Chris Nodder's 'Evil By Design' Exposed

Three paragraphs from one book reshaped how I think about every interface I design. The book: "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman. The concept that hit hardest: the Gulf of Execution and the Gulf of Evaluation. Gulf of Execution: the gap between what a user wants to do and how they figure out how to do it in your interface. Gulf of Evaluation: the gap between what the system does after an action and how the user understands what happened. Both gulfs kill user experience silently. Users don't always complain — they just leave. Or worse, they blame themselves instead of your design. After reading this, I started asking two questions about every screen I design: 1. Is it obvious what a user can do here? (Execution) 2. Is it obvious what just happened after they did it? (Evaluation) These two questions alone have improved more designs than any visual trend or tool tutorial I've ever studied. Great design books don't age. The tools change, the frameworks shift, but the psychology of how humans interact with systems remains remarkably constant. If you haven't read Don Norman — stop everything, go read it. And if you have, what other design book has genuinely changed how you work? #DesignBooks #UXDesign #DonNorman #DesignThinking #SaturdayReading

📖 The Library Card Lesson Back in school, I often visited the library. There were hundreds of books, but finding the right one could be overwhelming. 👉 Then I discovered the catalog cards. Each card had the book’s title, author, and shelf number. Suddenly, the chaos turned into clarity. That tiny card didn’t just organize books — it organized my experience. 💡 In digital design, the same principle applies: • Clear navigation helps users find what they need. • Labels and cues reduce confusion. • Structure transforms complexity into simplicity. Whether it’s a library or an app, guidance is the bridge between users and value. #UserExperience #DesignThinking #CustomerCentric #Innovation #Leadership #UXDesign #UXResearch #UXStrategy #UXUI #ProductDesign #HumanCenteredDesign #Accessibility #Usability #CustomerExperience #DigitalExperience #DesignLeadership #FutureOfWork #DesignCommunity #DesignMatters

“I’ll know it when I see it.” Every designer’s favorite client feedback… right? That moment when you start questioning all your creative confidence is exactly why this month’s IIDA Book of the Month is Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley & David Kelley.   The big idea: creativity isn’t reserved for the “naturally creative” people. It’s a skill we build by experimenting, trying ideas, and yes… occasionally failing along the way.   My biggest takeaway? Creativity isn’t about having the perfect idea. It’s about having the courage to start.   A few takeaways from the book: • Creativity is a skill that can be developed • Progress comes from experimenting and trying ideas • Failure is part of the creative process • Small steps and prototypes lead to better solutions   If you’ve ever hit a creative block, doubted your ideas, or needed a little inspiration in your design process — this book is for you.   #IIDAIntermountain#IIDABookClub#BookOfTheMonth#CreativeConfidence#InteriorDesign#DesignCommunity#DesignThinking#ProfessionalDevelopment#CreativeProcess#InnovationInDesign

#mycurrentwtf : If you create intelligent systems with complex relationships and variables (on an architecture level), know that this is bad product design. The result will most certainly be a "working flaw"; unmanageable, energy intensive and with unexpected outputs. That's garbage. Spend extra days in the design phase to find the essence, and simplify. You must ruthlessly cut out the bloat! Simple is smart. Complex is stupid. Genius is transforming complexity into simplicity without loosing depth. Super hard, but it's the way to create meaningul things that do not "pollute", but bring real value. Please, learn the principles of writing a haiku, or any form of poetry. Learn how it compresses books into a verse or two... This is the "secret" art of good design. When you understnad, you'll 10x your design ability in an afternoon!

We believe publishing is a strategic choice, not a one-size-fits-all task. Some projects thrive with DIY tools: quick launches, iterative experiments, and authors gaining hands-on control. Other works demand something else — archive-grade editions, thoughtful design, distribution finesse, and a career-long pipeline that protects your intellectual legacy. We recommend a hybrid path. Do the parts you can own well. Commission boutique services where craft and permanence matter. That’s where Upland Studios steps in: we pair practical workflows with high-touch expertise so your book reads like authority and endures like art. If you’re positioning a book to build cultural legitimacy or professional leverage, let’s talk about which parts to DIY and which to elevate. https://wix.to/0zqsGea #PublishingStrategy #AuthorAuthority #BookDesign

