Design Is How It Works

Three speakers on the cutting edge of design: the New York Times; RapGenius, who will be giving design tips for developers; and ZURB – the guys that created the Foundation framework – who are visiting New York from Silicon Valley on the ZURB world tour (https://zurb.com/worldtour/) and will be talking people-centric design.

Speakers

RapGenius (rapgenius.com (http://rapgenius.com/))
Jenn Scheer, Designer

Elements of Design: A Developer’s Primer

“Oh, don’t ask me, I’m a terrible designer.” That's something I've heard from Rails developers ever since I started working with them. But it’s never true. It's just that most Rails devs don't have the scaffolding (no, not that scaffolding) around which to structure their designs.

In this talk we'll cover the things every developer should know about design: contrast, repetition, proximity, hierarchy, flow, typography, and color.

ZURB ( http://zurb.com )
Brandon Arnold, Designer (brandon-arnold.com (http://www.brandon-arnold.com/))

Design for People

At ZURB, we believe that Product Design can change the world. And it already has. For more than 16 years, we've helped people roll up their sleeves and build products with people firmly in mind. But what does it mean to design for people? What does it take? In this talk, we go through how we design customer-centric products and what we've learned from working with startups and larger companies.

The New York Times ( http://nytimes.com )
Larry Buchanan, Graphics/Multimedia Editor ( http://larrybuch.com )

What is good design?

To a degree, design is subjective. What does it mean when design works? What does it look like when it fails? We'll look as some unconventional successes and some conventional design failures.

Details

7-9pm (program will be 7:15-ish to 8:15-ish, the rest will be mingling)
Wednesday, May 7

Refreshments

Free pizza, beers, and other beverages/snacks

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs