Learning Reflections / 6

This week we had an primer on typography. It was a good refresher and some of the things discussed in the Helvetica documentary were new to me. I was a self-taught designer for the first 10+ years of my career. I never knew the rules, I just did what looked good to me. I wonder how I would have developed as a designer if I had started my career with a formal education behind me.

Creating a type system was a good exercise. I find myself being too freewheeling sometimes. More and more I see the value in documentation. By documenting and creating systems, with the justifications to back them up, we are forced to be more thoughtful and systematic designers. This may ultimately lead to better designs, better user experiences.