I want to focus specifically on the development of the covers for the first book series Operating in the Dark. The covers were developed inside one of my operating companies — Deep Digital Co, a studio working across creative direction, identity systems, interfaces, development, and marketing. Under this structure the concept and production of the entire series were implemented. The visual language of the series was designed to create the first gravitational field of what I call the Black Field. The covers intentionally reflect the pressure that exists inside the texts themselves. Massive stone structures represent systems that cannot simply be changed or negotiated with. They exist as fixed conditions: markets, institutional rules, economic environments, and structural forces that shape decisions regardless of personal intention. The dark field limits visibility. It suggests that not all forces influencing decisions are visible to the observer. Many systems operate through their own gravity. The books explore how individuals and organizations operate inside such environments, how decisions are made under pressure, and how external structural gravity can sometimes be used strategically rather than resisted. In this project I worked as creative director, drawing on seventeen years of experience across different industries and markets. The visual execution was produced by a senior designer from Netflix, translating the conceptual framework into a cohesive visual system for the entire series. Operating in the Dark is the first structural anchor within the coordinate system of BLACK FIELD PUBLISHING. It establishes the visual and conceptual DNA of the field that will expand through future series and books. The concrete structures used in the visual presentation are intentional. They echo the same idea of structural weight and immovable conditions described in the books themselves. Tomorrow I will share the next layer of this visual language with the release of the deskbook editions, where the material language of concrete becomes even more explicit. View the design case on Behance: https://lnkd.in/dDt3tAU2 Explore the series on Amazon: https://lnkd.in/dbb675P4 When people first encounter this visual language, they often read different things in it — pressure, structure, isolation, strategy, gravity. And that difference in interpretation is exactly the point. #BLACKFIELDPUBLISHING #OperatingInTheDark #CreativeDirection #BookDesign #VisualLanguage #SystemsThinking #DecisionMaking #Strategy #Leadership #ComplexSystems #ArtDirection #DesignStrategy #Publishing #BrandArchitecture

We want to focus specifically on the development of the covers for the first book series Operating in the Dark. The covers were developed in collaboration with our partners at Deep Digital Co, a studio working across creative direction, identity systems, interfaces, development, and marketing. Within this collaboration the concept and production of the entire visual system for the series were implemented. The visual language of the series was designed to create the first gravitational field of what we call the Black Field. The covers intentionally reflect the pressure that exists inside the texts themselves. Massive stone structures represent systems that cannot simply be changed or negotiated with. They exist as fixed conditions: markets, institutional rules, economic environments, and structural forces that shape decisions regardless of personal intention. The dark field limits visibility. It suggests that not all forces influencing decisions are visible to the observer. Many systems operate through their own gravity. The books explore how individuals and organizations operate inside such environments, how decisions are made under pressure, and how external structural gravity can sometimes be used strategically rather than resisted. The author of the series also serves as the creative director of the project, drawing on more than seventeen years of experience working across different industries and markets. The visual execution was produced by a senior designer from Netflix, translating the conceptual framework of the books into a cohesive visual system for the entire series. Operating in the Dark is the first structural anchor within the coordinate system of BLACK FIELD PUBLISHING. It establishes the visual and conceptual DNA of the field that will expand through future books and series. The concrete structures used in the visual presentation are intentional. They echo the same idea of structural weight and immovable conditions described in the books themselves. Tomorrow we will present the next layer of this visual language with the release of the deskbook editions, where the material language of concrete becomes even more explicit. View the design case on Behance: https://lnkd.in/d6z9tFdS Explore the series on Amazon: https://lnkd.in/einzkbYB When people first encounter this visual language, they often read different things in it — pressure, structure, isolation, strategy, gravity. And that difference in interpretation is exactly the point. #BLACKFIELDPUBLISHING #OperatingInTheDark #CreativeDirection #BookDesign #VisualLanguage #SystemsThinking #DecisionMaking #Strategy #Leadership #ComplexSystems #ArtDirection #DesignStrategy #Publishing #BrandArchitecture

AISL Magazine Volume 3, Issue 2 - now live. Six issues in, and the challenge remains the same: how do you build a flexible visual system that accommodates shifting content without losing its spine? This issue called for tighter information hierarchies and more dynamic pacing - balancing long-form features with shorter editorial moments, while maintaining cohesion across 48 pages. The solution was a refined grid that expands and contracts, creating rhythm without rigidity. What continues to fascinate me is the overlap between publication design and form. Both disciplines require you to solve for spatial relationships, user journey, and the tension between structure and expression. The materials change. The thinking doesn’t. 📖 Volume 3, Issue 2: https://lnkd.in/guwZiNP7 My thanks to the AISL editorial team, collaborative partners who understand that good design is invisible, until it isn’t.

One of the most underrated skills for designers: Observation. Watching how people interact with content reveals insights no design book can teach. #designlearning #creativity