You must know what the rule is before you can break it.
Robin Williams
Don’t take my design advice. I’m not going to offer any except to maybe check out this book. It helped me understand the rules I was breaking.
Sometimes having the words to describe what you’re doing (or not doing) can help you do things better. It helps you to become more adept as you grow more aware, like naming your emotions is often the first step in healing tough feelings.
So when I learned that an entrepreneur I admire recommended Robin Williams’s book, The Non-Desginer’s Design Book* to anyone who needs to create newsletters, social media posts, or websites on their own, I bought the book.
Ms. Williams provides plenty of examples to illustrate her four rules:
- Proximity
- Alignment
- Reptition
- Contrast
Even if you don’t need to learn anything about design, I did find her advice about breaking rules applicable to many situations. Just as you shouldn’t take my advice about design, you have to be careful taking career advice from others. A lot of conventional wisdom can actually trip you up.
Gardening Notes
While construction on our building prevents me from growing vegetables and herbs this season, I did buy a new perennial called Coral Dianthus. So far, it has bloomed and produced new buds adding color to our half-empty balcony garden.
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*Some of the links on this page are “affiliate links” where I receive a small commission from any purchases at no cost to you. Some of these funds will be donated to organizations supporting women and girls.