I freely admit my own background and personal preference is totally based around complete simplicity, with each interface helping you with a single task. I find it fascinating how to approach putting together a coherent design for a much more multi-task interface. I suspect my own bias is partly based in the fact that I haven’t been educated in grid-based design, so should have a go at something similar to the site that is used for illustration.

I think I tend to work mostly from a visual / aesthetic point of view when carrying out design work. Another way to approach it is to decouple laying out content in the most appropriate way, from the visuals layered on top of this. Where I’m interested in grid theory is around this first step – using various grid configurations as faded layers in Photoshop or Illustrator to provide structure around the initial step before visuals are even considered.

I guess I tend to jump directly to the fun, high impact stage, and sometimes this means there is insufficient structure around how the content is presented.

I’m also playing around with ideas about the best way to convey or test pure content layout. This can be done in a flat way with Visio or Illustrator, but I think you can get better feedback using a simple interactive model that allows you to click through a particular scenario. I like the idea of using static html pages with very understated greyscale CSS, and maybe combining this with Wiki style content that can capture notes around the design, or feedback from others.

Then again, maybe I’m just trying to avoid writing spec documents in Word. I was reading an article from Joel about that whole subject, and it made me realise I should make an effort to embrace the word processor a little more than I do.