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Years ago, before I ever got into Web design, I was a sign maker. For about 3 years, I studied this craft. At it’s best, the art of sign making is a demonstration of both the purity of information design and subtlety typography. At it’s worst, it’s the loud example of why these two disciplines are so important.

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There are times when you wish there was a clean, elegant way to go about a thing and there are times, as we all know, when this just isn’t possible. Such, is my state of mind at present. We all know what it’s like to take something that is beautiful and clean, and have to bend and contort it to work in environments it really shouldn’t be subjected to. Such is the peril of the web designer and developer. And such is the profound necessity of standards.

In times like this, I can’t help but wish we, as designers and developers, had something for our practice, akin to the good old tennis ball hack.

Without a doubt, I’m ranting about Internet Explorer. I know, it’s a tiresome subject, but we, nevertheless, exhaust countless, valuable hours contending with the legacy Microsoft left behind.

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It’s a lazy Saturday morning. I woke up, brewed some coffee (helping myself to some more right now), sat down at my computer and started browsing through my RSS feeds. That’s when I came across an article by Adrian Shaughnessy, on Design Observer, Look and Feel / Nip and Tuck.

It’s kind of a silly thing to write a follow up on, at least at first glance. I set out for a languid read and then found myself involved. So the question, to unjustly reduce the article to a sound bite is this.

Today, the term [”Look and Feel”] has seeped into everyday usage, and it has become widely used by commissioners of graphic design. Why?

The speculation goes on to consider its’ increase use, on the importance of usability in modern design, to referencing overall branding within design. Needless to say, “look and feel”, as a term to describe anything, is vague at best (unless of course you are talking about a car, and even then, it begs for articulation).

In scanning through some of the responses to Brian’s article, one jumped out at me with a poignant questions:
Are we trying to keep this shit a secret?

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