[Python-Dev] Playing with a new theme for the docs (original) (raw)

Ned Batchelder ned at nedbatchelder.com
Wed Mar 21 20:59:59 CET 2012

On 3/21/2012 3:45 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 7:18 AM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com> wrote:

The challenge for the maintainer of the docs site is to choose a good design that most people will see. We're bound to disagree on what that design should be, and I suggest that probably none of us are designer enough to come up with the best one. Perhaps we could find an interested designer to help?

I've come to the conclusion that "good design" is not so much a matter of finding the "best" of anything (font, spacing rules, colors, icons, artowork, etc.). Good design is highly subjective to fashion, and the people who are recognized to be the best designers are more often than not just those with a strong enough opinion to push their creative ideas through. Then other designers, who are not quite as good but still have a nose for the latest fashion, copy their ideas and for a while anything that hasn't been redesigned looks "old-fashioned". (Before you say something about limitations of old technology, note how often designers go back to older styles and manage to make them look fashionable again.) If you want something that attracts attention through controversy, get one of those initial thought leaders. If you want something that looks "current" today but which will probably be out of style next year, use one of the style-following designers. If you want something that is maximally useful, get a scientist with an ounce of style sense to do your design... Oh hey, Georg is a scientist! And he's got more than an ounce of style. So just let him do it and let's not try to micromanage things. (I had to speak up about the low contrast because Georg has young eyes and may not realize that this issue exists for older Pythonistas.) +1000 Deriding the entire discipline of design because some of its practitioners are hacks is like pointing at PHP kiddies as the reason why you don't need "software architects." Yes, we could make the mistake of over-designing it, and that would be a mistake. The science you seek is something that designers are well-versed in.

--Ned.

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