Eloquent rant onTextism about you know who....

Hmmm... Shall I mark Dean Allen not in the Kult of Jakob? I think so!

enough ranting, i'll go ask him.

Well, I could just indicate that all the wanky blather in the first part of the post summarizes the things I like, but for the here and now I'll say that what I like is the act and craft of rendering speech visually, of making language retrievable, and that this craft is something about which we have no shortage of accumulated knowledge, and in the execution of which we have no shortage of powerful tools, and when those whose agenda is one of making as much freaking money as possible talking about publishing x (the definition of x is hardly the issue, apparently) while manufacturing shaky rules of deportment that flout all that accumulated knowledge and plainly have no taste besides, I say "hey, step away from this thing I like, you greedy, ignorant man."

I think the companies who don't give a rat's ass about design are much more harmful to society and much more deserving of our wrath than J.N.

What Jakob best understands and uses is to create extreme messages that grab attention and that do not require thinking on the part of the user/developer/designer.

but hey - what sells, sells. right??? :-(

If you think the quality of his work is poor, do better. People will start to pay attention to you if you produce excellent articles. That is the best way to "fight" against Nielsen.

That said, I agree with the (implied) conclusion that people will read simple articles, mostly because people are generally lazy, myself included, and don't have the will to plow through stuffy, academic papers all the time.

"My real advice? We should all stop complaining. If we think we can do a better job, we should do some research and publish it."

(incidentally, I've been thinking that books, though I love 'em, are such an old fashioned medium, mostly due to their size. hence the proliferation of those tiny, pocket-sized books you see on the counter at bookstores these days)

Simple solutions that provide an understanding of how to get to that correct endpoint is much better. Along the way easy to understand writing and illustrations can provide a better way to educate than a cookie cutter approach. Showing where you want to go and pointing out there are many ways to get to the same endpoint (some better than others for the given situations) and showing how to get to the endpoint step by simple step should work. (Then again it is always fun to rant).

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