grids
Typographic grid
Off the Grid...and Back Again?
An Article by Geoff BoeingMy article “Off the Grid… and Back Again? The Recent Evolution of American Street Network Planning and Design” has been published by the Journal of the American Planning Association and won the 2020 Stough-Johansson Springer Award for best paper. It identifies recent nationwide trends in American street network design, measuring how urban planners abandoned the grid and embraced sprawl over the 20th century, but since 2000 these trends have rebounded, shifting back toward historical design patterns.
Urban Street Network Orientation
An Article by Geoff BoeingThis study measures the entropy (or disordered-ness) of street bearings in each street network, along with each city’s typical street segment length, average circuity, average node degree, and the network’s proportions of four-way intersections and dead-ends. It also develops a new indicator of orientation-order that quantifies how a city’s street network follows the geometric ordering logic of a single grid. These indicators, taken in concert, reveal the extent and nuance of the grid.
In Defense of a Fussy Website
Fussy breakfasts
The other day I was doom-scrolling twitter, and I saw a delightful article titled “The Case for Fussy Breakfasts.” I love food and especially breakfast, and since the pandemic hit I’ve been using my breaks in between meetings (or sometimes on meetings, shh) to make a full bacon, poached egg, vegetable plate, so I really got into the article. This small joy of creating a bit of space for myself for the most important meal of the day has been meaningful to me — while everything else feels out of control, indulging in some ceremony has done a tiny part to offset the intensity of our collective situation.
It caused me to think of this “fussiness” as applied to other inconsequential joys. A walk. A bath. What about programming?
While we’re all laser-focused on shipping the newest feature with the hottest software and the best Lighthouse scores, I’ve been missing a bit of the joy on the web. Apps are currently conveying little care for UX, guidance, richness, and — well, for humans trying to communicate through a computer, we’re certainly bending a lot to… the computer.
Eggs, Easter and poached
When a site is done with care and excitement you can tell. You feel it as you visit, the hum of intention. The craft, the cohesiveness, the attention to detail is obvious. And in turn, you meet them halfway. These are the sites with the low bounce rates, the best engagement metrics, the ones where they get questions like “can I contribute?” No gimmicks needed.
What if you don’t have the time? Of course, we all have to get things over the line. Perhaps a challenge: what small thing can you incorporate that someone might notice? Can you start with a single detail? I didn’t start with a poached egg in my breakfast, one day I made a goofy scrambled one. It went on from there. Can you challenge yourself to learn one small new technique? Can you outsource one graphic? Can you introduce a tiny easter egg? Say something just a little differently from the typical corporate lingo?