

Mobile interfaces, composed of typography and graphic elements, suffer because of this lack of support for alpha antialiasing across devices. When I say mobile interfaces “suffer”, I really mean users. Lack of wide support for alpha antialiasing is just one example of the inadequacies of mobile interfaces. However, inadequacies present new, interesting challenges, both for designers working with the imposed restrictions, as well as companies spotting opportunities for improvement.

Twitter is the closest thing I’ve seen to the “crystal goblet” idea applied to social networking. ‘The Crystal Goblet’ was an essay on printing by Beatrice Warde which discusses the idea that printing should be invisible; that printed words should do their best to communicate the information instead of standing in the way of it, so that the “vintage of the human mind” isn’t spoiled by swirling ampersands and looping descenders.

Ideas printed in a book and means of networking with people online are entirely different things, but I really like the idea that some of the principles in Warde’s essay could be applied to social networking. Most basically, online services should be as transparent and camouflaged to human need as much as possible. Search is a good example: Google has become like the Helvetica of the internet.

Twitter’s character limitation has endowed each character you type into the box with extra value, as there are only 140 you could use. Twitter is naturally integrated into life, being very location-centric. In the past week I could have joined a friend in a cafe, an impromptu picnic, or a party, based on information shared on Twitter. Twitter is basically transparent to conversation, limited to 140 characters. 140 characters is the perfect length: long enough for a sentence or a question, and anything longer belongs somewhere else (which is why Twitter hasn’t completely replaced my need to blog).

The social dynamics are different from instant message, if you bring followers into consideration. It’s a hybrid forum-im-social network, which gives it a lot of power, and a lot of potential. The main problem for Twitter is that at the moment it seems to appeal mainly to geeks, while Facebook has wide appeal for everyone. Maybe it’ll take longer for its appeal to spread, and it’s still in an early adoption period…