A
Andy Rutledge
andyrutledge.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Andy Rutledge is a design writer covering design principles, web design as product design, and a well-known unsolicited redesign of NYTimes.com.
What HN saysCommenters call his archive a great introduction to design, especially his articles on perception and gestalt principles, though his NYT redesign draws debate.
46HN people shared it
19linked it in comments
34stories submitted
551story points
7 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Andy Rutledge Redesigns NYTimes.com6 people · 355 points · first shared 2011 · 127 comments on HN
- 2Gestalt Principles of Perception: Figure Ground Relationships6 people · 3 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 3Web Design is Product Design3 people · 49 points · first shared 2011 · 25 comments on HN
- 4Andy Rutledge Responds3 people · 13 points · first shared 2011 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Andy Rutledge: Quiet Structure2 people · 11 points · first shared 2007 · 7 comments on HN
- 6Op-Ed response to the talk given at TED by Patty Maes2 people · 5 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 7The Design Lesson: 1 of 12 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 8Homepage2 people · first shared 2010
- 9Nyt redux article2 people · first shared 2011
- 10The Employable Web Designer1 people · 21 points · first shared 2008 · 4 comments on HN
- 11Creativity is Not Design - Design Test 21 people · 18 points · first shared 2009 · 13 comments on HN
- 12How Well Do You Understand Design?1 people · 15 points · first shared 2009 · 21 comments on HN
- 13Designers as Pawns and Useful Idiots1 people · 13 points · first shared 2011 · 7 comments on HN
- 14Buying shampoo: A cautionary tale about the failure of marketing1 people · 11 points · first shared 2010 · 17 comments on HN
- 15The UX Design Education Scam1 people · 5 points · first shared 2010 · 1 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
thechangelog · 2010-12-15
I had found Andy Rutledge's archive (http://www.andyrutledge.com/) to be a really great introduction to design. The 'Practice' section in his archive has some really great introductions, especially his articles on perception.
This one is a good place to start: http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-ground-relatio…
mgunes · 2012-07-03
Some relevant writing on unsolicited redesigns from last year, worth bearing in mind in this context, by
- Lukas Mathis: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/05/15/unsolicited_redesigns/
- Khoi Vinh: http://www.subtraction.com/2011/07/28/unsolicited-redesigns
- Andy Rutledge: http://andyrutledge.com/journalism.php
tripzilch · 2011-07-26
> if everything was high contrast, everything would be SCREAMING AT YOU FOR ATTENTION
Simply not true. There's many more factors besides contrast that determine attention focus.
See this excellent series on gestalt principles of design:
http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-ground-relatio…
(it's five parts you need to click to get to the other 4)
Also see http://24ways.org/2007/typesetting-tables which shows a very nice way of adding structure to a table using contrast, instead of making everything scream for attention equally. (Additionally, the site used a different layout when this article was written in 2007, and currently it seems 24ways is a good example of low-contrast crappy readability :) )
gigawatt · 2011-07-26
In this post, yes (though he does insinuate that the NY Times has too strong of an editorial bias). In others, no:
https://twitter.com/#!/andyrutledge/status/95664717669994496
https://twitter.com/#!/andyrutledge/status/94536441488621569
http://www.andyrutledge.com/how-to-join-aiga.php
Again, if it works for him, great. It just makes it harder for me personally to be objective about him and his work.
dt7 · 2012-08-07
Interesting proposals, but like Andy Rutledge's NYT re-design (http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php) limited by the practicalities of implementing them. I don't think the Wikimedia foundation has the resources to do any kind of major re-design, at least not quickly.
kingsidharth · 2011-11-25
For starters, see the footer: http://www.andyrutledge.com/calculating-hours.php (His home page is changed so doesn't link to them all)
http://www.alistapart.com/ Does talk about psychology and logic behind design.
http://52weeksofux.com/ UX
And Don't make me think. An awesome book on usability: http://amzn.to/uZ4uH5
I haven't found any great resource on Information Architecture yet.
<selfpromiton> I wrote a very brief intro to them all: http://www.64notes.com/design/design-and-subsets-essay/ </selfpromiton>
klaut · 2011-10-30
my answer: yes yes yes, a million times yes. I found this article to be spot on and completely agree with everything the author says: http://andyrutledge.com/web-design-is-product-design.php
roshanr · 2011-09-12
Seems to compare favorably to the Andy Rutledge redesign (http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php) save for the ads. The ads on the story pages don't work as well resulting in horizontal scrolling.
j_baker · 2011-09-01
It certainly sounds to me that "designers should code" is the argument some are making.
http://andyrutledge.com/web-design-is-product-design.php
The graphic designer who lacks html/css skill is insufficiently prepared as a web designer. A designer who lacks competence should address that issue rather than seek refuge within embarrassing debate.
Sounds pretty clear-cut to me.
ralphsaunders · 2011-07-29
That simply isn't true.
> Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like in olden times.
http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/nyt-redux-article.html
Drossman · 2011-07-29
Actually, he's a pretty staunch conservative, not to mention an all around douche. Remember his 2008 redesign of USA.gov?
http://www.andyrutledge.com/usa-dot-gov-redux.php
dmbass · 2011-07-29
"Completely" is unfair. See: http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/nyt-redux-article.html
But just come out and say "we had to cover the site in ads and couldn't do a better design" if that's the case.
WeAreKnights · 2011-07-29
Based on the timing, I believe he's talking about the redesign exercise Andy Rutledge did @ http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php
Khoi Vinh is being a poor sport here. Criticism is an important part of the design world. In school we're taught to use criticism as another resource and learn from it. The design team at the New York Times could have learned a lot from this 'unsolicited' exercise. Instead, they chose to be offended.
Barnabas · 2011-07-29
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the redesign he refers to but does not link to is this: http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php
mannicken · 2011-07-26
http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/images/iphone_nyt_new.jpg -- in here lower-contrast is used properly, I think. Low-contrast allowed to hide the low-priority details allowing the brain to quickly navigate through important, high-contrast titles. Not all text is important.
cousin_it · 2009-09-17
Well... this is actually an okay redesign. A rare creature. Most designers do far worse, e.g. http://www.andyrutledge.com/google-redux.php . Also, it reminded me of Duck Duck Go http://duckduckgo.com/ created by HN user epi0Bauqu.
tdavis · 2009-03-15
Andy sums up my opinion on this pretty well: http://www.andyrutledge.com/blind-leading-the-blind.php
bouncingsoul · 2008-10-08
A short while back, the folks at Adaptive Path invited me and the gang at Unit to contribute to a cool project they had in the works for Mozilla Labs. Our part would be to design how The New York Times sports page would look a few years into the future.
http://www.andyrutledge.com/times-new-omen.php
ssp · 2010-02-05
Andy Rutledge's blog has lots of good stuff. His five-part introduction to gestalt principles is about the basics of graphic design:
http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-ground-relatio…
http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-2-similarity.php
http://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-3.php
http://www.andyrutledge.com/common-fate.php
http://www.andyrutledge.com/closure.php
For typography, Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is a must-read. http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/…
You mentioned the looks of your sites, so the above are about visual and graphic design, but good interaction design will also help making people think your site looks better, is faster, has more features etc.
Be careful whose judgement you trust. People here on HN sometimes seem to have a caricatured view of users as only being attracted to visuals. In reality, visuals can't do much more than support (or ruin) an otherwise well-designed site.