Web services send notification emails. The links in such emails serve a sole purpose of bringing users back to the services’ websites. Therefore, there should always be exactly one link per such email. The flow: the receiver clicks the blue underlined text without even reading anything and ends up in the right place.

Example: an email to confirm registration by following a special link

Typical mistake (the links in the example don’t work, obviously):

Dear Ilya,

You have tried to sign up for the Exciting Service. To confirm your registration please follow the link. Make sure to subscribe to our blog to get the latest news and go try our great iPhone app!

Sincerely,
Exciting Service’s team

To take an action, I need to read and understand all the crap that the author has written here.

Here is the right way:

Ilya, confirm your registration:
Confirm and start using Exciting Service

Exciting Service

The right place to tell the user about the blog and the iPhone app is the website itself. You will have more room to talk about them, and the user will be much more motivated to check them out after he or she has completed the registration.

Example: an email to notify you about a shipped online order

Typical mistake:

Greeting from AwesomeBooks, dear customer Ilya!

You have ordered the book “How to Order Books Online” by James Writer (see your order history). The books has been shipped, and the tracking code is WTF4382430324.

Learn more about shipping and delivery, warranty and return policy. If you have any further questions, contact the support.

There are 0 items in your cart. Since you have bought the book “How to Order Books Online”, you might also be interested in “Underlining links: an essential design skill”, “What makes an email notification bad” and “What should one do if he cannot come up with a third stupid book name”.

Thank you very much!

Your AwesomeBooks

Notice how the only thing that interests me, the tracking code, is not a link.

Here is the right way:

Ilya, the book “How to Order Books Online” has shipped to you.
Track the delivery and see more recommendations

AwesomeBooks

The links leads to a page with tracking information, recommendations and all the service links.

It may seem hard to leave just one link in an email. What if you need both this and that? The solution is to change the approach: treat the whole email as a link. There is only one by definition. Ask yourself: “Where does this email lead?”, and it will all make sense.

Obviously, the principle is not applicable to email designed for reading and thus does not lead anywhere.

In the year 1960, my grandpa went to Great Britain as a member of one of the first tourist groups from the USSR. It was quite a trip for a soviet engineer. When he was still alive, he recounted the trip and even showed me this Welsh newspaper with his picture and a mention of him:

But there is something he did not show me, and I did not ask. Among his papers was found an actual map of the London Underground (and a ticket):

It is amazing that he brought and saved it. There is even a name of Harry Beck in the left bottom corner:

If he went to London a year later, I would not be so lucky, as in 1961 the brilliant Beck’s diagram was replaced by the miserable Hatchinson’s one. In 1964 the design for improved but the diagram never looked quite that good.

When I first saw the leaked pictures of iPhone 4, I thought, no way, this cannot be true, it is ugly as hell. Why do all these sites even publish the pictures? Clearly, they are fake.

Turned out, I was wrong: the pictures were real. Interestingly, when Apple announced it, Steve Jobs even had to vindicate the design explaining how the lines on the edges were actually part of an antenna, and so it was a brilliant design. I was disappointed.

Turned out, I was wrong to be disappointed: when I saw the phone in an Apple store, it made a good impression. It looked much, much better in person than in any photos, including Apple’s own official ones.

A couple of years later Apple has shown iPhone 5. To me it looked even uglier than the iPhone 4 on the pictures. But having learned my lesson I decided to not make any conclusions before I saw the device in person. I thought that it will look much better in real life.

Turned out, I was wrong, again: the iPhone 5 is ugly, even in person. I’m still using my old, slow iPhone 4 and I don’t want to switch.

Here is the iPhone 5:

The top is a pain to look at. The camera is positioned randomly in a stripe of plastic:

It wants more air around it, it doesn’t want to be squeezed there like this.

Also look how it’s misaligned relatively to the corner:

And the way this stupid piece of plastic is touching the antenna band gaps on the sides?

So sloppy.

Compare with the design of the iPhone 4:

Everything is balanced, everything is where it should be.

I was hoping that they would change the design for the next iPhone so I could finally have something to replace my old iPhone 4 with. But going by the latest rumors, the design will stay the same, so I am sad. By the way, the rumored “cheap” version (aka iPhone 5C) looks better:

Anyway after you’ve seen and held in hand the iPod touch (no-camera version) everything looks and feels wrong. I wonder, how many years should pass for us to see an iPhone that is well designed?

John Gruber telling a story about two young women and a newspaper on a counter in Starbucks:

I’m gonna just say there are twentyish. And they had a New York Times on the counter in front of them. And one young woman was explaining to the other — and I know it sounds comical, and I don’t think she was stupid, but I think she grew up on the Internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was in fact a college student, I don’t think she was living in a cave or something.

But the one really had no idea what a newspaper was, and she said to the other one: “Wait, you mean they print this every day?”

And the other one says: “Yes, exactly”.

And the other one goes: “Why would they do that?”

And she was clearly impressed.

I am also twentyish (okay, I’m 28) and I am also impressed. I find it amazing that people still print stuff. I have no reasonable explanation as to why would anyone buy a newspaper, unless they are a designer liking the layout. I was profoundly surprised by Apple’s announcement of Airprint a couple of years ago: it felt like I was taken back to the 1990s — by Apple, that is. Printing, Apple, are you serious? Come on.

Apparently, printing is still a thing.

Anyway, I was thinking lately: what will look really weird when one watches a today’s movie five or ten years from now? A criminal taking a SIM card out of a phone and throwing it away probably will. What is that thing, right? Or taking an SD card out of a camera to secure the pictures. Why, aren’t the pictures online already?

Fast forward some more years, and we’ll hear questions like, why does he need to hold this thing next to his ear to talk to someone? Why is she holding this thing in front of her saying “cheese” to her children? Why is he holding that round thing in his hands when riding a car? Why does she look so old if she is just 80 years old?

The future is awesome.

One of Steve Jobs’s quotes goes:

If they need a stylus, they blew it

Does it mean that no device and no app should ever be used with a stylus? I do not think so and I suppose neither did Steve. The key word is need.

A stylus for a touchscreen is the same as a pencil for the “real life”. There is a place for it, but it is not required. Your fridge does not require a pencil to open it. Your bed does not require a pencil to take a nap on it. And so your smartphone does not require a stylus to make a call.

But when you draw something, you usually want a tool: a pencil or a brush — or a stylus, if you use an iPad. Styli are not included with the iPads, but make perfect sense as separate products.

Wow, Forebruary was an accidental hit. I’m getting lots of feedback and questions, so I thought I should answer some here. Thank you so much for your feedback!

I want to print it, do you have a PDF?
No, sorry. Printing is cheap these days, so if you are OK with a printed calendar, why not just print a usual calendar every month? Forebruary should be made from nice and expensive materials, it should look great next to a beautiful clock, like this Newgate:

How is Forebruary pronounced?
Starts like “forever”, continues like a month name.

Why a month name?
Because it looks like a wide month.

I already saw this idea before!
Oh? I have not. I’m not sure what I am supposed to do now that you’ve told me, but thank you anyway.

How should I know how many days a particular month has?
Forebruary cannot help with it, it only matches a week day to a date. Many watches also have 31 (or more, sic!) days, you manually reset them to the first each month. If you consider it a major drawback, then Forebruary won’t suit you.

How should I know where to move the frame when a month begins?
You consult your phone, or computer, or even another calendar. It’s like setting time on your clock: you look at another clock you know is correct and adjust yours accordingly.

Why haven’t you put the week days on the frame?
I removed them right before publication. It looks cleaner sans them and works just as well.

What about people whose weeks start on Sundays?
An alternatively painted frame can be produced for the countries where week starts on a weekend, no big deal.

How to buy it?
There is no way so far — Forebruary exists only as a picture. I will update the site if this changes (use RSS or Twitter to follow me). I am actually thrilled by how many people asked this question. Thank you all guys.

I would like to invite you to look through my other projects and generally make yourself at home on my site. I am particularly proud of my work on the Moscow Metro map.

It has always bugged me that every year people produce and sell wall calendars for the next year. It is hard not to notice that there are only seven different months. Even one full-year calendar already has duplicate months. When something bugs a designer, designer makes a project.

Intoducing Forebruary, an endless wall calendar. The movable frame above the surface contains the month needed. Here is August 2013:

Try moving the frame

The red stripe denotes the weekend. For the United States, where week starts on Sunday (but Sunday is anyway considered a part of weekend), alternative frames can be produced.

Instead of paper, nice materials are used to produce Forebruary. That’s because it is not a throwaway thing. It is designed to look good next to a clock.