In accord

It makes for really dull conversation when everyone agrees, but right now a number of people are talking sense and I feel better for it:

Zeldman on design:

As designers, we are uninterested in blowing you away or using web design as an excuse to display our cleverness. We are interested in presenting content simply and engagingly (and on commercial sites, we are interested in facilitating ease of use) within a fast-loading, appropriately branded environment. Many web designers do not see this kind of reductionism as design at all. For them, the labor of design consists in the crafting of many visual elements. For us, the labor of design consists in the proportioning and positioning of only those elements that are needed.

Christina Wodtke on information architecture:

Information architecture has become how we find our way in information spaces. It provides shelter like a house, movement like a bridge, access like a library. It’s taken for granted like a road, but it is just as annoying as five miles of potholes when it’s done wrong.

Douglas Bowman on usability:

Devices are popping up everywhere which change the way we access and communicate with the web. [...] With these new technologies and the increased range of potential visitors to our pages they bring I’m becoming keenly aware of a new level of responsibility and considerations within my profession. [...] Messages like the one I got from Mark [a blind reader of Wired] help pull back my focus, providing pieces of a larger picture that I want to better understand and be able to impact.

Rich Sutcliffe on new music magazine, X-Ray:

X-Ray is about passion, about not telling someone you don’t like a certain kind of music before you’ve even given it a chance. It’s for people with inquisitive minds that want to know why bands sound like they do.

Ricky Gervais on fame:

People confuse fame with excellence: if I meet someone who’s a cock, I’m not confused by that – cocks get famous as well as nice people. There’s no correlation between fame, niceness and excellence.