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.

I’m not really sure what I’ve got myself into. Feeling a little pressured by the fact tickets were being reserved for both girl geeks and those who hadn’t attended a BarCamp before, I haphazardly signed up to attend BarCamp Brighton 3, which is being held at Sussex University on the 6th–7th September. (It is just after dConstruct, which I’m also attending – I’m hoping to glean some presentation skills from the excellent speakers.) Tickets for BarCamp Brighton 3 sold out within 10 minutes, which, of course, made me feel lucky and compelled to actually go.

I know it’s “just” a BarCamp, but I can’t help wondering what the hell I’m doing. Public speaking was something I despised at school and university, and generally I tried my utmost to avoid it. In fact, public speaking and exercise were my two least favourite things. In some grand twist of irony, I now visit a gym three times a week (paying an obscene fee to do so), and I’m attending a BarCamp – voluntarily!

So, I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to talk about. Typography was my specialism at university, and I know a fair amount about how typography works (mainly in print), and, of course, the history of typography. What interests me most about typography is printing. There are obvious parallels with printing and with the web: both deal with the dissemination of information, with literacy, and the flow and sharing of ideas. I wrote my dissertation on the history of the broadside ballad, which was the first low-level way of communicating thought through cheap print. I can’t imagine having written about anything that is more meaningful to me.

I’m going to use a blog post I wrote a few months ago on ‘Twitter and the Crystal Goblet’ as a starting point, and come up with a twenty-minute presentation on transparency in mobile experience design. That way, I’ll usefully combine my three loves: typography, experience design, and mobile. Oh: and Twitter. (I’m also contemplating calling the presentation what dead typographers can teach us about designing for delightful mobile experiences.)

Thoughts welcome. Presentation tips very welcome.

Icelandic illustrator/artist/graphic designer Siggi Eggertsson has the most interesting work I’ve seen recently. A “post-modern impressionist”, his work has a maturity beyond his age (24). In 2006, Print Magazine named him as one of the brightest design stars under 30. He already has a formidable client list including Nike, H&M, and Coca Cola, to name a few.

Most interesting to me, his work is underwritten by formal rules and systems, which is more common in graphic design than illustration. I have just asked him if he feels graphic design has influenced his work as an illustrator, but he said that he doesn’t like to categorise his work as “art”, “illustration”, or “graphic design”.

So, I’m going to leave it there, and share a few cool pieces of his work that I particularly like: