# Jan Persiel's Blog > Follow along when I share knowledge about design, tech, working in teams and share experiences made while working on small and large projects. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### Über Jan Persiel URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/uber-jan-persiel/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T07:03:11.000Z Schön, dass Sie vorbeischauen! Man könnte sagen, dass ich seit der zehnten Klasse Grafik Design betreibe. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt habe ich meine erste komplette Schrift entwickelt, weil im Letraset-Katalog nicht die passende war, und für andere habe ich kleine Aufträge ausgeführt (Einladungskarten zeichnen, T-Shirts designtund illustriert). Wenn ich Produkte hässlich fand, habe ich Umverpackungen gestaltet und gegen die Originale getauscht. ## Grafik-Design statt Chemielabor Irgendwie war es nicht zu verwunderlich dann eine Kunstschule zu besuchen und Gebrauchsgrafik zu studieren, obwohl eigentlich ein Chemiestudium der „vernünftige Plan“ war. Während des Studiums kam dann das Internet nach Deutschland und ein riesiges Gestaltungsvakuum. Das habe ich genutzt und mich neben dem klassischen Grafik Design auch auf Online-Design und -konzeption gestürzt, meine heutige Kernkompetenz. ### Das Designstudio Seit 2004 betreibe ich mein eigenes Designstudio (Persiel Design / persiel.com) in Hamburg, Fokus auf visuelle Konzeption, wie ich den Mix aus User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI) und Interaction (IA) Design nenne. Alleine oder gemeinsam mit Partnern aus meinem Netzwerk gestalte ich oder setze dort komplexe Projekte für Web-Plattormen, Magazine, E-Commerce-Lösungen um. ### Beratung zwischen Marke und Maschine Mein Bücherschrank ist neben vielen Designbüchern auch mit einer großen Menge an „Nerd- und Geekliteratur“ bestückt. Ich arbeite mich schon seit den „frühen Webtagen“ immer in Themen wie Programmierung und Technologien ein. Unabdingbar wenn man alle Spieler in einer zunehmend digitalen und dynamischen Medienwelt zusammenhalten will und dafür konzipiert. Dieser Mix an Kenntnis und Erfahrung ist allerdings nicht allzu gängig, was mir immer wieder die Gelegenheit ermöglicht auch beratend tätig zu werden. Wenn Sie jemanden suchen, der komplexe Dinge verständlich macht, verschiedene Disziplinen in (Online-)projekten zusammenbringt und das ganze auch noch mit einem sehr anspruchsvollen Auge begutachten soll, auch nur beratend oder um das Projekt in Gang zu bringen sollten wir sprechen. Viele Verlage, Agenturen und „Macher“ (tolles Wort, ist so produktiv aufgeladen, keine Endlosmeetings vor meinem Auge) buchen mich als Unterstützung dieser Art. ### Lehre und Entwicklungshilfe Ich hatte immer Glück in meiner Ausbildung, dass ich Profis gefunden habe, die mir geholfen haben, die mir Dinge aufgezeigt haben, mir Einblicke gewährt haben. Dafür bin ich sehr dankbar und habe aus diesem Grund auch immer einen großen Teil meiner Zeit in Schulung anderer und Entwicklungshilfe investiert. Eine Möglichkeit zurückzugeben, was mir angeboten wurde. So bin ich seit 1998 auch immer als Trainer und Dozent an diversen Instituten und Vorträgen/Konferenzen aktiv gewesen. Es wäre toll in Kontakt zu kommen, egal, ob als Partner, im Netzwerk, oder als Designer oder Art Director, vielleicht sogar als Schriftgestalter? ### Stationen 1991 – Erste Schrift und Verpackung gestaltet 1996 – Freier Art Director Online (z.B. manufactum.de) 1998 – Certificate Designer Abschluß Kunstschule Wandsbek Hamburg mit Auszeichnung 1998 – Dozent Webdesign Kunstschule Wandsbek 1998 bis 2001 – Art Director Kabel New Media (Hamburg, Zürich, UK) für ATPTennis.com, FIFA World Cup und diverse weitere Projekte und Plattformen 2001 – Freier Art Director und Konzepter für diverse Agenturen und Verlage: HEIMAT Hamburg, InterOne, e-bloc interactive, kontoreins, Jung v. Matt, KolleRebbe, beans-n-bites, freibuero, iconscreen, Gruner+Jahr, BurdaMedia, Jahreszeitenverlag, Macnews.de. Projekte und Kunden: BWM.com, MINI.com, Telefonbuch.de, German Media Pool FIFA Marketing, Ribbon & Partner, Greenpeace, facebook, SysEleven, JurForce, Tubuk, Classische Osteopathie, Golfpeaks, MOPO.de, stern / stern.de / stern eMag diverse Lehraufträge… ### Trainer und Dozent - International Institute for Journalism Berlin mit Trainings in Deutschland, Indien und Vietnam - Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) Chennai, India - Ev. Journalistenschule Berlin - Akademie für Publizistik - TYPO Berlin - Vietnamnews - Akademie Sankelmark - Henri-Nannen-Schule Hamburg - Multimedia Campus Kiel - Kunstschule Wandsbek - Kunsthalle Kiel - CouchSchool - Digitale Leute School ### Contact / Imprint / Impressum URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/contact/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T07:01:26.000Z > Pleased to meet you! ### Art Director & Designer Jan Persiel #### Persiel Designstudio und Postanschrift Eppendorfer Weg 264 20251 Hamburg E-Mail: studio (ät) persiel.com Web: www.persiel.com Tel: +49.40.18206119 Mobile (Telekom): +49.163.6970976 Fax: +49.1803.622229-10005 \* \* ca. 9 Cent/Min aus dem Telekomfestnetz, Gebühren können bei Ihrem Telefonanbieter abweichen ### Hey! Psssst, let me email you a secret … URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/publickey/ Last updated: 2025-10-28T10:41:37.000Z EN: Feel free to grab my public keys to email me encrypted messages. This block contains my commonly used email addresses. DE: Meine Public Keys für verschlüsseltes E-Mailen sind in diesem Block hier. 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Pleased to meet you. Let me introduce myself and tell you a little bit about myself, since that seems to be the thing you are here for, right?! I started to do something like graphic design in 1989 when I fell in love with a Letraset catalogue. But instead of ordering the sheets I started to draw my own fonts for illustrations and invitations people asked me to do. Some signs here and there, a cartoon there. When I disliked a product’s packging a drew my own and repackaged it. I even found out that you could increase the price and still resell it with a profit after putting things in a new packaging. That was the moment when I figured that I should probably not study chemistry but follow that passion. So, instead of pursuing a solid well-paid job as a chemistry super hero like my uncle used to be one, I started to study graphic design. And when I had just started with the studying the internet arrived in Germany. What an amazing opportunity to design things! So many grey pages, so little people knowing how to do it. This was my chance and I went for it, self-training, researching, exchanging ideas and knowledge with people who were just as eager as I was to get this thing to work as good and pretty as possible. The basis for my deep knowledge and understanding of web design and online conceptual work. ## My design studio Since 2004 I run my own design studio (Persiel Design / persiel.com) in Hamburg, with a focus on visual conceptual development, how I like to call this mix of user experience (UX), user interface (UI) and interaction (IA) design. Be it just me or with a set of partners, I design and develop simple and strong solutions for complex web platforms, magazines and e-commerce websites. ## Consulting from somewhere between the brand and technology My studio’s book shelves are loaded, but not only with design annuals, logo books, type specimen folders or print instruction manuals, but quite a few nerds and geeks might find themselves at home when they browse the titles. From the very beginning of my work on web projects I tried to learn and understand as much as possible about the underlaying technologies to get the most out of the platforms or devices. Only when you know where the limits are, you can start to move beyond them by thinking about solutions instead of relying on someone who will somehow make stuff work for you. As it turns out this has not been the typical way of understanding the tasks at hand in the digital space for many designers. For that very reason I found out that I can be of great value for many projects by bridging the divide between developers and designers. So in case you are in need of a designer with the ability to write a bit of code and closely work with your development team, but still making sure the design is at a high level: Get in touch and let|s work on your project, just like I did with and for many agencies, publishing houses and corporations throughout Europe. ## Teaching and capacity building I was very fortunate from the very beginning of my design career to have had the chance to get feedback and advice from seasoned pros who did take the time to teach and tell. I am very thankful for that and always tried to give a little bit back to the next generation of talented young designers. For that very reason I have always spent time teaching and coaching new designers and journalists. Since 1998 I have been a lecturer/coach/trainer/you name it in many schools, colleges and agencies from Hamburg to Berlin, from the UK to Vietnam, from my studio workshops to a staff membership in an Indian college. And yes you might have guessed it, I do train in German and English. It would be great to get in touch, be it for a partnership of some kind, as a designer, to expand each others networks, or as your next font designer or letterer?! Let’s get in touch! ## A few milestone? Here you go. 1991 – First typeface and packaging designed 1996 – Freelance Art Director Online (eg manufactum.de) 1998 – Certificate Designer Art School Hamburg Wandsbek, with distinction 1998 – Trainer for Webdesign Art School Wandsbek 1998 bis 2001 – Art Director with Kabel New Media (Hamburg, Zurich, London, Brighton) for ATPTennis.com, FIFA World Cup and multiple other websites and platforms 2001 – Freelance Art Director and Concept developer for … ### Agencies and publishing houses: HEIMAT Hamburg, (BBDO) InterOne, e-bloc interactive, kontoreins, Jung v. Matt, KolleRebbe, beans-n-bites, freibuero, iconscreen, Gruner+Jahr, BurdaMedia, Jahreszeitenverlag, Macnews.de, talentformation.com GmbH ### Projects and clients: BWM.com, MINI.com, Telefonbuch.de, German Media Pool, FIFA Marketing, Ribbon & Partner, Greenpeace, facebook, SysEleven, JurForce, Tubuk, Classische Osteopathie, Golfpeaks, MOPO.de, stern / stern.de / stern eMag, breuninger.com, Galeria-Kaufhof.de and various training assignments … ## Trainer and Lecturer - International Institute for Journalism Berlin (Germany, India and Vietnam) - Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) Chennai, India - Ev. Journalistenschule, Berlin - Akademie für Publizistik, Hamburg - TYPO Berlin - Vietnamnews, Hanoi/Vietnam - Akademie Sankelmark - Henri-Nannen-Schule, Hamburg - Multimedia Campus, Kiel - Kunstschule Wandsbek, Hamburg - Kunsthalle, Kiel - CouchSchool - Digitale Leute School ### Datenschutzerklärung URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/datenschutz/ Last updated: 2025-10-28T10:44:25.000Z ## Kleines Vorwort Ich freue mich sehr über Dein Interesse an diesem Blog. Datenschutz ist wichtig und deshalb schreibe ich (mit Hilfe von ein paar Standardtextblöcken und meinen Erklärungen dazu) hier auf worum es auf dem Blog in Sachen Datenschutz geht bzw. was berührt wird. Eine Nutzung der Internetseiten JanPersiel.com ist grundsätzlich ohne jede Angabe personenbezogener Daten möglich. Sofern eine betroffene Person besondere Services von JanPersiel.com über die Internetseite in Anspruch nehmen möchte, könnte jedoch eine Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten erforderlich werden. Das ist technisch gar nicht anders machbar, leider. Mein Blog wird von Strato gehostet. Hier findest Du die [Datenschutzerklärung von Strato](https://www.strato.de/datenschutz/?ref=janpersiel.com). Mit Strato besteht ein Vertrag zur Auftragsverarbeitung gemäß Art. 28 DSGVO. Ist die Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten erforderlich und besteht für eine solche Verarbeitung keine gesetzliche Grundlage, hole ich generell eine Einwilligung der betroffenen Person ein, das ist nicht nur gute Kinderstube, sondern auch verpflichtend. Zum Abschluß des Vorwortes sei eins noch einmal explizit erwähnt: Dieses Blog möchte Informationen und Gedanken teilen, nicht Daten sammeln. Ich habe weder Zeit noch Muße mich mit persönlichen Daten zu "bereichern". Auch andere sollen dies nicht durch irgendwelche Sharing oder Analysetools, durch Karten oder Schriftenserver. Die Daten, die allerdings dennoch zwangsläufig entstehen, wie z.B. IP-Adressen auf dem Server, sollen natürlich so sicher wie irgendmöglich behandelt werden, auch wenn Ihr mir z.B. schreibt o.ä. Also volle Aufmerksamkeit wo es sein soll, dort wo es nicht zwingend notwendig ist wird hier auch nichts gesammelt. Punkt. In diesem Sinne nun der Hauptteil, den ein paar schlaue Menschen erarbeitet haben, durch mich auf mich angepasst. Danke für Deinen Besuch und Deine Aufmerksamkeit! ## Der Hauptteil Die Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten, beispielsweise des Namens, der Anschrift, E-Mail-Adresse oder Telefonnummer einer betroffenen Person, erfolgt stets im Einklang mit der Datenschutz-Grundverordnung und in Übereinstimmung mit den für mich geltenden landesspezifischen Datenschutzbestimmungen. Mittels dieser Datenschutzerklärung möchte ich die Öffentlichkeit über Art, Umfang und Zweck der von uns erhobenen, genutzten und verarbeiteten personenbezogenen Daten informieren. Ferner werden betroffene Personen mittels dieser Datenschutzerklärung über die ihnen zustehenden Rechte aufgeklärt. Jan Persiel hat als für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlicher zahlreiche technische und organisatorische Maßnahmen umgesetzt, um einen möglichst lückenlosen Schutz der über diese Internetseite verarbeiteten personenbezogenen Daten sicherzustellen. Dennoch können Internetbasierte Datenübertragungen grundsätzlich Sicherheitslücken aufweisen, sodass ein absoluter Schutz nicht gewährleistet werden kann. Aus diesem Grund steht es jeder betroffenen Person frei, personenbezogene Daten auch auf alternativen Wegen, beispielsweise telefonisch, zu übermitteln. ### 1\. Begriffsbestimmungen Die Datenschutzerklärung von Jan Persiel beruht auf den Begrifflichkeiten, die durch den Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber beim Erlass der Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (DS-GVO) verwendet wurden. Meine Datenschutzerklärung soll sowohl für die Öffentlichkeit als auch für meine Leser und Geschäftspartner einfach lesbar und verständlich sein. Um dies zu gewährleisten, möchten wir vorab die verwendeten Begrifflichkeiten erläutern. Ich verwenden in dieser Datenschutzerklärung unter anderem die folgenden Begriffe: - #### a) personenbezogene Daten Personenbezogene Daten sind alle Informationen, die sich auf eine identifizierte oder identifizierbare natürliche Person (im Folgenden „betroffene Person“) beziehen. Als identifizierbar wird eine natürliche Person angesehen, die direkt oder indirekt, insbesondere mittels Zuordnung zu einer Kennung wie einem Namen, zu einer Kennnummer, zu Standortdaten, zu einer Online-Kennung oder zu einem oder mehreren besonderen Merkmalen, die Ausdruck der physischen, physiologischen, genetischen, psychischen, wirtschaftlichen, kulturellen oder sozialen Identität dieser natürlichen Person sind, identifiziert werden kann. - #### b) betroffene Person Betroffene Person ist jede identifizierte oder identifizierbare natürliche Person, deren personenbezogene Daten von dem für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen verarbeitet werden. - #### c) Verarbeitung Verarbeitung ist jeder mit oder ohne Hilfe automatisierter Verfahren ausgeführte Vorgang oder jede solche Vorgangsreihe im Zusammenhang mit personenbezogenen Daten wie das Erheben, das Erfassen, die Organisation, das Ordnen, die Speicherung, die Anpassung oder Veränderung, das Auslesen, das Abfragen, die Verwendung, die Offenlegung durch Übermittlung, Verbreitung oder eine andere Form der Bereitstellung, den Abgleich oder die Verknüpfung, die Einschränkung, das Löschen oder die Vernichtung. - #### d) Einschränkung der Verarbeitung Einschränkung der Verarbeitung ist die Markierung gespeicherter personenbezogener Daten mit dem Ziel, ihre künftige Verarbeitung einzuschränken. - #### e) Profiling Profiling ist jede Art der automatisierten Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten, die darin besteht, dass diese personenbezogenen Daten verwendet werden, um bestimmte persönliche Aspekte, die sich auf eine natürliche Person beziehen, zu bewerten, insbesondere, um Aspekte bezüglich Arbeitsleistung, wirtschaftlicher Lage, Gesundheit, persönlicher Vorlieben, Interessen, Zuverlässigkeit, Verhalten, Aufenthaltsort oder Ortswechsel dieser natürlichen Person zu analysieren oder vorherzusagen. - #### f) Pseudonymisierung Pseudonymisierung ist die Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten in einer Weise, auf welche die personenbezogenen Daten ohne Hinzuziehung zusätzlicher Informationen nicht mehr einer spezifischen betroffenen Person zugeordnet werden können, sofern diese zusätzlichen Informationen gesondert aufbewahrt werden und technischen und organisatorischen Maßnahmen unterliegen, die gewährleisten, dass die personenbezogenen Daten nicht einer identifizierten oder identifizierbaren natürlichen Person zugewiesen werden. - #### g) Verantwortlicher oder für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlicher Verantwortlicher oder für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlicher ist die natürliche oder juristische Person, Behörde, Einrichtung oder andere Stelle, die allein oder gemeinsam mit anderen über die Zwecke und Mittel der Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten entscheidet. Sind die Zwecke und Mittel dieser Verarbeitung durch das Unionsrecht oder das Recht der Mitgliedstaaten vorgegeben, so kann der Verantwortliche beziehungsweise können die bestimmten Kriterien seiner Benennung nach dem Unionsrecht oder dem Recht der Mitgliedstaaten vorgesehen werden. - #### h) Auftragsverarbeiter Auftragsverarbeiter ist eine natürliche oder juristische Person, Behörde, Einrichtung oder andere Stelle, die personenbezogene Daten im Auftrag des Verantwortlichen verarbeitet. - #### i) Empfänger Empfänger ist eine natürliche oder juristische Person, Behörde, Einrichtung oder andere Stelle, der personenbezogene Daten offengelegt werden, unabhängig davon, ob es sich bei ihr um einen Dritten handelt oder nicht. Behörden, die im Rahmen eines bestimmten Untersuchungsauftrags nach dem Unionsrecht oder dem Recht der Mitgliedstaaten möglicherweise personenbezogene Daten erhalten, gelten jedoch nicht als Empfänger. - #### j) Dritter Dritter ist eine natürliche oder juristische Person, Behörde, Einrichtung oder andere Stelle außer der betroffenen Person, dem Verantwortlichen, dem Auftragsverarbeiter und den Personen, die unter der unmittelbaren Verantwortung des Verantwortlichen oder des Auftragsverarbeiters befugt sind, die personenbezogenen Daten zu verarbeiten. - #### k) Einwilligung Einwilligung ist jede von der betroffenen Person freiwillig für den bestimmten Fall in informierter Weise und unmissverständlich abgegebene Willensbekundung in Form einer Erklärung oder einer sonstigen eindeutigen bestätigenden Handlung, mit der die betroffene Person zu verstehen gibt, dass sie mit der Verarbeitung der sie betreffenden personenbezogenen Daten einverstanden ist. ### 2\. Name und Anschrift des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen Verantwortlicher im Sinne der Datenschutz-Grundverordnung, sonstiger in den Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union geltenden Datenschutzgesetze und anderer Bestimmungen mit datenschutzrechtlichem Charakter ist die: Jan Persiel Eppendorfer Weg 264 20251 Hamburg Deutschland Tel.: +491636970976 E-Mail: hi(ät)janpersiel(punkt)com Website: / ### 3\. Erfassung von allgemeinen Daten und Informationen Die Internetseite der Jan Persiel erfasst mit jedem Aufruf der Internetseite durch eine betroffene Person oder ein automatisiertes System eine Reihe von allgemeinen Daten und Informationen. Diese allgemeinen Daten und Informationen werden in den Logfiles des Servers gespeichert. Erfasst werden können die (1) verwendeten Browsertypen und Versionen, (2) das vom zugreifenden System verwendete Betriebssystem, (3) die Internetseite, von welcher ein zugreifendes System auf unsere Internetseite gelangt (sogenannte Referrer), (4) die Unterwebseiten, welche über ein zugreifendes System auf unserer Internetseite angesteuert werden, (5) das Datum und die Uhrzeit eines Zugriffs auf die Internetseite, (6) eine Internet-Protokoll-Adresse (IP-Adresse), (7) der Internet-Service-Provider des zugreifenden Systems und (8) sonstige ähnliche Daten und Informationen, die der Gefahrenabwehr im Falle von Angriffen auf unsere informationstechnologischen Systeme dienen. Bei der Nutzung dieser allgemeinen Daten und Informationen zieht die Jan Persiel keine Rückschlüsse auf die betroffene Person. Diese Informationen werden vielmehr benötigt, um (1) die Inhalte unserer Internetseite korrekt auszuliefern, (2) die Inhalte unserer Internetseite sowie die Werbung für diese zu optimieren, (3) die dauerhafte Funktionsfähigkeit unserer informationstechnologischen Systeme und der Technik unserer Internetseite zu gewährleisten sowie (4) um Strafverfolgungsbehörden im Falle eines Cyberangriffes die zur Strafverfolgung notwendigen Informationen bereitzustellen. Diese anonym erhobenen Daten und Informationen werden durch die Jan Persiel daher einerseits statistisch und ferner mit dem Ziel ausgewertet, den Datenschutz und die Datensicherheit in unserem Unternehmen zu erhöhen, um letztlich ein optimales Schutzniveau für die von uns verarbeiteten personenbezogenen Daten sicherzustellen. Die anonymen Daten der Server-Logfiles werden getrennt von allen durch eine betroffene Person angegebenen personenbezogenen Daten gespeichert. ### 4\. RSS-Abonnement auf der Internetseite Im Blog von Jan Persiel besteht die Option Inhalte auch via RSS zu abonnieren. Dieser Zugriff wird wie ein regulärer Zugriff auf die Website behandelt. ### 5\. Routinemäßige Löschung und Sperrung von personenbezogenen Daten Der für die Verarbeitung Verantwortliche verarbeitet und speichert personenbezogene Daten der betroffenen Person nur für den Zeitraum, der zur Erreichung des Speicherungszwecks erforderlich ist oder sofern dies durch den Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber oder einen anderen Gesetzgeber in Gesetzen oder Vorschriften, welchen der für die Verarbeitung Verantwortliche unterliegt, vorgesehen wurde. Entfällt der Speicherungszweck oder läuft eine vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber oder einem anderen zuständigen Gesetzgeber vorgeschriebene Speicherfrist ab, werden die personenbezogenen Daten routinemäßig und entsprechend den gesetzlichen Vorschriften gesperrt oder gelöscht. ### 6\. Rechte der betroffenen Person - #### a) Recht auf Bestätigung Jede betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber eingeräumte Recht, von dem für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen eine Bestätigung darüber zu verlangen, ob sie betreffende personenbezogene Daten verarbeitet werden. Möchte eine betroffene Person dieses Bestätigungsrecht in Anspruch nehmen, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. - #### b) Recht auf Auskunft Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, jederzeit von dem für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen unentgeltliche Auskunft über die zu seiner Person gespeicherten personenbezogenen Daten und eine Kopie dieser Auskunft zu erhalten. Ferner hat der Europäische Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber der betroffenen Person Auskunft über folgende Informationen zugestanden: - die Verarbeitungszwecke - die Kategorien personenbezogener Daten, die verarbeitet werden - die Empfänger oder Kategorien von Empfängern, gegenüber denen die personenbezogenen Daten offengelegt worden sind oder noch offengelegt werden, insbesondere bei Empfängern in Drittländern oder bei internationalen Organisationen - falls möglich die geplante Dauer, für die die personenbezogenen Daten gespeichert werden, oder, falls dies nicht möglich ist, die Kriterien für die Festlegung dieser Dauer - das Bestehen eines Rechts auf Berichtigung oder Löschung der sie betreffenden personenbezogenen Daten oder auf Einschränkung der Verarbeitung durch den Verantwortlichen oder eines Widerspruchsrechts gegen diese Verarbeitung - das Bestehen eines Beschwerderechts bei einer Aufsichtsbehörde - wenn die personenbezogenen Daten nicht bei der betroffenen Person erhoben werden: Alle verfügbaren Informationen über die Herkunft der Daten - das Bestehen einer automatisierten Entscheidungsfindung einschließlich Profiling gemäß Artikel 22 Abs.1 und 4 DS-GVO und — zumindest in diesen Fällen — aussagekräftige Informationen über die involvierte Logik sowie die Tragweite und die angestrebten Auswirkungen einer derartigen Verarbeitung für die betroffene Person Ferner steht der betroffenen Person ein Auskunftsrecht darüber zu, ob personenbezogene Daten an ein Drittland oder an eine internationale Organisation übermittelt wurden. Sofern dies der Fall ist, so steht der betroffenen Person im Übrigen das Recht zu, Auskunft über die geeigneten Garantien im Zusammenhang mit der Übermittlung zu erhalten. Möchte eine betroffene Person dieses Auskunftsrecht in Anspruch nehmen, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. - #### c) Recht auf Berichtigung Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, die unverzügliche Berichtigung sie betreffender unrichtiger personenbezogener Daten zu verlangen. Ferner steht der betroffenen Person das Recht zu, unter Berücksichtigung der Zwecke der Verarbeitung, die Vervollständigung unvollständiger personenbezogener Daten — auch mittels einer ergänzenden Erklärung — zu verlangen. Möchte eine betroffene Person dieses Berichtigungsrecht in Anspruch nehmen, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. - #### d) Recht auf Löschung (Recht auf Vergessen werden) Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, von dem Verantwortlichen zu verlangen, dass die sie betreffenden personenbezogenen Daten unverzüglich gelöscht werden, sofern einer der folgenden Gründe zutrifft und soweit die Verarbeitung nicht erforderlich ist: - Die personenbezogenen Daten wurden für solche Zwecke erhoben oder auf sonstige Weise verarbeitet, für welche sie nicht mehr notwendig sind. - Die betroffene Person widerruft ihre Einwilligung, auf die sich die Verarbeitung gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 Buchstabe a DS-GVO oder Art. 9 Abs. 2 Buchstabe a DS-GVO stützte, und es fehlt an einer anderweitigen Rechtsgrundlage für die Verarbeitung. - Die betroffene Person legt gemäß Art. 21 Abs. 1 DS-GVO Widerspruch gegen die Verarbeitung ein, und es liegen keine vorrangigen berechtigten Gründe für die Verarbeitung vor, oder die betroffene Person legt gemäß Art. 21 Abs. 2 DS-GVO Widerspruch gegen die Verarbeitung ein. - Die personenbezogenen Daten wurden unrechtmäßig verarbeitet. - Die Löschung der personenbezogenen Daten ist zur Erfüllung einer rechtlichen Verpflichtung nach dem Unionsrecht oder dem Recht der Mitgliedstaaten erforderlich, dem der Verantwortliche unterliegt. - Die personenbezogenen Daten wurden in Bezug auf angebotene Dienste der Informationsgesellschaft gemäß Art. 8 Abs. 1 DS-GVO erhoben. Sofern einer der oben genannten Gründe zutrifft und eine betroffene Person die Löschung von personenbezogenen Daten, die bei der Jan Persiel gespeichert sind, veranlassen möchte, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. Der Mitarbeiter der Jan Persiel wird veranlassen, dass dem Löschverlangen unverzüglich nachgekommen wird. Wurden die personenbezogenen Daten von der Jan Persiel öffentlich gemacht und ist unser Unternehmen als Verantwortlicher gemäß Art. 17 Abs. 1 DS-GVO zur Löschung der personenbezogenen Daten verpflichtet, so trifft die Jan Persiel unter Berücksichtigung der verfügbaren Technologie und der Implementierungskosten angemessene Maßnahmen, auch technischer Art, um andere für die Datenverarbeitung Verantwortliche, welche die veröffentlichten personenbezogenen Daten verarbeiten, darüber in Kenntnis zu setzen, dass die betroffene Person von diesen anderen für die Datenverarbeitung Verantwortlichen die Löschung sämtlicher Links zu diesen personenbezogenen Daten oder von Kopien oder Replikationen dieser personenbezogenen Daten verlangt hat, soweit die Verarbeitung nicht erforderlich ist. Der Mitarbeiter der Jan Persiel wird im Einzelfall das Notwendige veranlassen. - #### e) Recht auf Einschränkung der Verarbeitung Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, von dem Verantwortlichen die Einschränkung der Verarbeitung zu verlangen, wenn eine der folgenden Voraussetzungen gegeben ist: - Die Richtigkeit der personenbezogenen Daten wird von der betroffenen Person bestritten, und zwar für eine Dauer, die es dem Verantwortlichen ermöglicht, die Richtigkeit der personenbezogenen Daten zu überprüfen. - Die Verarbeitung ist unrechtmäßig, die betroffene Person lehnt die Löschung der personenbezogenen Daten ab und verlangt stattdessen die Einschränkung der Nutzung der personenbezogenen Daten. - Der Verantwortliche benötigt die personenbezogenen Daten für die Zwecke der Verarbeitung nicht länger, die betroffene Person benötigt sie jedoch zur Geltendmachung, Ausübung oder Verteidigung von Rechtsansprüchen. - Die betroffene Person hat Widerspruch gegen die Verarbeitung gem. Art. 21 Abs. 1 DS-GVO eingelegt und es steht noch nicht fest, ob die berechtigten Gründe des Verantwortlichen gegenüber denen der betroffenen Person überwiegen. Sofern eine der oben genannten Voraussetzungen gegeben ist und eine betroffene Person die Einschränkung von personenbezogenen Daten, die bei der Jan Persiel gespeichert sind, verlangen möchte, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. Der Mitarbeiter der Jan Persiel wird die Einschränkung der Verarbeitung veranlassen. - #### f) Recht auf Datenübertragbarkeit Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, die sie betreffenden personenbezogenen Daten, welche durch die betroffene Person einem Verantwortlichen bereitgestellt wurden, in einem strukturierten, gängigen und maschinenlesbaren Format zu erhalten. Sie hat außerdem das Recht, diese Daten einem anderen Verantwortlichen ohne Behinderung durch den Verantwortlichen, dem die personenbezogenen Daten bereitgestellt wurden, zu übermitteln, sofern die Verarbeitung auf der Einwilligung gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 Buchstabe a DS-GVO oder Art. 9 Abs. 2 Buchstabe a DS-GVO oder auf einem Vertrag gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 Buchstabe b DS-GVO beruht und die Verarbeitung mithilfe automatisierter Verfahren erfolgt, sofern die Verarbeitung nicht für die Wahrnehmung einer Aufgabe erforderlich ist, die im öffentlichen Interesse liegt oder in Ausübung öffentlicher Gewalt erfolgt, welche dem Verantwortlichen übertragen wurde. Ferner hat die betroffene Person bei der Ausübung ihres Rechts auf Datenübertragbarkeit gemäß Art. 20 Abs. 1 DS-GVO das Recht, zu erwirken, dass die personenbezogenen Daten direkt von einem Verantwortlichen an einen anderen Verantwortlichen übermittelt werden, soweit dies technisch machbar ist und sofern hiervon nicht die Rechte und Freiheiten anderer Personen beeinträchtigt werden. Zur Geltendmachung des Rechts auf Datenübertragbarkeit kann sich die betroffene Person jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter der Jan Persiel wenden. - #### g) Recht auf Widerspruch Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, aus Gründen, die sich aus ihrer besonderen Situation ergeben, jederzeit gegen die Verarbeitung sie betreffender personenbezogener Daten, die aufgrund von Art. 6 Abs. 1 Buchstaben e oder f DS-GVO erfolgt, Widerspruch einzulegen. Dies gilt auch für ein auf diese Bestimmungen gestütztes Profiling. Die Jan Persiel verarbeitet die personenbezogenen Daten im Falle des Widerspruchs nicht mehr, es sei denn, wir können zwingende schutzwürdige Gründe für die Verarbeitung nachweisen, die den Interessen, Rechten und Freiheiten der betroffenen Person überwiegen, oder die Verarbeitung dient der Geltendmachung, Ausübung oder Verteidigung von Rechtsansprüchen. Verarbeitet die Jan Persiel personenbezogene Daten, um Direktwerbung zu betreiben, so hat die betroffene Person das Recht, jederzeit Widerspruch gegen die Verarbeitung der personenbezogenen Daten zum Zwecke derartiger Werbung einzulegen. Dies gilt auch für das Profiling, soweit es mit solcher Direktwerbung in Verbindung steht. Widerspricht die betroffene Person gegenüber der Jan Persiel der Verarbeitung für Zwecke der Direktwerbung, so wird die Jan Persiel die personenbezogenen Daten nicht mehr für diese Zwecke verarbeiten. Zudem hat die betroffene Person das Recht, aus Gründen, die sich aus ihrer besonderen Situation ergeben, gegen die sie betreffende Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten, die bei der Jan Persiel zu wissenschaftlichen oder historischen Forschungszwecken oder zu statistischen Zwecken gemäß Art. 89 Abs. 1 DS-GVO erfolgen, Widerspruch einzulegen, es sei denn, eine solche Verarbeitung ist zur Erfüllung einer im öffentlichen Interesse liegenden Aufgabe erforderlich. Zur Ausübung des Rechts auf Widerspruch kann sich die betroffene Person direkt jeden Mitarbeiter der Jan Persiel oder einen anderen Mitarbeiter wenden. Der betroffenen Person steht es ferner frei, im Zusammenhang mit der Nutzung von Diensten der Informationsgesellschaft, ungeachtet der Richtlinie 2002/58/EG, ihr Widerspruchsrecht mittels automatisierter Verfahren auszuüben, bei denen technische Spezifikationen verwendet werden. - #### h) Automatisierte Entscheidungen im Einzelfall einschließlich Profiling Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, nicht einer ausschließlich auf einer automatisierten Verarbeitung — einschließlich Profiling — beruhenden Entscheidung unterworfen zu werden, die ihr gegenüber rechtliche Wirkung entfaltet oder sie in ähnlicher Weise erheblich beeinträchtigt, sofern die Entscheidung (1) nicht für den Abschluss oder die Erfüllung eines Vertrags zwischen der betroffenen Person und dem Verantwortlichen erforderlich ist, oder (2) aufgrund von Rechtsvorschriften der Union oder der Mitgliedstaaten, denen der Verantwortliche unterliegt, zulässig ist und diese Rechtsvorschriften angemessene Maßnahmen zur Wahrung der Rechte und Freiheiten sowie der berechtigten Interessen der betroffenen Person enthalten oder (3) mit ausdrücklicher Einwilligung der betroffenen Person erfolgt. Ist die Entscheidung (1) für den Abschluss oder die Erfüllung eines Vertrags zwischen der betroffenen Person und dem Verantwortlichen erforderlich oder (2) erfolgt sie mit ausdrücklicher Einwilligung der betroffenen Person, trifft die Jan Persiel angemessene Maßnahmen, um die Rechte und Freiheiten sowie die berechtigten Interessen der betroffenen Person zu wahren, wozu mindestens das Recht auf Erwirkung des Eingreifens einer Person seitens des Verantwortlichen, auf Darlegung des eigenen Standpunkts und auf Anfechtung der Entscheidung gehört. Möchte die betroffene Person Rechte mit Bezug auf automatisierte Entscheidungen geltend machen, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. - #### i) Recht auf Widerruf einer datenschutzrechtlichen Einwilligung Jede von der Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten betroffene Person hat das vom Europäischen Richtlinien- und Verordnungsgeber gewährte Recht, eine Einwilligung zur Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten jederzeit zu widerrufen. Möchte die betroffene Person ihr Recht auf Widerruf einer Einwilligung geltend machen, kann sie sich hierzu jederzeit an einen Mitarbeiter des für die Verarbeitung Verantwortlichen wenden. ### 7\. Rechtsgrundlage der Verarbeitung Art. 6 I lit. a DS-GVO dient unserem Unternehmen als Rechtsgrundlage für Verarbeitungsvorgänge, bei denen wir eine Einwilligung für einen bestimmten Verarbeitungszweck einholen. Ist die Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten zur Erfüllung eines Vertrags, dessen Vertragspartei die betroffene Person ist, erforderlich, wie dies beispielsweise bei Verarbeitungsvorgängen der Fall ist, die für eine Lieferung von Waren oder die Erbringung einer sonstigen Leistung oder Gegenleistung notwendig sind, so beruht die Verarbeitung auf Art. 6 I lit. b DS-GVO. Gleiches gilt für solche Verarbeitungsvorgänge die zur Durchführung vorvertraglicher Maßnahmen erforderlich sind, etwa in Fällen von Anfragen zur unseren Produkten oder Leistungen. Unterliegt unser Unternehmen einer rechtlichen Verpflichtung durch welche eine Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten erforderlich wird, wie beispielsweise zur Erfüllung steuerlicher Pflichten, so basiert die Verarbeitung auf Art. 6 I lit. c DS-GVO. In seltenen Fällen könnte die Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten erforderlich werden, um lebenswichtige Interessen der betroffenen Person oder einer anderen natürlichen Person zu schützen. Dies wäre beispielsweise der Fall, wenn ein Besucher in unserem Betrieb verletzt werden würde und daraufhin sein Name, sein Alter, seine Krankenkassendaten oder sonstige lebenswichtige Informationen an einen Arzt, ein Krankenhaus oder sonstige Dritte weitergegeben werden müssten. Dann würde die Verarbeitung auf Art. 6 I lit. d DS-GVO beruhen. Letztlich könnten Verarbeitungsvorgänge auf Art. 6 I lit. f DS-GVO beruhen. Auf dieser Rechtsgrundlage basieren Verarbeitungsvorgänge, die von keiner der vorgenannten Rechtsgrundlagen erfasst werden, wenn die Verarbeitung zur Wahrung eines berechtigten Interesses unseres Unternehmens oder eines Dritten erforderlich ist, sofern die Interessen, Grundrechte und Grundfreiheiten des Betroffenen nicht überwiegen. Solche Verarbeitungsvorgänge sind uns insbesondere deshalb gestattet, weil sie durch den Europäischen Gesetzgeber besonders erwähnt wurden. Er vertrat insoweit die Auffassung, dass ein berechtigtes Interesse anzunehmen sein könnte, wenn die betroffene Person ein Kunde des Verantwortlichen ist (Erwägungsgrund 47 Satz 2 DS-GVO). ### 8\. Berechtigte Interessen an der Verarbeitung, die von dem Verantwortlichen oder einem Dritten verfolgt werden Basiert die Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten auf Artikel 6 I lit. f DS-GVO ist unser berechtigtes Interesse die Durchführung unserer Geschäftstätigkeit zugunsten des Wohlergehens all unserer Mitarbeiter und unserer Anteilseigner. ### 9\. Dauer, für die die personenbezogenen Daten gespeichert werden Das Kriterium für die Dauer der Speicherung von personenbezogenen Daten ist die jeweilige gesetzliche Aufbewahrungsfrist. Nach Ablauf der Frist werden die entsprechenden Daten routinemäßig gelöscht, sofern sie nicht mehr zur Vertragserfüllung oder Vertragsanbahnung erforderlich sind. ### 10\. Gesetzliche oder vertragliche Vorschriften zur Bereitstellung der personenbezogenen Daten; Erforderlichkeit für den Vertragsabschluss; Verpflichtung der betroffenen Person, die personenbezogenen Daten bereitzustellen; mögliche Folgen der Nichtbereitstellung Wir klären Sie darüber auf, dass die Bereitstellung personenbezogener Daten zum Teil gesetzlich vorgeschrieben ist (z.B. Steuervorschriften) oder sich auch aus vertraglichen Regelungen (z.B. Angaben zum Vertragspartner) ergeben kann. Mitunter kann es zu einem Vertragsschluss erforderlich sein, dass eine betroffene Person uns personenbezogene Daten zur Verfügung stellt, die in der Folge durch uns verarbeitet werden müssen. Die betroffene Person ist beispielsweise verpflichtet uns personenbezogene Daten bereitzustellen, wenn unser Unternehmen mit ihr einen Vertrag abschließt. Eine Nichtbereitstellung der personenbezogenen Daten hätte zur Folge, dass der Vertrag mit dem Betroffenen nicht geschlossen werden könnte. Vor einer Bereitstellung personenbezogener Daten durch den Betroffenen muss sich der Betroffene an einen unserer Mitarbeiter wenden. Unser Mitarbeiter klärt den Betroffenen einzelfallbezogen darüber auf, ob die Bereitstellung der personenbezogenen Daten gesetzlich oder vertraglich vorgeschrieben oder für den Vertragsabschluss erforderlich ist, ob eine Verpflichtung besteht, die personenbezogenen Daten bereitzustellen, und welche Folgen die Nichtbereitstellung der personenbezogenen Daten hätte. ### 11\. Bestehen einer automatisierten Entscheidungsfindung Als verantwortungsbewusstes Unternehmen verzichten wir auf eine automatische Entscheidungsfindung oder ein Profiling. Diese Datenschutzerklärung wurde durch den Datenschutzerklärungs-Generator der DGD Deutsche Gesellschaft für Datenschutz GmbH, die als [Externer Datenschutzbeauftragter Dachau](https://dg-datenschutz.de/datenschutz-dienstleistungen/externer-datenschutzbeauftragter/?ref=janpersiel.com) tätig ist, in Kooperation mit dem [Anwalt für Datenschutzrecht](https://www.wbs-law.de/it-recht/datenschutzrecht/?ref=janpersiel.com) Christian Solmecke erstellt. ## Posts ### Setting up a design system – Part 4: Budget for a design system URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-4-budget-for-a-design-system/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:21:03.000Z ## What is needed to get started Nothing really. The will to get something set up is the first and foremost need if you ask me. A lot of things speak for a design system of some kind and that is why there will always be a chance to get the budget for it. But there is none such thing as a "motivation grant" one can give. Okay, but that is not why you came her. Let's talk about the things to create a budget. This post will point you towards things you might need to take into consideration, however it will not give you specific details of how many Euros, dollars or whatever cash is needed. That could be another post going into more examples. Today I would like to offer you the insights to calculate a budget yourself which is more reasonable anyway as the rates for certain tasks differ a lot depending where you are or get your work done. ### A trial run, a group of people From an employee perspective I have heard people who did not get a budget to work on a design system. They did it anyway, unpaid for. They got together in a group of motivated people because they believed in setting up such a system. Once they got the basics right they pitched the system again, this time with way more leverage, as the argument of initial costs just got a whole lot weaker. But they were motivated to do work in a certain way, they invested time to reach that state of work culture at their workplace. But even if you do not find the group of people you can start small. As a designer work in a way as if you had such a system. Write a specs sheet and refer to it whenever possible. Do not pass along distances in pixels anymore but mention a value on your specs sheet, like "spacer XL". This is the first step of showing how valuable it can be to have such a system in place. From an employer's perspective it can be a great idea to dedicate a specific time budget per week or maybe something like a team day to work on a design system / Pattern Library. This has the benefit of making it budgeted and it might even have the big benefit of getting the team to work on something together beyond the everyday ticket mill. ## What costs money In general money is not the only currency here. We are more or less talking about resources. You can either have two designers working on dead slow machines because you do not want to spend new hardware, and they get stuff done. Just. But maybe with the proper hardware not making them wait every few seconds a single designer might be able to get the job done at the cost of a faster computer. And with less therapy costs for anger management (that spinning beachball of death on a Mac can make you go crazy for sure). ### Time is one currency The main part on the budget is basically time (spent by the people working on it). How much time is needed then? Let's take a look at the tasks at hand: - Creating the design / concept - Writing the documentation - The meetings to get people synced - Research within the teams (workflows, opinions, ideas, …) - Research outside (software, tools, best practices) - Setting up a system - Bringing content, code, and documentation into the system - Converting existing design and code into a (standardised) components ### Hardware, hosting, and other costs The other aspect when talking about costs is hardware and connectivity for example. You might need a server to host a design system, a machine to build it, a domain. Depending on your setup this can range from a few bucks to a larger sum. But you certainly won't need a 64 core, 512 GB Ram, 32 TB SSD machine with 155 TB/s connection. Most systems could probably be hosted on a Raspberry Pi for a few euros. But maybe you have a server already and there is space on it for your design system as well. After all we are talking about something that is more than a static PDF to be served, but not a full fledged shop system either. So when hosting, hardware, and a domain are out of the way, what else is there to pay attention to on the costs sheet? Well, quite frankly, that could be it. Maybe you have licence costs for a software to display your design system, but there are a lot of free and open-source alternatives out there, like the [UIengine](https://github.com/dennisreimann/uiengine?ref=janpersiel.com), [Fractal](http://fractal.build/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Storybook](https://storybook.js.org/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Pattern Lab](http://patternlab.io/?ref=janpersiel.com), [patternplate](https://github.com/sinnerschrader/patternplate/?ref=janpersiel.com). Or have a look at the growing [list of similar tools](https://github.com/davidhund/styleguide-generators?ref=janpersiel.com) to generate pattern libraries / styleguides. ## Where can you save money? Now we get to the interesting part: Saving money and reducing costs. For management this is crucial, because so far we have talked about spending extra money and time. The headline itself is not quite right, as there is no money being saved, but rather time. But in the end time needs to be paid for be it in the form of wages or freelance invoices wanting to be paid. So where does a design system help to save time? ### Consistent use of components The first thing is a no-brainer, literally. When you have components with a good documentation and flexibility it is a natural thing to use them. You do not have to invent the wheel when it comes to buttons obviously. But in the case of a more complex form this is something you do not want to reinvent once you have figured it out and designed it with maximum comfort and conversion chances. Be it in the conceptual phase, when the UI is brought together, or in the development stage, everyone on the team can tap into the components and make use of them. And since it is either a quick reference on a scribble ("this box is our standard form type C") during the concept development, a quick dropping of a sketch symbol in a layout, or a copy and paste / include in a code editor, it becomes somewhat ridiculously simple. While you might not want to re-use forms all the time, there is a lot of communication which can get saved because a developer does not need to ask for styles anymore, a module to be used, or a which exact colour code should be used. Either it is used in the Pattern Library or it is a potential candidate for it. The latter case is a great point for an exchange to enhance or defend the style guide ("great let's add mauve to the list of colours" vs. "do we really need a 25th shade of red?"). However the mere question for a colour code is something nobody wants to be delayed by. A last example could be the use of spacers. The way an interface makes use of space and areas is something that can be systemised. It does not make sense to create re-usable components and do some random spacing job over and over again. Make distances a standardised thing and communicate them with clarity. ### Plausibility and Clear concepts Everyone makes mistakes. We know that since layouts have been passed to developers despite the fact that they were not finished yet, resulting in updated files, which again were only updated partially, etc. When a design system is in place and lived by by everyone it is a lot easier to spot things gone sideways or to answer questions by doing a quick look-up, not by sending questions to colleagues who are in meetings all day making you need to wait for the answer before you can continue working. So you feel like setting up a concept how certain things in a design should behave? An example would be a button. Active, inactive, hover, busy, whatever the state is, you can define it. What about links? Do they behave similarly? Is there a shared rule or two? May that rule even apply to the mega menu you dreamt up? Embrace the power of clear concepts. To a UI designer this might be a relief because they do not need to visualise a gazillion different states. To a developer this could mean that a certain behaviour can be moved to a mixin and be used over and over again. Win win again. Having simple and easy to remember rules and making them available to everyone is a great start to get the system more reliable in terms of what can be expected from a user's perspective and from a production perspective as well. This reduces questions and leaves time. For instance for more feature development. Ouh, nice! ## Planning the budget When setting out to create a budget it makes sense to have a team of people getting together again. The different trades and departments can give better evaluations of what might be needed and can be expected. Make sure to evaluate often whether you are on track, especially in the beginning. ### What needs to be accounted for in a design system? The following list is a good start to discuss what you need and what you estimate. Be aware of the different experience levels and rather let the realistic people be in the lead instead of the enthusiastic founding team members we talked about previously. Depending on your product, industry, and teams the list items might be applicable to more than one department. - Research: What is needed and should be included in the system - Research: Accessibility and permissions - Research: Which software is needed? - Research: What should be included? - Research: Is the system a living system? - Inventory check: What is available already? - What needs to move? What does not? - What needs to be created? - When are certain parts needed? - Will a versioning system be needed? - How will people get to know about the system? - How are updates being handled? - Where is input and feedback gathered? - Who does quality control? - Where and when will the work on a design system take place? - What are the goals and milestones? - How is the system future proof and technology agnostic? - etc. etc. etc. ## Hidden costs When you go through a list of questions like those in the previous section you might be able to discuss and estimate how much time is needed for certain things. However there are quite a few things which can go wrong and bear hidden costs by taking more time. Let me give you a few examples so you can have an eye open for similar issues in your project: 1. Misunderstanding of what a design system can and cannot do, what is part of it and what is not. Having experienced that some people thought they would pretty much get a self-running system doing their work for them is not the best thing to plan with. Be realistic, do not glorify a system. It is a system, not an autonomous self working robot ninja wonderthingy. 2. Getting started prematurely and eventually having to start from scratch again because the system is not ready for the whole team. 3. Not integrating the system into the workflow, making it fail to be reliable, which causes either a collapse or a strong effort to bring it up to speed. In the meantime wrong, faulty, or outdated things might have been produced. Maximum harm is done this way buy hurting everyone's trust in such a system. 4. A new technology is introduced and the design system documentation / the templating system / Pattern Library is not able to incorporate this. This might either result in a major refactoring or even the need to move the documentation to a new setup all together. The list of potential hazards goes on and on. Just be aware of the pitfalls you can think of and get the other team members to chime in with their end-of-the-world scenarios as well. We cannot think about everything but a few brains more close the potential gaps a lot more effectively. And this does not only apply to design systems as we know but to holding a fortress agains zombies trying to get in as well. You get the point: Work together to keep things running smoothly. And despite all the problems and pitfalls being mentioned, work on how those can be overcome as well. That is the power of such a system beyond patterns and components: Team communication and collaboration imporves. Something which is almost impossible to account for in numbers. **Up next: Checking inventory** ### Setting up a design system – Part 3: Who needs to be involved URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-3-who-needs-to-be-involved/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:20:51.000Z Part 3 of the [**Setting up a design system series**](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-1-overview/). ## The initiators In the [previous article](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-2-do-you-need-a-design-system/) I hinted at the fact that design systems often get initiated by a single person or a small group within a team. Often this is due to the fact that something triggered the wish to create a design system. I have seen these initiatives from both designers and developers. Obviously the motivation was different depending on who started the conversation and articulated the wish for such a system. And this is where it is important to pay attention to how things continue from here. If the creation of a design system, a living style guide or a Pattern Library is only initiated by one group of people it is quite likely for it to have some built-in problems. As the proverb says: If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And there is a lot to it when it comes to design systems and all related tools and workflows. As motivated as a small group of 'makers' can be, hyped, pumped, ready to get a month's work done in a week, it is crucial to hold on for a moment and get the rest of the team/company aboard. This is an adventure with many obstacles ahead, you will need every single person to get to the proverbial paradise of a perfect design system, golden workflows, and rainbow emitting Pattern Libraries. With that warning out of the way let's assemble a team to get the process of creating a design system started. ## The founding mothers and fathers While the initiators might be super excited and eager to get stuff done, quite possibly this could cause rejection and fear in other parts of the team or the company. They are just too motivated for some. An idea is to get a "constitutional meeting" organised. This meeting / workshop can be a great start and will most certainly bring a truck load of revelations to the surface (and no, I am not talking about things which happened at the last company Christmas party). ### The design system kick-off meeting Invite one or two representatives from the departments which might come into contact with the design system to a kick-off meeting. This ensures that no party is forgotten and feels left out. You want every possible input at this stage to create the most solid foundation for your system. The meeting/workshop should cover these topics: - What do/don't we like about our workflows and tasks? - Where do we see chances to improve workflows and communication? - What is important to a trade? - Where do we need help? - Where do we observe problems and obstacles on a regular basis? - What are we afraid of? - What do we think about when we hear design system / Pattern Library / Style guide? - What would be a task / project you could imagine getting started with? - What are the costs? - Who has which experiences and knowledge to bring to the table? - Do we have everything to get started? - What are the next tasks? - When do we meet again? Ideally this will spark a lot of ideas and discussions. Obviously everything should be documented and a group of founders to take responsibility should be defined. They will get the first to dos done and distributed, keep the momentum up. Ensure that this group has at least one representative of all impacted trades, even if it is just a partial presence in the group. Advisors you might say. ## The management By now, you have an understanding of what is needed or might be coming. The founders get to define things, interview the others in their groups of trade or departments, a picture starts to shape up. Obviously this process will cost time / money / effort and not everyone might feel like doing this in their free time. That is where management comes in (if you did not decide to have them in the initial meeting, which you should have). If people continue doing research, work on tasks, write stuff, do more research it is a thing requiring company resources. And even if there is no need for a fully fledged business plan for a Pattern Library (yet) or something similar it makes sense to discuss the impact of the founding work and the potential outcome. Setting up a proper evaluation of the mission, the first tasks, the expected outcome, the investment is a good way of making sure there are no unexpected outcomes. At least not the nasty when-did-this-get-so-expensive kinds. Get management to sign the founding document as well (i.e. the meeting minutes). ## The builders Depending on what your design system will include, what you envision, it might need people to build it. Even if you come up with a simple document to start with, a text document with all colour codes on it, a folder with all code snippets used, a guideline for UX on your app, it needs to be created. Meet the content creators. They focus on the respective aspects from their trade's point of view. They do the lobby work for their topics. The builders come in when things get a bit more complicated. There might be the decision to have a system which can be maintained via a web browser. Who builds that? Exactly, the builders. But they need support as well, as this is not just software. There needs to be someone doing the UI for this tool, a content structure, etc. Even if an existing tool can be used (like the [UIengine](https://github.com/dennisreimann/uiengine?ref=janpersiel.com) for example) it is most likely that some adaptation is necessary for a smooth workflow. ## The users Once a system is in place, it is in a continuous stress test. Everyone who uses it from that point on has an opinion. Typical problems are: - incompleteness (features, content, components) - hard to use - slow speed - buggy functions and UI - ugliness - etc. Those are just a few aspects, but should you wait to get the system started? Rather spend some more time to make it perfect? Probably not. Start early and make it clear and obvious that this is work in progress. This has many advantages: People know that things will break. They can try using something and give feedback. Actually that is a crucial thing to offer simple feedback. Maybe a simple mini form on each screen a user uses? From there you can not only collect, but make sense of feedback because it is clear where it came from and in which situation. Ask questions, derive features and optimisations from it. In short, make a better product. Because creating a design system is a product by itself. And so are the tools like a Pattern Library. The better your tool, the more likely it is to be used. ## The design system ambassadors With a need to keep people informed about what is going on, i.e. the status of the system, the feedback, and subsequent next steps, it makes sense to get your PR people to talk about the changes and new things. It sounds like selling something which should be used by the people anyway, but if you do it right, the whole team will start being more involved, know more details, get a hang of what is going on. They start owning it. You might consider offering the people a newsletter, a microblog, some part on the intranet, maybe even a few minutes every week at the company get-together, to talk about the latest changes. People like to know things. Just do not overwhelm them. One thing at a time and in small doses. Reward feedback, embrace productive criticism, it will make the system stronger and stronger. ## The external forces This sounds dangerous. Force from the outside? Well, if you have a genuine interest in getting feedback, why not from outside as well? A design system is usually nothing secret. It is basically the rule book of everything people might see anyway. Many companies make their Pattern Libraries or design systems public, it is a good way of showing how you work. Some actually define this as one of the goals of such a system: communicating that they use a system to get certain jobs done. Not the worst idea to attract the right kind of people to get to work with you. Obviously you would not want to put information into your documentation / design system with a top secret clearance and make it available to the public. But even that can be something to take into consideration when you set up your system in the first place. So even people not on your team or within the company might be valuable contributors to the system or at least get an idea how you are working. Which raises the question: Did you get HR invited at the first meeting? ;) **Up next: Talking costs and budgets** ### Setting up a design system – Part 2: Do you need a design system? URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-2-do-you-need-a-design-system/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:20:34.000Z Part 2 of the [**Setting up a design system series**](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-1-overview/). > You need a design system! And a Pattern Library! A Living Styleguide is a must have! Today, one cannot work without one … That's how many design systems, Pattern Libraries, and similar principles get pitched. Now, as much as this is typical, this is a big problem at the same time. In this post we will focus on the question whether one needs a design system. ## Where from does the initial idea originate Very often there are trends which people pick up and they are super excited about them. It becomes obvious that something great is right in front of them. Or a person comes back from a conference and is all motivated and pumped for he or she has been "loaded" with many great concepts and ideas. That is wonderful! After all this incorporates a lot of energy and brings home a person who is willing to invest energy into a system to improve it. Now, with that being said we have to take a look at the other team members as well: ## Who can benefit from a design system and how First of all let us take a look at the design system itself. What is it? It is a system with elements, styles, and principles which can be used to design something: A product, an interface, even a workflow if we stretch the definition a bit further. It offers components, chunks, bits, blocks, whatever you might want to call the building units and it combines these with rules and some basic definitions (think typography, colours, characteristics, tone of voice, …). Now who can benefit from such a component-driven system? Well, anyone who needs to interact with the system in some way or the other. What does that mean? A few examples … ### The designer A designer is most likely builder, maintainer, and consumer of this system at once. They have the benefit of not having to build everything over and over again, but can design building blocks and use these to create the more complex things. They can grab components and arrange them in the best way to form an interface for example. They can simply "throw things together" and focus on the structure and usability, not the rough design of a form element. That has been optimised before, probably by them. They build upon their previous work. ### The developer A new landing page needs to be built. Great! Let's copy the last one. But there are new things on it. There are old things on it. Some things from the contact page are used. The validation in the concept wireframe looks more like that of the check-out process. Well, with a design system this could easily be communicated and looked up. The components are probably not just images of a layout unit, but if a design system is extended to the code side of things it makes for a great code repository with standard snippets and modules a developer can use as well. It makes code more harmonised and similar, maybe even dry'er. ### The product owner / marketing manager Something needs to be built. But how can one start? "We are not designers," might be the first thought. The design system can be a source to tap into, just like a LEGO brick box. There will be components which might be suitable to get a first idea created or written down using these components. Fixing and optimising can be done by a UI/UX designer afterwards or, even better, in a collaborative effort. ## What do people like about a design system ### 1\. It creates a common language Of all things a design system creates a common language. When it includes not just the design aspects, but also includes the code, the business aspects, maybe even more than that, it can be the place for everyone to document and look up things. A slider, a carrousel, a teaser slideshow, all of that might be the same, but now it gets one name for everyone to refer to. No more misunderstandings: A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. And not a flower. And not a plant with a red/white/orange/… blossom in a specific shape. ### 2\. Things are up to date and can be relied upon When a team has the chance to create and maintain a design system properly, there is a great benefit: It will become a source of knowledge one can tap into, rely upon, and trust. No more outdated design PDF, a code base with a newer version, layouts with even another version, the list of things that can create "forks" goes on. ### 3\. It makes the work easier and faster When a team can make use of a design system, with a tool like a Pattern Library keeping all the components at hand, sporting a documentation explaining everything, they have the chance wo work faster and create more relieable products. A component which has been tested and designed, can just be reused. No need to invent the wheel again. Just grab a few components, slab them together and a new thing is ready for deployment or release. Well, it might be a bit more complicated than that but it can be as simple as that. ### 4\. New team members can have a faster onboarding With a design system in place and a good documentation / Pattern Library to bring it to life, it makes the onboarding process a lot easier. A new team member can basically start right away. All they need is to use the things available. By the way, this is a great way of checking for inconsistencies: Should there be a need to ask questions because the design system does not cater towards the solution of the job at hand it makes sense to improve it at that point. Never let that chance go to waste is a big recommendation I can give you. New team members often have questions: Use this indicator! It actually makes the new team members become a valid contributor to the system right away which usually creates a stronger feeling of ownership. And that is key to a successful design system to work. ## What are people afraid of ### 1\. Loosing control > But as a designer I am the one to decide how things should look like! Not a design system. True. And that should not change I guess. But are you really interested in doing the same ground work over and over again? 21px spacer this time, 23px next time, 19px thereafter, … That–and of course exceptions can be part of the system as well–is not the job. The job is to make a design work towards a goal, be consistent, shine by supporting a business or usage cause. It is most certainly more important to focus on whether something offers the right information hirarchie than battling over a few random pixels. ### 2\. Crossing into other departments' turf Actually some people are not afraid of stepping into other departments' territory. But they might be afraid of not knowing enough about something. Can I use this component as a navigation item? Will it function? What about responsive behaviour? Does it work on a touch screen? A design system brings departments together. When this is not just the case in a document but there is an actual discussion and collaboration happing in the process of creating components, people are not afraid of asking questions anymore. And you actually know whom to talk to when in doubt. ### 3\. Too much extra work > But we have no time to document everything! Especially documenting things might be a thing people see as a potential extra work. Yes, true. But only in the beginning. It shows that there is a quick change taking place. Every bit of documentation makes the next use of a similar item, component, concept a lot faster and easier. ![](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2020/01/workload-vs-time-design-system.png) However, the initial work load needs to be accounted for. Do not think it will be done on the fly, especially as the process might be trained at the beginning. And there will be discussions about the how and what needs to be documented. ### 4\. It will be old and outdated in a few weeks Love this one! Yes, 'Living Styleguides' often turn into zombies indeed. They still offer components. But while they were fine in the beginning, they start falling apart, their voice turns into soar throat noises and the way they walk is more like that of a boar being hit by a car on a highway. This happens all too often when the process behind a design system and its components is undefined and not owned by someone. So the danger is that the system gets created and never updated. That indeed needs to be avoided. ### 5\. It is expensive to create / maintain a design system No. Yes. Maybe. When it comes to the cost and budgets there is an elephant in the room, actually two. The first is that documentation needs to be written, components need to be sliced, a Pattern Library tool needs to be evaluated and set up. That takes time and energy. With an existing design language and code this might even be a painful transition process with ambiguity along the way. However, the cost of the actual set up can be an investment when one gets the workflows set up in a fashion that the future work benefits from the systems. More feature creation and faster turnaround times can bring a return on the invested money/time/energy quite quickly. Just think of costs for onboarding new team members, bringing freelance support up to speed, not loosing knowledge because people leave the company etc. All of that can be put into budgets and excel sheets. But the right things need to be taken into account, not just the cost part. ## Which pain points does it tackle We obviously touched on a few points already, there will always be more but let's create an incomplete list of benefits a design system can offer when created, maintained, and used properly: - Common language / fewer misunderstandings - Knowledge documented, not just in people's minds - Higher consistency in code, design, etc. - Greater output (speed / features / quality) - More efficient inter-department communication - Stronger identification with a product - Cost-effective ways of working - No outdated or inconsistent information - Adapting modern workflows - … On the cons side there are a few as well which should not be ignored as they can be strong influencers and make a design system fail in terms of acceptance, trustworthiness, and many more aspects. Some problems include: - Set up cost (time / energy / money) - Complexity when integrating existing projects - New workflows and team communication needed - Involving all trades and departments - Keeping the system up to date - Maintaining a system which might not yield income / turn-over directly - Additional resources needed for the system itself - … Neither list is complete, feel free to think about the issues, ideally in a team meeting. ## Deciding whether you need a design system In order to figure out whether a design system is needed it becomes clear that this is not just a design department thing. Many people on a team / in a company can benefit from a design system. In the next post I will focus on the groups of people involved. For the actual process of evaluating the benefits and pitfalls of a design system, seeing to what it can help with and where it might interfere with the current way of doing things these people need to be involved. For that to happen it makes sense to get these people or representatives of the group together in a brain storming session. Make sure that people know what such a meeting is all about. They need to have a chance to think about what such a system might incorporate, what they would want from it and what they would not like to see. One of the biggest misunderstandings of a design system is that it only involves design aspects / is for the design team and that it is about software ("Which pattern library tool should we use?"). A design system is as much about people and workflows as it is about components, fonts, and colours. At least if you are seriously interested in making it a thing that can survive. **Up next:** [**Who must be involved in the creation of a design system …**](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-3-who-needs-to-be-involved/) ### The pain of choosing a CMS – Ghost vs. CraftCMS vs. Statamic vs. Wordpress vs. HUGO URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/the-pain-of-choosing-a-cms/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:20:17.000Z In a [previous article](https://www.janpersiel.com/how-to-take-an-influencer-brand-to-the-next-level/) I wrote about my rough idea to take my publishing to the next level when it comes to my websites [gingingin.de](https://gingingin.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) and [liquorlabs.tv](https://liquorlabs.tv/?ref=janpersiel.com). One of the things on the task list is to fid a content management system (CMS) which I can use to do what I want to do. ## The easy way out When I started my Gin Blog I did what I did with many other projects before: Download [Wordpress](https://wordpress.org/?ref=janpersiel.com), choose a theme that fits my needs to some extent, install it in a few minutes and get going. There is nothing wrong with that. Wordpress offers a million plugins, loads of themes, has even come around when it comes to GDPR compliance and has an amazing community and wealth of knowledge videos/articles/code snippets to tap into. Heck I even wrote Wordpress themes myself back in the days. Let's quickly get the other pros out of the way: free to use, great e-commerce functionality with WooCommerce and unbelievably backwards compatible. A Wordpress blog can run for decades and still be security patched. I know that because I am aware of folks who do have Wordpress 2.x installed (15 years and counting). ## The usual problems Why don't you use Wordpress if all is good and fine? First of all it feels like being trapped in the system. There are export functions out there but that does not necessarily mean that you can get the content and structure into a new system after a platform change. Wordpress feels sluggish in oh so many ways, the backend is a mess and simply makes me feel like I do not want to use it. That is the reason why I backed and enthusiastically started using [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=janpersiel.com) the moment it showed up on the surface. Up until today I am super happy with the UI and the way I can type. It is clean and so slick. I have stopped writing in a text editor for a long while and it did what it promised: Being a simple blogging platform/software. Now many of the themes for Wordpress out there look great and come as fully equipped battle ships. But you know what? I just want a slick boat with a few extras making my content shine. The moment I get all that functionality into Wordpress I have created a monster with a gazillion plugins and so many dependencies. My content is a mess of shortcodes and text fragments. Data is dumped into fields which will never come out of the system again. ## The frustrations with other software I am very familiar with Wordpress, know how to get it to perform like a F1 car and could do a lot of things myself. But it distracts me from creating content. And in order to get my setup the way I want it to be in a perfect world would take ages and lots of tweaking. Ghost was great so far as it got me writing again. It is clean, it is fun, it is super limited and it costs me years of my life, literally. Ghost is run by a non-profit which employs the developers and offers a hosting service to make money. For a blog that you just want to quickly set up that is great. Except for one thing: The price. It feels ridiculously expensive. Plans start at 29 USD/month and there is not a whole lot of to get for that except for flawless hosting, continuous updates and backups. In times where one gets a server for 5 USD at DigitalOcean or the alike this is a lot of money. Now I run various Ghost blogs (this one, gingingin.de, liquorlabs.tv) and that would be 87 USD/month so I opted for the self-hosted version. Making this work made me scream, rage and cry. I am a designer and I know a few things about tech. I do not fear the terminal. Frontend development is something I do for fun and half of my reading is tech related. But try getting three Ghost blogs installed on a server and keep them updated. Nightmare because the CI-tools simply do not work for me. I searched half the web but still there is something wrong every single time. So I settled for manual updates (sic). In addition to the update nightmares the latest development for Ghost to make it subscription ready is great and was part of my thinking. But the problems remain the same. Plus: To make the subscription model work for me I cannot remain 100% GDPR-compliant without making use of non-EU companies, just stripe for payments so far. Sorry, cannot use it. Another thing why Ghost is not the thing for the future is the fact that it cannot do what I want my CMS to do with my content. When I write a gin review I want to link to matching tonics. Relations and connections in Ghost? Only via tags and that will be a hack. And the same goes for other connections and related topics etc. In short: This functionality is still missing. ## The requirements So what do I really need? 1. **Bring your own Code**: clean and lean markup, no bloated 1.5 MB source code. 2. **Relationships**: Offer cross references and linking to related content. 3. **System agnostic content**: Writing in Markup is what I do anyway, so that would be perfect. Ghost understands that, Wordpress as well these days. 4. **Simple technology**: Easy installation and updates. 5. **Speed**: My site is simple and should load blazingly fast. 6. **Be flexible**: A podcast and shopping functionality would be great. 7. **Multi-Language**: I will need some dual language pages as well in the future. 8. **Beautiful UI**: Having a nice backend UI is what makes me like going to my writing pad. 9. **Price**: Free is great, but I need a sustainable CMS. Something which will be there tomorrow. 10. **Good documentation**: Code snippets, demos, community. All essential to me as I am not a native developer. ## My CMS Shortlist I came across quite a few systems in the last 20 years and I have always tried to use best practices when it comes to frontend development. This has helped me in communicating a lot better with developers and led to creating the [UIengineering](https://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) initiative and podcast with [Dennis Reimann](https://dennisreimann.de/?ref=janpersiel.com). Many systems were never an option as they shipped with wrong or old-school markup, mixed content and structure, etc. My list of systems to evaluate now is based on my current selection and potential candidates. Those are: - [CraftCMS](https://craftcms.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) - [ExpressionEngine](https://expressionengine.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) - [Statamic](https://statamic.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) - [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=janpersiel.com) - [HUGO](https://gohugo.io/?ref=janpersiel.com) Let's compare them in a table: | Feature | Craft | EE | Statamic | Ghost | HUGO | | ----------------------- | -------- | --------- | -------- | --------- | ---- | | BYO Code | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Relationships | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | \- | ✅ | | System agnostic | \- | \- | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Simple installs/updates | ✅ | ? | ✅ | \- | ? | | Speed | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Flexibility | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | \- | ✅ | | Multi language | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | \- | ✅ | | Good UI | ✅ | \- | ✅ | ✅ | \- | | Price | 299$ | Free\[1\] | 199$ | Free\[2\] | Free | | Shop | 199-999$ | \-\[3\] | \- | \- | ? | | Documentation | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | \[1 Support starts at 99$ / month\] \[2 Hosted version starts at 29$\] \[3 Paid for third party add-ons\] These are just a few of the aspects when you compare CraftCMS, ExpressionEngine, Statamic, Ghost, and Hugo but they are relevant to me. Since I do not write code that often I probably need to look up things in the documentation anyway. There is no preference to me really. ## The potential candidate So far I am biased to choose Statamic. It offers a fair pricing, seems to be developed consistently, has a good documentation to get started including great videos on YouTube, lots of great humor built into their site and videos, smart UI decisions, and let's me keep my content completely in markdown with some frontmatter. While Craft was my initial candidate before I discovered Statamic, I like the fact that after a little bit of a setup marathon to get a dev environment ready on my machine, Statamic v3 looks like a nice collaboration tool as well. And it can be tracked in GIT, which makes updates and deployments a breeze. And as far as I can tell the pain of different databases when using any of the other systems (except for HUGO) is eliminated by using statamic as well as it has none but operates based on flat files which can be synced and deployed easily. My next steps are to analyse my website concept in detail and see whether I find things which might be a pain point with Statamic but could be done more easily with any of the other systems. However so far I am quite confident to be able to use it as my system of choice. ### Setting up a design system – Part 1: Overview URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-1-overview/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:20:00.000Z ## Some changes take time Working with design systems is slowly becoming a more mainstream thing. When we created the [**uiengineering initiative**](https://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) back in 2016, almost four years ago as of this writing, some leading teams and companies had already embraced the ideas of design systems, Pattern Libraries, and the necessary workflows. But many were not there yet to pick up the baton and start working in a similar way. ## Status Quo of design systems in 2020 Today things are a bit different. Companies have stumbled upon the ideas more and more often, a lot more has been published, it is hard to avoid a discussion about design systems and their benefits and caveats these days. ## Who is this design systems series for? This article series aims at getting you up to speed and helping you in getting your design system started. Now you might be a designer, a front end developer, a project manager, or the owner of an e-commerce site. Great, this is for you. This series will be for everyone, not too technical, important aspects for everyone on the team will be covered. Why? Because in short design systems are for everyone on a team. My experience shows that there are so many things to be taken into account to make a design system successful, making it relevant, and keeping it alive and shining. For over a decade or so design systems have been evolving, at least what we would consider a design system today. Designs, partially due to the nature of the way code is written, has turned from mere layouts to more usable components. Something that has been used in many areas before as a standard, think about catalogues and magazines, but on the web this tended to be a bit different and changed while technologies and browser capabilities improved throughout the years. ## What's in the series We will be covering the following topics in this series. The topics will be linked as soon as an article gets published. 1. **Overview** (you are reading this) 2. [Why do you need a design system](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-2-do-you-need-a-design-system/) 3. [Who is involved in the making](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-3-who-needs-to-be-involved/) 4. Talking design system budgets 5. Checking your UI inventory 6. Platforms to be taken into account 7. A test project for your design system 8. Documenting your design system 9. Reviewing experiences with a design system 10. Finding the right software for a Pattern Library 11. Workflow integration for a design system 12. Design system stakeholders and guardians 13. Auditing and quality control of a Pattern Library 14. Living design systems vs. Parallel systems 15. Nature and content of the design system ## Feedback and Podcast Just like a design system needs constant feedback and work, I am happy to get feedback from you as well. Should you have additional questions feel free to ask me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/janpersiel?ref=janpersiel.com) or via email as there might be more than you interested in answers. That way I can add to the articles. Furthermore there is a podcast over on [UIengineering.de](https://uiengineering.de/podcast.html?ref=janpersiel.com) in German for those who like to hear about design systems, Pattern Libraries and much more. Last but not least I am happy to help as a UI/UX designer and a hand-on consultant in your projects, getting the basics set up, optimising and improving your workflows, making your design system shine and thrive. Feel free to get in touch. I am happy to help. And now enjoy the [first article](https://www.janpersiel.com/setting-up-a-design-system-part-2-do-you-need-a-design-system/) … ### How to take an influencer brand to the next level URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/how-to-take-an-influencer-brand-to-the-next-level/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:19:41.000Z This is a repost of a post I have published on [**GinGinGin.de**](https://gingingin.de/creating-a-network-of-spirits-publications/?ref=janpersiel.com) and which will be continued here on this blog. There is no defined end to it, there will be many open questions, it is a log of the things I am working on and decisions I will make. However, beyond making my intentions clear and openly accessible, it might help to read this when you are in a similar situation. This is and will not be a recipe, it is my journal. Feel free to chime in and comment at any time. I am happy to discuss things with you. There is no comment system here but feel free to get in touch whichever way you like. There are contact details on this site and on [gingingin.de](https://gingingin.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) as well. Without further ado here is the article: --- Let's talk about business for a moment. And time. And priorities. ## What's the matter? Why this post? For the last four years (time really flies!) I have been working on **GinGinGin.de**, the Instagram profile [**@ginginginde**](https://instagram.com/ginginginde?ref=janpersiel.com), The [**Gin & Notes books,**](https://gingingin.de/books/?ref=janpersiel.com) corporate and private tastings, started work on [**LiquorLabs.tv**](https://liquorlabs.tv/?ref=janpersiel.com) and got [**The fabulous Gin Show**](https://gin.show/?ref=janpersiel.com) started. I spend about 2–3 hours a day on things related to this. Seven days a week. Sometimes it is even a whole day. Do I get any money for that? So far basically no. Can I keep this up? Yes. At no cost? No. Many think I am doing this because I like gin and I receive free bottles. Well that is the biggest misconception of the century so far. Would you spend that much time only to get a free bottle once a week? many only every other week? I don't. I can work for an hour and buy one. That would be easier. So why am I doing this? ### The initial idea: Document your findings When I started this I simply wanted to document my findings. And why not write a blog about that. Many did that and failed. there are lots of dormant blogs about gin out there. Mine was relaunched twice since the launch in 2015\. I ditched the German language and opened up to a wider audience, being a presentor of German products to the world, and yet being more open and interesting to other brands from across the globe as well. The decision to write in Englich came after I got so many great discussions on Instagram started by writing in English with people from all over the globe. I still document my findings as of today, although I have gained some experience in doing so. However that makes me a bit of a nerd and not the average consumer in terms of understanding a spirit. I am still no expert by far I would say. ### Why more than one channel? As I gained more knowledge and understanding about gin, I came across more and more cocktails, other spirits, events, and bars which helped me grow even further in terms of understanding products. So after a bit of a plateauing of my excitement for gin my idea of a wider documentation was started. If I could get to understand gin, why not take on the rest (yes, I hear you whispering "world conquering maniac"). So that is how the idea for **Liquorlabs.tv** was born. ### What is missing? So where is the problem you might ask. You have (good) ideas, just make things happen. Well, I need more time, liquorlabs is video, which takes a lot more time. I am not good at starting on a 20% level and improving from there on. This needs to be overcome for sure, and that is why I am writing about all of this as well. It makes myself accountable and even if it is just to … well, myself. Now, I have ideas how a gin website should look like, what people need, what should be in there, what is not needed and whom I want to cater my content towards. But to get there it takes work on various levels: #### Technology and websites Now there is a list of things I need to tackle: - Finishing the design for GinGinGin.de - Choosing a content management system or a way how I want to publish (currently I am running gingingin.de and LiquorLabs.tv on [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=janpersiel.com)) - Developing the website templates - Integrating the gin.show website - Making gin.show scalable and low maintainence for as little effort as possible for now #### Obstacles when choosing technology/software Since the beginnening I am a firm believer that the GDPR is a very good thing in general. The implementation sucks though, and some things are not thought through. It is a pain to deal with it as well but I will not let my standards sink because of that. But this slows me down. I have found many solutions before which had to go because of the GDPR and things to come with even stricter rules. #### Content gaps and black holes Oh, I have dumped to much energy into a system already next to my blog: Instagram. And did it say thank you? No. Currently all things related to alcohol are severely punished by reducing reach, visibility, and even by blocking accounts. Well, that happens when you build on someone else's land. This needs to change. More original content for the blog, promoted with teasers on Instagram. The podcast will be similar, and LiquorLabs.tv is completely platform agnostic. You want to see it? Ideally it will be where you are. Any platform. But there is a lack of content for the sites so far … - Better profiles for mixers - More reviews for the gins - more tonic tastings / pairings with gin - shooting the actual episodes for LiquorLabs.tv - Postproduction of the videos - Organising the guests for the Gin.Show - Recording and editing podcast episodes - Photoshootings for reviews and Instagram - Cover art design for Podcasts and videos - – The list is long and as you can imagine these are no little tasks. For some things I actually need a lot of preparation, a video shooting takes quite some time, so does the editing. Guess why those bigger YouTubers all have editors doing their stuff and helping filming. ### Time management Besides the fact that I have a [design studio](https://persiel.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) to run I cannot put more time into this. It is too much and there are too many bonfires I am trying to start up with fresh wood. It just does not work that way. While @GinGinGinde on Instagram works, it is a time killer beyond reasonable limits. This cannot be maintained any further in the same fashion. Oh, and wait, there are friends and family. They come first, but sometimes that seems to slip away. And that should never happen. And it won't. ## The consequences If I want to make this whole thing more sustainable, I need to change things or drop some stuff again. The latter is no option right now. There is so much potential and this should not go to waste I think. Documenting like this is time consuming. But I will do it for the transparency I love seeing elsewhere, and because it might help people to learn from what I do and do wrong. It probably is not the right place to discuss this here on gingingin.de but I have a blog over on [**janpersiel.com**](https://www.janpersiel.com/) where it makes sense to write about it as it fits over there since it involves discussions and topics which I document and write about over there as well. So please feel free to join me in my thoughts over there and let me know what you think or whether you have the feeling things are just not clear, not diretled towards a goal, etc. Any constructive feedback is more than welcome. Let the work begin! ### Responsive Design is hard! How to prepare for a relaunch. URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/responsive-design-is-hard-how-to-relaunch/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:19:23.000Z Nowadays pretty much every website comes as a responsive design website. Despite the fact that responsive web-design (also known as RWD) is a term that to some extent is flexible, some people still use it simply as a replacement term to say, that they want a mobile site. I am not going into that direction in the current post but might touch on this at a later time. So the focus for me will be the actual responsive web-design today. ## Things to consider when planning a responsive design You do not just come up with the idea of creating a responsive website. There is a client asking for better usability on their smart phone, customers in a shop have trouble reading the type, etc. The good old 2006 website simply does not work so well anymore in many cases. When planning the process of relaunching a website with a responsive approach, it makes sense to clarify the reasons upfront. Why does it need to be responsive? Or would it make sense to have a mobile site and a desktop site? How can one differentiate between the two? Does the device type trigger this? Is the plan to administrate only one website? Let’s get into a few core issues to check upfront. ### Responsive vs. mobile and Desktop website Both options offer great advantages and disadvantages at the same time. A **responsive website** is based on the same code and content for all devices visiting the site. When a device is smaller it might not get the same images loaded (often times these should be smaller in dimensions and file size) and it might be that a few decorative elements are not there to ease the load on the smartphone, but in general it is the same content. Only the viewport defines how the content is displayed and arranged. You might go to [whatismyviewport.com](http://whatismyviewport.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) to see what your devices say about their size. Based on these values a design is delivered to the device. The great advantage: Create the content once, serve it up in the proper design, done. But you cannot change too many things around, because that might create the need to have content only for a mobile version and hide that on the desktop and vice a versa. Google might not like hiding things on some devices and showing it on others. The **mobile plus desktop version** on the other hand brings the need to manage and administrate two sites. Content might not be shareable and if things are limited by the systems being used it could mean that one has two entirely different sites to cherish. This could mean trouble. The problem arising as well: What is a mobile site? Some treat every device with touch capabilities as mobile (including your iPad and larger tablets). That can be quite a pain because you might try to cater one design to many different devices. And a blown-up design from a smartphone usually disappoints on a tablet. So what could work? Based on media queries / the size of the devices? It is imperative that you think about the needs and implications before going down any path whatsoever, be it the RWD or the mobil/desktop way. ### Who were/are/will be your visitors? Here is a really important thing: Where are your visitors coming from? What are they using? Smartphones or desktops? Where is the best conversion. What are the trends? Is mobile on the rise? I bet it is. When looking at these facts and data bits you should extrapolate the changes. See what has influenced the sites traffic and how. When did mobile visitor numbers get a boost? This might severely influence the way you have to treat your plans and the importance for your mobile site design. Despite the fact that „**mobile first**“ is more of a development term, it has actually been adopted as a way of approaching the concept phase as well. You consider the website appearance and structure for a mobile visitor and only then you work your way up to the bigger breakpoints (the points where you decide to have a change in the design, based on the „width of a device“). Basically you are enhancing the design/layout with every bit of space you get. ### Do we need layouts for everything? In the past you might have had a designer creating the design for your homepage and that was followed by a category page and a product page and maybe a contact page. Now is that the way you need to work again? Consider this: You have 3 zones between your breakpoints, one for smartphones, one for tablets, one for desktops. do you really want a designer to create 3x the amount of layouts, costing 3x the amount? There is more work involved in general when it comes to RWD, but doing this is to some extent plain crazy. If you can somehow arrange for layouts not being needed for everything it saves money. I will talk about alternatives later. ### Is your design and your development team within each others reach? When it comes to RWD you cannot afford to have these two in their own respective silos. It will create time consuming and costly communication problems. These two trades need to move closer together. More on that later as well. ## Which devices should I design for? As mentioned above it is of great importance to check who is coming to your site, now and in the future. But do not design for the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S8\. Design for device groups. You do not know what happens within the next few months. A new breed of phones comes out. everybody loves it, but your site only takes care of a certain phone. Phones change, but they have things in common. Design for that and always assume that something might change beyond a breakpoint. And that is okay as long as you treated that area with the same love and care. When Apple started to change the ratio of their screens after introducing the iPhone 5 and 6 respectively it became obvious that even the most change resistant companies might change things eventually. So be prepared and do not rely on two many facts from one corner of the market. ## Which steps should be taken for a successful responsive design? In order to keep the length of this post at a digestible length I will keep this part short and rather break the detailed information into separate posts in the future. ### Conceptual groundwork The important thing upfront is a conceptual base which includes and pays attention to all of the essential bits of information from all departments and groups involved in the process. This means design and development as well. It is important to get everyone on board in order to avoid trouble later on in the process. Collect and gather all information, demands, wishes and limitations first. Let all project parties evaluate the information and get together to see what needs changing or fine-tuning. ### Wireframe and sketch With the basics checked and the concept in place it is a great thing to sketch out your templates/views/pages/screens – whatever you want to call them. Use pen and paper to be fast for the first ideas. I personally use my own RWD pad to get things done super fast. Read more about the [RWD sketch pad](https://www.janpersiel.com/rwd-pad-the-fastest-way-to-sketch-web-and-app-interfaces/) here on the blog as well. Let me know if you are interested in a pad. Once you have things laid out and on paper it is a great idea to go back to the designers and developers. They love to give first feedback and help to improve. Of course there are many other additional tools in the digital space: [Omnigraffle](https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Balsamiq](https://balsamiq.com/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Axure](http://www.axure.com/?ref=janpersiel.com), [sketch](https://www.sketchapp.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) … the tools do not really matter, it is a matter of preferences and what exactly needs to be wireframed. ### Design by stiletiles Use [styletiles](http://styletil.es/?ref=janpersiel.com) to get the design process started. Personally this is the way I currently think things should be going. Based on the creative briefs available to the designers one can get great first traction and move forward quickly without wasting time and budget. It is simple to get everyone on board and discuss design, not where a button should be positionedor whether that shirt from the top left teaser is still available. The styletiles are a wonderful starting point to have a first set of interface elements ready for the developers to implement. In case the project is a bit bigger, it is more than valuable to consider using a pattern library / living styleguide or whatever one wants to call it. I will stick to pattern library for now and will dive deeper into this topic later on as well. ### Browser, baby, browser! Instead of creating all the things in Photoshop and producing layouts which will be of barely any value except for the design process and the presentations to the management board, things should come to live in the browser. This way one can shape the site from a design and content point of view, test on different devices, get a feeling for how the site will feel like. The great thing: Changing a button colour in CSS takes seconds. Updating all 21 photoshop files takes an hour. So guess who is not going home early today? The team still using Photoshop all the way. ### Content production Personally I have experienced a lot of relaunches where the site and CMS were ready just hours before the launch date and time. And then the alarm bells rang: „All hands on deck!“ Everyone needs to stuff as much content into the system as possible. What a crazy approach, and how prone to error! The earlier everything is in the browser, the earlier the CMS will be there in most cases. This means that many things can be done in terms of editorial and content work at an earlier stage. It simply does not make sense to have the whole production pipeline running later because one runs the project on a strict waterfall style process where the design is blocking the rest of the development because some CEO still does not like the yellow as much as he/she would love to. ## Summary This is only the beginning of a series of many posts to come. There are so many aspects to how a great relaunch and/or RWD project should be handled. I hope that I have left you with a few first impressions and things to pay attention to. Feel free to get in touch with specific topics and questions which I would love to cover in future posts. Last but not least I would love to point you to [http://UIengineering.de](http://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) (in german language): Together with my good friend [Dennis](http://dennisreimann.de/?ref=janpersiel.com), who is an outstanding front-end developer, we try to bring more of these things to everyone's attention. There is a podcast, a website and we share many articles (in english and german) under the hashtag [#UIengineering](http://twitter.com/hashtag/UIengineering?ref=janpersiel.com). Feel free to follow this and contribute when you have something to add to the discussion. We are happy to see what you have to share! ### Help! I am drowning in brush script fonts! URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/help-i-am-drowning-in-brush-script-fonts/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:19:04.000Z A few posts ago I was writing about the problems one can run into with design asset bundles. These bundles, as I explained back then, cover many different areas or bring you vast amounts of the same or nearly the same fonts, Photoshop Actions, Lightroom filters, icons, you name it. ## Same same but different: Brush scripts One thing really does become apparent when looking at the current font charts and what is on sale: Brush Scripts are the latest fashion it seems. I have purchased vast amounts of these fonts during the last 12 to 18 months. Not that I actually wanted them except for one or two, but I got them with the aforementioned bundles. Now of course when you look at these fonts in detail and inspect the details of the letters, ligatures and their flow you do notice all the differences, even when you are not an experienced font expert. And as with every font there is a use case out there. Some of the demo images which the authors create do show some nice applications. However the sheer amount of brush scripts are beyond manageable. I did a quick rundown through the bundles from last year and counted some 70+ fonts of these. All of them different but I could barely imagine any real use case in my daily work. Well that is not the fonts' fault of course but I am surprised about the flood of these fonts being published every day. ## Production cost for brush script fonts is lower Compared to other fonts, like a solid sans-serif or a classic serif, a brush script font can be produced quickly and with imperfections. The base is often a good set of letters - glyphs drawn on paper. scanning these and fine-tuning them a bit to work as a font is way easier than actually drawing a font from scratch and making it a well-working piece of software and aesthetics. The inaccuracies of the hand-drawn shapes are most likely what you are willing to accept, actually it might be something you are aiming for. The more distorted and destroyed some letters are, the more authentic the result coming from your laser printer later on. ## Hail OpenType! The great thing about OpenType is that it offers many features beyond what people have come to expect: You can randomise glyphs being output, add calculations, make letters twist and wiggle, merge them in different ways. All of that is fairly playful, but can be turned into a great set of choices to enhance handwriting, lettering, and brush-script fonts. A bit of randomness is what makes these forms of typesetting "real". For that reason it is a pity that many fonts do not make use of it. But then again, these might only be produced for a quick buck. ## Additional Glyphs for decoration but … Many authors spend a little extra time to get more into the fonts. Filler words like "and", "new", "sale", etc. are added for the users' convenience and because they fit well into many design concepts where such scripts are being used. Unfortunately this is about all of what is added. Not seldom one is looking for umlauts and accents in vain. I would love to see more of these in the quick and easy productions. After all my native tongue is German and it needs these umlauts. ## Trend scouts, tell me what's coming up? I am wondering what the next thing will be after this flood of brush scripts. There is no end to the tsunami of them coming in so far, but most designers and even some clients must get sick of them already. Is the pendulum swinging back towards extremely engineered fonts next? Making Helvetica and DIN look like flourished pieces af artistic work? Probably that goes a bit beyond a reasonable scenarios but there will be some of that effect I guess. We will see it very soon. ## Get your hands on a real brush It is convenient to use the aforementioned scripts as a font. But I urge every designer, blogger, and greeting card producer: Get a real brush and lettering tools. Get your hands on real paper, real ink, real dirt and scratches. It is so much more satisfying than just loading up a font. The beauty of hand-writing and lettering can barely be reproduced. You get there 80% of the way with a good font, but after a little practice the real monty is the thing you want. There will be more imperfections more randomness and often times a better flow. Try it for yourself, it will pay off! ## Summing up I am happy to see the lettering art coming forward. People are starting to appreciate hand-made things again. Yay! But instead of making the quick choice to use a font I will start resorting to real drawing and lettering for now. By the way: Finding the right font is not as quick as I would love to see it happening either. But talking about the state of font management is a topic for another day. ### Creative briefs, visual trends and starting a design project URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/creative-briefing-and-the-design-kick-off/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:18:47.000Z As a designer you have a very simple yet challenging task every single time. Some might say you are supposed to make things pretty. Well, it is a good idea to cover that base as well ;) But, however, the main task you are working on, is to get a message across. ## What is the thing you need to achieve? When you get to work for someone you are usually given a task like designing a logo, draft a website structure, maybe even get a whole range of stationary designed. Either task is a unique thing and should start with one big question for you as a designer: What am I supposed to bring across? What is the purpose of the thing I am working on? When I work with clients I go through an extensive process with them to clarify what we are actually doing and what the output is supposed to look like. This proves to be helpful in many situations because some clients ask for things but do not necessarily need these. Often times it makes sense to make sure everybody is on the same page. Quite literally. The steps are usually like this: ### 1\. Talk about the topic and create a creative brief I write down notes while we are doing this and I ask a set of questions. These are The basis for the creative brief by the client. ### 2\. Write a protocoll and get it to the client for approval I might have added a few things here and there which help to elaborate on the idea and make clearer. ### 3\. Get to work and compile a set of graphics, fonts and images which fit the topic and intentions These are compiled in a huge mood-board. When I am working on an interface or a website I might skip to creating a [styletile](http://styletil.es/?ref=janpersiel.com) right from the start. ### 4\. Get back together with the client and discuss the styletile / mood-board What is right, what is not? What should be pursued and what is not quite there yet. The great thing about this step is the fact that people see something and will give you extremely valuable feedback. It has happened more than once that I got information out of this session which was a) completely opposed to what was in the briefing at the beginning of the process, and sometimes people really started mentioning important things when they saw things and commented on them. Do not skip this step, it can prevent you from wasting valuable time and save both parties from loosing many nerves throughout the process. ### 5\. Start designing and use a timer A timer? Yes a timer. It is a great thing to set a little alarm to remind you of two things: a) every time you see the alarm (I set mine to 6 minutes) I stop for an instance and reflect whether I am still on track to reach the desired goal or whether I am simply doing what **I** like. There is a huge difference in same cases. Beware to follow the path with the things you like. b) It is a great sign to start a new version of a logo or element. The 6 minutes are enough to draft a logo and get it on the canvas in many cases. So this way you have 10 versions in one hour. Only by creating many logos and designs you will be able to get the best work created. Quantity eventually leads to quality. But do not take your 30 something logos with you to the client! ### 6\. Select the best and most promising designs with you to discuss them with the client Which ones really knock it out of the park? Only show your best work. ### 7\. Continue to improve them and go back again I usually have 2 feedback loops planned for. And I plan the time according to that. If things go down south and it takes more time and effort, I have a basis to recalculate my fees. Maybe you work with value-based pricing, so this does not really impact you as much. ## The danger of being headed in the wrong direction Following these steps you should be fairly safe to not hit the wall of astonishment when presenting your first designs after the the briefing phase. You have lead the client to get a feeling of what to expect. They have worked with you on the briefing and know what you were looking at to get inspiration and narrow down the choices. Clients love to be surprised, but only when it is great work and meeting their expectations. Take the risk out of the first presentation by making everyone feel comfortable. The presentation of the first designs is just one step, not the big revelation moment. Rather surprise them with the outstanding quality than some idea which is borderline akward. ## What about trends I hear you say Oh, trends. Like those you can buy in the design asset bundles? Well, what do you think? Are they good? Are they bad? Just go back to the top and see for yourself. You want to create an awesome vintage style hipster logo? Great. Does your client actually need this? Or is it just a fashionable thing to do right now? What happens when you travel into the future? Will your client still be happy with it in 5 years? The trend might be long-gone but your client is stuck with a logo from last season. So there you go: When it serves the purpose: Embrace such a trend. If it is just for the kicks right now, do not do it and rather spend your time on creating a t-shirt with the vintage look and sell it. It might make you more money, t-shirts only live a season or two and are used to be thrown out after some time. In a future post I will talk in detail about the creative brief. But the steps above should be a great first set of steps to take when starting your design project. And if you are reading this as a potential client looking to hire a designer talk with her or him about these steps and whether they will follow these. It will probably be a good basis for a successful project. If you like the process because it sounds like a good idea, feel free to work with me, or let your designer consider taking these steps with you. Thanks for reading. ### Form fear - Why filling out forms sucks URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/form-fear-why-filling-out-forms-sucks/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:18:29.000Z Everybody hates them: forms. But why is that the case? So why is it that such a small thing can be so unbelievably annoying? I guess it is two things: Work and work. ## Why so much hate? The problems with forms is that they often times sit in the way of getting something done. You want to leave a comment, but you have to register first. That sweet thing you want to order online and get your hands on? Well there is a form stopping you and making you sign in first. And so on. The typical form is like a guy guarding the door at that infamous night club everyone is talking about. So forms get a bad reputation for something they are not really guilty of. The process needs something and the guilt is connected to the form. But the form is really just the messenger. For that reason one should start to think about some solutions. Some think a form is just a form and leave things at that, fair enough. But at maybe you should think about testing whether your forms can be improved. In case you have the chance to A/B test your forms it would be a great idea to do so. Since these tests actually enable you to compare even slightly different designs and concepts you have the chance to optimise step by step. ## Want to screw up big time? Do paper forms wrong. Forms have the problem of not being understood. I have been confronted with endless paper-based forms making me think. The online world is barely any better than the offline or analogue forms I have encountered. In print it is actually a lot easier to screw things up since there is a space limit in many cases. How often have you filled out your name in the row where you were supposed to have the street written down? But of course you did not notice that before you got to the last row of the form and you still had one thing to be filled out. And that happened because the label to the field was just placed a little bit different than expected. This is frustrating to say the least. On mobile devices with smaller screens this can easily happen as well since you might not see all of the screen. So make sure to get this designed right. If you scroll randomly to a part of your form, is it obvious which label belongs to which input or select field? The advantage of forms on screens is that there are some things baked in to connect the label semantically and technically to the input field. But that needs to be implemented by the developer. ## Clueless in Fieldsettle Is this the right field to fill out? What exactly am I supposed to put in here? Help people. In case you need something and it is not clear to someone who is new to the form: Explain it. Add a help link or button to open a little help text. Or maybe add the help icon next to the respective form field, so one can always get help when in need for it in order to understand something. When you offer help texts do the form victim a favour: Make them relevant! The input field asking for street name, does not need a help text like "your street name". People are not stupid. When it is relevant for something, or the reason is not clear why this needs to be filled out, explain it here: "We need your address in order to veryfy your identity with identity provider XYZ ## Patience is something you should not count on How much time do people have, and when do they loose their patience? Think about what you want and what you need. For a newsletter you do not need anything from them except the email address. Why do I have to give them my social security number and home address? A valid question to ask! Do not be too surprised when not a single person sings up for this newsletter. We are in the Post-Snowden era and people do not feel like giving away too much of their data without valid reasons. And in case you need the data, hey, at least explain why it is the case. If they get a benefit from it they might actually pass the data to you. ## Error, error on the screen who isn't frustrated in this scene? Getting an error when you have filled out a form? Oh don't we all hate these forms which pretend to be soooo flipping smart? Thinking they know better than us how our address is being spelled? Or that your password is not secure despite the fact that it has 24 characters? Displaying an error only because my domain has more than one "." in it. Only because the form does not know the german street names and their spelling I am not able to enter my data? Well done, you just lost another customer, or actually never got it in the first place. And if the forms were your decision and design making me angry you quite rightfully deserve none of the business. ## The help, that did not help at all: Placeholder texts Oh, and these wonderful pre-filled input fields: No labels but only placeholder texts telling me what I have to enter. Because everything looks so clean and slimmed down when the form is filled out! Maybe I make a mistake and need to review the form. Now I have to go back and delete the data from the form input field(s) to see what the field asked for. Genius move from the form designers. Not. Make people do the work twice, so they get more practise! And do not forget to make all input fields the same size, no matter whether it is a street number or the city name. That way it gets even harder to distiguish the fields. I should develop an app: formtastic – track your form activities plus challenge your friends … the more often you fill out forms the more points you get. Sorry, got a bit carried away here. But it just gets me railed up when stupid decisions are made for the wrong reasons. ## Hands up! Gimme all your data! Or how to gain trust. Why are people coming to you? A newsletter? Ordering something? Applying for a job or something like that? Do not stop them. The forms might create a show stopper. Often times you could just start with a few things and as people move on they will gladly add more information. But make it clear why you are collecting data. An email address should be enough for the beginning. You can send them a newsletter. They want to order something? Well, only ask when they are actually checking out, not upfront. Gender, title, interests? Do not worry they will tell you soon enough when you offer custom content based on these bits of data. Just let them know about the possibilities, do not make it compulsory to strip down naked in terms of data. ## Why shorter is not always better But: I just came across a form the other day where I was supposed to register for a web-service. It was something where I had to pass on a lot of data to the company in order to get things up and running, and I knew that. The service was about working with the data. That was the sole purpose of it. But they only wanted my email address and a password. This felt so wrong. I wanted to start, get all the data in and be done with the whole registration and setup thing to start working. Why did I have to go through an email verification process first. It ripped me out of the experience and the email was late as well (17 minutes! Seriously?!). I did not continue any further since I lost trust in their real-time data analysis promise. 100% fail on their side. ## Lots of value for lots of data Above I told you that asking for too much in the beginning is annoying. But if someone wants to give you all the data, why limit them and step on the breaks instead of helping them: Hey, out of the way! Here comes a new customer! Make way please! People are not afraid of entering data. They are annoyed by entering data which does not make sense to be collected from their perspective. When you manage to get things explained properly, they will be more open to do the extra work and fill in the form entirely. So be clear about the necessity of the data collected and what you really need. Making things optional and even clustering them in an optional section could be a way to go. That way the user does not need to scan every single field set for the little asterisk telling them whether it is optional or not. But pretty please do not open up a section for optional data only for one optional field will you?! Thanks. ## Simplify but don’t go overboard As mentioned above some (designers) think that a clean form with barely any lines and labels is the best. It looks so pretty. Hey, a form is not (solely) a beauty contest. One should feel good when going through it and filling it out. These over-simplified forms make you feel inferior and force you to think. "Am I just too stupid to understand this? Why aren't there any labels.? Why did the text just disappear when I started to fill out the form?" Nevertheless a form is obviously allowed to be pretty. But not when it sacrifises understandability or accessibility. When you are absolutely certain that people know what the form is about, reduce label length and additional texts, but only then. When you have space and structure to integrate help texts (on demand for instance) offer them. ## Animating the experience A form needs to get you into a flow. In case animation helps to achieve that it should be there. Animation can be reassuring and support your positive feeling that you have entered data correctly. Again, do not animate for the sake of animation. Many forms in the last months, triggered by material design from Google, have started to come alive. Not always for the better to be honest with you. Some are simply dancing the night away and not really adding to the experience of filling out the form more effectively. But as mentioned above: If it is fancy people, designers that is, will copy these patterns without thinking and all of a sudden we have loads of these forms and they turn into a wrong but quasi standard. Do not fall into that trap. There is an article about **ux flaws** on this blog as well. ## Alternative form designs [Typeform](https://www.typeform.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) offers nice and beautiful forms. You focus on one thing and use your keyboard if you like. Very fast, very fun to use. A great form alternative worth looking at. The genius thing about it is that it caters towards form pros and users who barely know how to use the web. Fast track: Use tab key and the rest of the keyboard and get through the process in record time. Normal track: Just use a very cleaned up form, with hints and offers to learn how to use forms even faster. Chat bots are an alternative way to make the form process fast and fun at the same time. When you sign up to [Slack](https://slack.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) for instance, the first thing that happens after having gained access, that a bot welcomes you. It does not get in your way, but if you pick up the conversation it starts with you, it asks you a few things and before you know it your profile is complete with relevant data for all the others to get to know you and know how to contact you outside of slack. However: You can always skip this and come back to it. It is optional. ## Ready to submit? Are you ready to get your forms optimised? As a designer read the basics about html tags used in forms. you might be surprised what they can do out of the box. Set up a prototype and fill it out yourself, that will give you hints where things are a bit buggy or need clarification. After that ask people who have no idea about the background of your registration to do the same. Where did they stop, think, slow down? Want to board the hype train and use a bot? Well check whether it is the only and/or valid way to go. If so it might be pleasant alternative (see slack above). If you are into paper forms more often and/or have the money for a great book on forms I can recommend "[Formulare gestalten: Das Handbuch für Gestalter und Anwender zu Hürden, Chancen und Gestaltungsfragen](http://amzn.to/2p0CiUU?ref=janpersiel.com)" in german language a lot. It shows examples, explains many details and is very well designed. Something for your next birthday perhaps? Or for the company library? We, the rest of the internet users, form-fillers, and me are thankful for all the hard work you have, do, and will put into forms! Submit. ### Job applications: What a recruiter wants to read and know (and what not). URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/job-applications-what-a-recruiter-wants-to-read-and-know-and-what-not/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:18:15.000Z Applying for a job is always an exciting thing. Usually one does this because it sounds like a fun thing to work at that company. Nice prospects, great salary, wonderful projects etc. Of course you want to be there and make a living at exactly that place! ## Try walking in my shoes I have been involved in hiring people for almost 20 years now. And another disclaimer upfront: My wife is the head of human resources in a digital communication agency, and has been doing this full time for even longer. So I do have a few insights into what happens when your resume lands on many recruiter's tables. ### Covering your base Applications are trying to tell the important and best things about you. They will ideally list experiences and achievements and bring across an idea of what kind of person you are. For my field of expertise it usually is a set of work examples you are responsible for, your portfolio, or often times a link to your portfolio. Now, obviously as an applicant you are trying to tell the person reading your application, looking at your portfolio and resume as much as possible. Hey, you have someone's attention right now and that is your chance: Tell and show all you have got! … really? ### Don't go overboard and stay focused Recently I had a bunch of applications in my inbox to identify candidates for a lead design position. I had to scan 20+ of those hoping to get a set of 5 or so to be invited for a phone interview. Well, I am not very used to this kind of work, but felt one thing again: it must be a tremendous pain to someone who does this on a daily basis: Some applications are nice and have great things in them, one was even hand-drawn with nice illustrations, but do people really think that a recruiter will read through an application letter which stretches over 20 pages before even getting to the portfolio? And just to be clear: This was no illustrator position but a digital interface art director position. Anyway, I think not many will go through this complete thing and I did not either. It would be irresponsible to spend so much time on one single application. I would just get through 2 of those per hour if I did. That would have been more than a day for the 20 applications. No one has time for that, especially since this was the first level. The next stages where interviews are due has not even been reached yet. ## Short, crisp, current and relevant I am pretty sure you get what I am all about here: You are applying for a job in a field of communications. At least that is what I am assuming. And even if you do not, this is important to understand. There is no point in forcing an epic version of who you are, where you come from and what has made you apply for this job down someones throat. You are applying for a job in interface design? No one needs to see your sketches from art school, with a date in the bottom right corner dating back as far as 1999\. What are you communicating? I used to draw things and I loved it so much that I still feel like there is an artist hidden inside of me just waiting to break free? Yay, great you created a website for a Mercedes dealer back in 2002! Good for you. But only because this sounds like a great brand in your track record it does not justify showing a 14 year old layout which is outdated in every single aspect. Let it go and show your best stuff. Recent work. People need to know what you can do now, not what you were able to design back in 2002\. There is only one place and time to do that: Applying for a job as Chief Retro Webdesign Officer. ### What should be your message? What are “we” (recruiters) looking for then? Tell me what you did, where you collected experiences. What was challenging, what made you grow, both personally and professionally. What are you burning for and what are you bringing to the table. Personally I cannot stand the text book application texts which feel like totally glitch free copy taken from the ‘job applications 101’. Do not get me wrong, I am not the best writer, but I hate slopyness. Have a friend spell check your texts. Even if he or she is called Microsoft Word. Seriously. And by the way, you can always tell me in these texts as well because I am not a native speaker for English and have only limited access to someone who checks my texts. So please let me know :) Where were we? I do not need access to your facebook profile, but let me know what really interests you. Reading? Great. What and why? But keep it short. This tells me more about a person than anything else. And even if the rest is not as good as someone else's application: I might remember you for the book recommendation. ;) Stand out for your authenticity, not for chaos and sloppiness, not for something from the past. But again: Short, crisp, precise. We do not have much time. Unfortunately. ### The design perspective As a designer, I am looking at your resume and the other things you submit from a design perspective as well. And so should you if you are a designer. Which font? Can I print the resume for discussions or non-screen discussions? Is there a TLDR; for me about you? Consider these things and you actually tell me that you know what UX design is. Rather than saying you do know that, prove it right here, right now. You might only get this chance. ### Xenophobia counter-work Personally I have seen weird things: HR people with heavy prejudices about ethnic groups and nationalities. Admittedly they should be fired for being complete idiots, but those people do exist. In case you do know about any of these topics potentially related to you, there are two ways. Ignore them and hope for good and fair people, or encounter them with answers to their worries. This is a highly political topic and I am sure that everyone should be treated equally, but you are dealing with humans with fears and worries. Help them to feel like meeting the most friendly person. One with an exciting background. Let them know why you are adding to the team and not potentially threatening it. Being different can be an additional bit of spice in a team, not a dent in a polished surface. ## Your online portfolio ### Create a printable mini version Now, as you have optimised your letter and PDF to the max, you might have an online portfolio. Put 2-3 things in the PDF and offer more on the web. Someone might print out your resume. That means, no images and visuals if you do not put them in the PDF. I am not always near my Mac when talking to people on the phone. I print out the application and go to a calm and relatively private place to talk to applicants. There is simply not screen often times. And I might call a few people in a row. Help me to remember you for the right portfolio after all. ### Landing page for recruiters On the portfolio website think about offering a landing page related to your application. Do not send the recruiter to your website, the one where you are trying to attract new clients for your freelance work. That is not the task at hand here. Instead show that you understand the business of creating things for a target group. The recruiter is your target group now. Show them that you know their needs. They have seen your things already in the PDF. Is there an additional value on the site? Make sure there is or you are guilty of wasting someone's time again. ## Pleased to meet you You have paid attention to all the details? Prepared things in a precise and crisp way? Awesome. I am extremely sure that this gets you far. In case you do not hear from a company in time feel free to ask for an update, but do not be a pest about it. Sometimes it might take a moment for the people in charge to check all applications. Just make sure you care and that you would really love to get to know them. Good luck for your next application process, and thanks for making every recruiters' life easier! If you have experienced other things and have more advise feel free to let me know for future articles. ### Design trends and their caveats (part 6) - Icons without cause URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:17:52.000Z Where ever you look, icons. Bold icons, tiny icons, icons on your home screen, icons on t-shirts, icons, icons, icons. People love icons, and so do designers. But how can we use them more appropriate? ## Millions of icons Today there are many icons and icon sets available. You can choose from a vast variety, some of the available for free ([Fontawesome](http://fontawesome.io/icons/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Ionicons](http://ionicons.com/?ref=janpersiel.com),[Iconfinder](https://www.iconfinder.com/free%5Ficons?ref=janpersiel.com) etc.). Others can be purchased on market places like [Creative Market](https://creativemarket.com/graphics/icons?ref=janpersiel.com) or directly from designers like on [picons.me](https://picons.me/?ref=janpersiel.com). But they all share one thing in common: They have a certain amount of icons, some are very versatile whereas others come strongly topic based. In some sets you can find hundreds or even thousands of icons whereas others only give you a set of 20-40 items to choose from. ### Choose wisely When it comes to choosing icons for a website/app/design it makes total sense to look at the design in detail. Just like a font which needs proper visual evaluation, so do the icons. Are they busy, sharp and spiky or rather smooth and rounded. Not every style fits a design obviously. But when choosing an icon set it is not as easy as choosing a typeface. The advantage of the fonts is to bring you roughly the same glyphs. Some carry more glyphs than others, bring fancy open-type features to the table … errr, desktop, but in general they all offer numbers and letters. But in an icon set it is pure luck to find the rocket which you want to use for your launch date count-down. All of a sudden you are faced with the question: Shape or meaning/symbol? What is more important? And what makes things even more complicated: Maybe you need more icons in the future. Will they be in the set? ## Thou shalt not mix So there you are, having to decide between proper look and the right symbol representing the action/feature/etc. Well, taht is easy: Mix! Websites like [the noun project](https://thenounproject.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) offer an icon for every symbol imaginable. Just go and choose the right one … NOT! While this is the easy fix and solves a problem for now, it does not solve it for good and with high design standards in mind. Doing so is basically not any different from setting something in Times New Roman and for a certain letter you switch over to Arial Bold. No one with a slight understanding for design principles would even dare thinking about this. But when it comes to icons this is something you see all over the place. ![The caviar icon set with both outlined and line versions](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2017/04/iconjar-caviar-icons-filled-and-lines.png) The reasons one should stay away from mixing icons are manyfold: Lines might be of different thickness, the curves and edges might be different, the general appearance and lightness can be different, Some icons are solely based on lines whereas others rely on fills or even colour fills. That can be one or a bunch of reasons not to mix icons from different sources. ## Scale me not But even when you design with a single source of icons it makes sense to still pay attention to scale. Often times there are UI relevant icons in use: chevrons, carets, arrows and similar symbols. These are often being used for links and interaction areas like tabs, pull-downs, popups or even buttons. Unfortunately many icon sets just offer one size of these symbols. So the little one inside the tiny button is scaled down to 12 × 12 pixels and in the slider the same one is used at 48 × 48 pixels. This results in a difference of line thickness of 400%. A little bit to much in most cases. So there is a strong reason for icon sets to offer different sizes of such symbols. Alternatively an iconset in light, regular and bold weight would fix this as well, but is more than rare. It is super rare. Alternatively an icon set is available as an open format giving the user the chance to change line thickness. Free icon sets barely ever come in in such formats. The last icon set I purchased ([Caviar Icons](https://ui8.net/products/caviar-premium-icons?ref=janpersiel.com)) came with both a fixed line width (outlined) version and an open version where one can change and modify the icons' line thickness. Well done, that is the way to go. The great thing about this is, that one can use CSS to control the line thickness. ## Decipher me Now, we have covered the visual aspect of icons to some extend, but what about the rest? The rest? Yes, the symbols themselves. Many people, and I have had clients like that as well, ask for icons to "make the site look modern and slick". They simply want some icons in there. There is no real reason, they often times just think, that it is a checkbox that needs to be ticked in order to be able to enter the cool website owner's club. I would almost dare to bet that it takes you only a few clicks to find a website with icons used without any real purpose and/or with a completely weird icon selection. I am not talking about printer icons being used for fax numbers (which is not perfect but understandable), but rockets for just about every single thing one wants to communicate, or coffee mugs because … well I cannot explain many of those choices. ### Font (not so) awesome Do not get me wrong. I think [fontawesome](https://fontawesome.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) is a great idea and service and I have backed their hilarious [kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/232193852/font-awesome-5?ref=janpersiel.com) video and campaign but the readily available nature and the fact that every theme and template on the planet seems to use them has made the icons more than generic. And since there is only a limited set of symbols available (still loads compared to other sets) people simply choose something that fits 'kind of'. And that is the point where I personally think that things get lost in the process: First a generic icon set, used by everyone on the planet, then mediocre fit in terms of line thickness and no way of fixing that because the icons are not line-based. And last but not least picking symbols which only roughly explain what you need or want to show. How does that mix-and-not-match make a website special, modern and slick? It shouts out mediocracy from the roof tops at best. ## Summing up Icons are great. When properly designed they help understanding an interface, find your way around in an airport, make reading a manual a lot easier. But to benefit from icons all the way, one should choose the style and symbols very carefully. An icon is missing? Rather design it or have it designed with the same design principles as your chosen icon set and keep the consistency up. For that reason it makes sense to have access to the open base design files. So in case your designer is not the original designer anymore the work is still consistent with the original icon set. Choose the right visuals and test them. When 2 out of 5 think that it makes only some sense to use the rocket as the symbol for speed do not use it. Your audience is so young that they have never seen a floppy disc? Do not choose a floppy disc icon for saving. And by the way, not for loading animations either ;) When choosing an icon set think about the future as well. Is it extendable, are the formats only pixels, or vector? The vectors are what one wants and needs, the pixels are nice add-ons. Paying for an icon set with open files and making it editable is such a time saver. The moment you have to start working on just one icon you will hate yourself for not having bought a set with open files. ## End of the series For now this is the end of the series. There are more things to come and even more to discuss and talk about. For now I hope that I was able to point you as a designer, or as someone who hires a designer to a few things that make the designs worse than they need to be. Let me know when you need help with some of these topics or when you need your things reviewed. Thanks for reading and I would love to hear from you whether this helped you. ## In this series 1. [Parallax until you vertigo](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) 2. [Bad font decisions](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/) 3. [Frameworks which break design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/) 4. [Boring responsive design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/) 5. [Adopting UX flaws](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/) 6. **Icons without cause** ### Design trends and their caveats (part 5) - Adopting UX flaws URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:17:37.000Z After our trip through boring responsive land in the last part it is time to take a look at some things which are commonly misplaced, misused or simply applied in the wrong fashion. Let me point out a few things to give you an idea what I mean: ## Forms Form follows funtion, or was it the other way around? Do not follow some functionalities common in design for some time now. ### Minimalist inputs Input fields have labels for a reason. One can see what needs to go into them. Many designers make the labels appear inside the inputs looking like placeholder texts. Problem: Users tend to ignore placeholder texts. The label does not get read properly. Result: Wrong data input resulting in flawed data or error messages for the user. Either way, not what you or your users want. Second problem: Someone starts entering data and is not sure what to put in there. Was it street name and number, or just the street name? No chance to find it out. Delete the entry, read the label/placeholder text, start again. Really? Some designers were smart and started moving/animating the placeholder texts out of the input area on top of the respective input field. Better, but it is only a fix for a problem that would not be there if you would not start with a bad idea in the first place. Exception: Really little space. But even that is barely justifiable to my mind. ### All men are equal and so should all inputs be, not. Especially on mobile forms you get input fields which are all 100% wide no matter what you are supposed to enter. That causes form filling fatigue. Make form inputs represent the expected length. At least approximately. This is easier to scan as well. All inputs with the same length are hard to go through. Make it easy and at least try to define 2 or 3 sizes to make things easier to read. ### Weird tab behaviour, faux inputs/selects/… I don't know about you but I hate forms. I hate them because I might have to use the mouse, and then the keyboard and the mouse and the keyb… you get the point. Actually, I do not have that problem. I start forms and then tab my way through them. Jan TAB Persiel TAB Hamburg TAB … Sometimes this does not work, sometimes people decide to use funky custom designs and emulate form input elements and I cannot tab through the forms anymore. This is super annoying and not very accessible either. Please value peoples' time and do not slow them down by reinventing the wheel, a pretty one admittedly, but one that does not roll. ## Burger Menus Whether it is the name that makes people fall for the burger menus? One thing is sure, they can work great on mobile devices when you need to hide a lot of navigation while it is not being used, but many users simply do not expect these on desktops. Despite the fact that oh so many UX experts might tell you that this is a common design pattern which people know by now (thank you facebook for adding it to your app a few years ago). Yes, true users have started to learn and accept that this stands for navigation access. But not all of them, and certainly not in a desktop context. Since it is not expected on larger screens it is often not considered to be the navigation. I have seen too many failed user tests for these menus to trust this method (yet). Make sure by testing your design with real users before going all burgerymobilish. ## Password security 1234, here we go again. I will not go on my typicall rant about passwords and why you should make them more secure. Actually you should be usind 2-factor authentification by now where possible. But that is not the point here. It is an apaling thing to try using safe passwords and then you get funneled into a registration process every now and then which tells you that your password exceeds the 8 characters limit and that you cannot use the following 723 glyphs. Never, never, never ever should you as the concept, design or developing craft decide what the limit is for passwords. It is not your account at stake here. Make your own passwords longer and more complex because obviously you did not encounter this limitation. Next, allow others to do so as well and do not enforce a limitation which can barely ever be justified. ## Dark patterns Ever visited [https://darkpatterns.org](https://darkpatterns.org/?ref=janpersiel.com)? You should head over there and take a look at the evil side of usability. What is a dark pattern? Well let's put it this way: You are using the fact that users have build up expectations when using the web against them. An example: Users are used to close windows by clicking an icon in the top right corner. Now you might want to display a banner with advertisements on your site. But now you position something else up where the close button is supposed to be, at least from experience. Basically you are misleading people for your own good. Well, every time you do stuff like that, Karma sees it anyway, but until then I hope you are thinking about whether this is really what you want to do. Keep people on the site, but do not make them by brute-force or dark patterns. As a designer you should ask yourself when being asked to do stuff like that whether this is the right client for you. ## Scroll traps This is a great one. We have all been there, on a mobile website or a desktop browser: Contact page, huge Goolge map, you scroll down and all of a sudden you stop scrolling and zoom the map. Unfortunately the map is covering the whole darn screen by now and there is only one way out of this map: Quitting the browser. Well done! Seriously, this must be a perfect scenario why there is no excuse to not test the stuff you build. And not just with fancy sidual regression, integration and unit tests, no with the devices being used later on by your clients. The earlier the better. This stuff is easy to discover and fix. Test things, let others test it as well. ## Up next Icons are everywhere. Icons are loved by everyone. Ice cream is the only thing coming closer to winning the title of "best thing in the universe". Well and your boy- or girl-friend of course. But some things go wrong when it comes to icons. I will give some advice on where to pay attention and what to avoid. ## In this series 1. [Parallax until you vertigo](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) 2. [Bad font decisions](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/) 3. [Frameworks which break design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/) 4. [Boring responsive design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/) 5. **Adopting UX flaws** 6. [Icons without cause](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/) ### Design trends and their caveats (part 4) - Boring responsive design URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:17:20.000Z In the last post I talked about frameworks and how they speed things up, and how they make designs and layouts generic at times. To be honest there are times when we are not as creative as we would love to be. In cases like that it might make sense to take a break, step back from what we are doing, or simply ask someone else for a quick idea or inspiration instead of defaulting to the simplest common denominator of "works" and "client will accept it". This is no different when it comes to responsive website design. ## Well, it just stacks up Responsive web-design is nothing new anymore. As a matter of fact some companies and agencies are even moving away from it in some cases again. But that is not the point of this article. It just goes to show that we have reached a decent saturation of RWD (Responsive Web Design) in the wild. When you ask many designers about how they approach RWD you will be surprised how often they throw this back at you: „Well, the thing with RWD is that it stacks up when you go mobile“. Some will tell you that they go mobile first and begin with the smallest breakpoint(s) and work their way up. „As soon as I have more space, I place items next to each other“. That is an approach. I would call it the path of least resistance, but not the award winning road to UX and design glory. ## Priorities and accessibility While none of the above is wrong or to be condemned in any way, it still is only the basic 51% of the job. To be honest with you, that can be done by any framework out of the box. It does not really need a designer for that. Challenge people when it comes to RWD. Starting with a mobile first approach is great because it a) caters towards what many users will be seeing as smartphones take over the majority of page impressions on the web, and b) it helps to clarify what you want and need to do and where. When you only have a limited space and need to get your priorities right in order to have things nearby when they are needed the discussion about priorities becomes much more focused. Imagine a mobile shopping app with the add to cart button at the bottom of the page, that would be an epic fail wouldn’t it?! But all too often it makes sense to think a bit further when the device width increases and one might be tempted to have the things just simply move next to each other. ### Hi! My name is flexbox and I am your friend, and so is my pal CSS grid! With CSS technologies like flexbox we have the chance to reorder components on the pages, distribute them in exciting ways and shape the layouts in ways which make the content and functions stand out and work well. For those who would like to understand a bit about it, there is an awesome game on the web showing you what can be done with flexbox: [Flexbox froggy](http://flexboxfroggy.com/?ref=janpersiel.com). And once you have played all level Read up on another great thing: [CSS grid](https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/?ref=janpersiel.com). This is yet another upcoming way of handling all your layout needs. Both need to be used with caution due to the danger of not being implemented in your target groups old IE of choice or an old browser version in general but using it and planning with it is pure gold. You will understand what I mean when you start reading the text. ### Readability as a guiding principle Nothing is more annoying than bad readability and underperforming typography. In the RWD world typography can be done right: There are breakpoints which offer us the chance to not only move things around and change their order but to shape the typography as well. Text does not need to stretch from 320px in width to 1680px. Now, every breakpoint offers the chance to evaluate how the content can be distributed and how the type works up until the next breakpoint where the same evaluation can take place again. We can introduce whitespace, create columns as long as that does not break with the typical reading habits on screen-based devices, we can turn images into backdrops and have overlaying captions move to sides and below images. Some items might even turn into something sticky, hanging at the edge of the viewport (remember that add to cart button?). Start looking around and figure out where you want your content shaped and how. Actually, do it the other way around: Shape your content and decide how you want your breakpoints to be set based on that. Breakpoints follow content not content follows breakpoints or even worse, device-specific breakpoints. Don’t just make it a boring 12-column-grid-based stack-system which turns blocks from 4-4-4 into 6-6|6 and then 12|12|12 column-wide arrangements. The 6-6|6 shows the trouble with these simple approaches already. All of a sudden one column turns out to be twice as wide as the others. That doesn’t always work out so glorious. When we relaunched [breuninger.com](https://breuninger.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) to become responsive in 2013 there were a few decisions to be made which were quite the opposite from simple stacking. When you look at the way filters and sorting options behave on product lists across all breakpoints you have a wonderful example of how one can tailor the items to fit at every size of the device. Be creative and get together with your UX-designer, your front-end developer, your concept developer and figure out ways how things would be perfect. How you want them to be, not how they can be crammed into predefined iOS-device breakpoints. ## Supersize me! A last word on large screens. Everyone talks about the mobile revolution and that the mobile devices are taking over. True, there is a lot of movement. But aren’t we forgetting something? More and more screens are at 16:9 and have resolutions at Full HD (1920 × 1080 pixels). This is a nice format for many things. There is a lot of space to have large images and arrange modules side by side. Why are so few designs taking that into consideration? The majority of designers rather limit the width of a website and recreate the same thing from 900px width all the way up to 1600px and then simply add padding to the left and right. Come on! at close to 2000px in width you have to start in a different way. This is almost two websites next to each other. No designer would arrange things from a vertical A4 layout identical on a landscape layout and simply add a bit of padding in the print world, would they? So start using that canvas and let the user feel and experience the full screen. Layouts adding just padding are throwing away lots and lots of opportunities at the same time. ## Summing up When designing RWD or evaluating designs make sure you challenge the RWD behaviour. You are spending a lot of time and money on these projects, why just live with the boring framework ideas when you can really make an impact by challenging the designer to make the canvas and content excel in parity. Content is king (again) and it should obviously make the rest follow. ## Up next Do a mistake once and correct it? No problem. See someone else's mistake and copy it? Plain stupid. Many things go wrong in UI and UX land but unfortunately all too often patterns are being used because they look cool, or because they are simply animated. This aspect of being different tends to lure many of us onto the bandwagon of trendiness and makes us forget that there are jobs to be done. Now we have fancy eye candy but fail at succeeding with the task at hand. In the next post I will focus on some of these hip new points of failure. ## In this series 1. [Parallax until you vertigo](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) 2. [Bad font decisions](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/) 3. [Frameworks which break design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/) 4. **Boring responsive design** 5. [Adopting UX flaws](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/) 6. [Icons without cause](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/) ### Design trends and their caveats (part 3) - Framework vs. Design URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:16:53.000Z Today I have to look at something both great and unpleasant at the same time: frameworks. There are a million frameworks out there and I am totally over-simplifying with my little article but hopefully you will get the idea. ## Frameworks are good Frameworks in software development and design are probably one of the best things to happen since the invention of the wheel or sliced bread. They offer basic functionalities and ideas packaged and bundled into working tools and templates. That is a wonderful thing because that makes it easy for those who use these frameworks in order to achieve things faster: Prototypes can be build within a shorter timeframe, designs get cranked out quicker and the functionalities are consistent throughout. So much time can be saved when you simply choose the width of a grid column instead of developing the entire grid system yourself. It leaves you with more time to do the things that matter most to you or your client. That does not mean, that we have to limit ourselves when it comes to creativity and getting the ideas onto the screen or into the browser. depending on the framework there are many ways to do things the way you want to. Sounds great, but … ## Frameworks are bad Ooops, what? Didn’t he just say they are great? Well, yes. But the fact that so many things are defined already and it is dead simple to get stuff done carries a major caveat within: People using these frameworks stop thinking about the designs to some extent. Everything is there. Nothing needs to be done anymore. But when frameworks get developed they are usually a big compromise. A very smart person or group (often, but not always) finds solutions to solve common problems and develop tools to get things done. But due to the demand to have a generic nature they have to find and define compromises. These compromises help to make a framework versatile and usable for many. When a compromise-based tool-set or template-set is the basis for a development, it is obvious that there are very low chances that the outcome based on this will be the best solution to the problem at hand. So basically you are building on a foundation which is mediocre. It takes a lot of effort to make things great again. So that it will be tremendous, that everyone will love it. (Got a little carried away there, sorry.) And that is the point why frameworks by themselves will never be really great. I have not seen many websites or apps where the framework was a major part of the solution and where the final product was outstanding. Do not get me wrong: They all work and many are nice. But the really awesome stuff is usually framework plus many additional tweaks and fixes. It is like building a great house or office tower and leaving the scaffolding there for everyone to see how it was build. The real work is covered by the scaffolding. ## Themes and their shortcomings Themes and templates are great examples: You can get an amazing [theme for your Wordpress site](https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress?ref=janpersiel) these days for some 50-70 USD and it looks dynamite; on the demo server. But start testing the responsive capabilities. All of a sudden you realise that the spacing is kind of sloppy. On the mobile version the spacing is not as nice as on your iMac at full screen window width. The modules and blocks are not aligning as smart as you would love them to. Oh, and while you are able to read the blog posts on the smartphone quite well … on the iMac the lines of text with 320 chars are simply an impudent way of throwing text at you (remember my [part 2 on typography](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/)?). And here we are: As always in life you cannot have your toast with a thick layer of nutella on both sides and still expect it to be an easy eat. Things will get messy. ## Spacing and details Why this rant? Let me be clear: I love frameworks and well-made themes and templates. They offer great opportunities. Low budgets can still get people and companies decent looking websites, presentations and business cards. I myself use them for private projects in order to get started quickly. I can always create my own design later when the thing really takes off. But I urge every designer who takes the (apparently) easy way of choosing a ready-made thing to be responsible and decide (together with the client) what this means. Identify what needs to be done. Pay attention to decent spacing. Is the typography well done? Or do you need to work on it once you decide on a theme? Often times it is the little things that make a huge difference in style and quality. Be aware of that and plan according to it. Save time with frameworks, templates and themes and use it for the greater good or improve the template for the specific case. ## Up next Responsive web-design? Everyone does it. Piece of cake. What is so special about it? The boxes just move underneath each other. What's the fuzz about? Actually, I don’t think so: If you really want to design and develop things well on all devices you have to do a little bit more to create great work than just letting things collapse and move them underneath each other. The next article will take a closer look at this aspect. ## In this series 1. [Parallax until you vertigo](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) 2. [Bad font decisions](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/) 3. **Frameworks which break design** 4. [Boring responsive design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/) 5. [Adopting UX flaws](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/) 6. [Icons without cause](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/) ### Design trends and their caveats (part 2) - Bad font decisions URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:16:27.000Z After having talked about a literally moving topic like [Parallax effects](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) in web design it is time to pay attention to typefaces in part 2\. In general typefaces are a very opinionated thing to discuss but I will keep it to the facts (isn’t that what everybody claims to do?) as good as possible. ## Play fair on your reader’s eyes The heading is no coincidence. [Playfair](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Playfair+Display?ref=janpersiel.com) is a great font to make a bold statement. It comes in very distinc shapes and especially the scrip/italic version is very luscious and full of wonderful curves and curls. Typefaces like these are being used a lot these days because they break with the boredom emerging from the over and over appearing [Open Sans](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans?ref=janpersiel.com) and [Roboto](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto?ref=janpersiel.com). Add a few hundred typefaces inspired by calligraphy to the mix and the web does not feel like 1999 anymore at all. And this month there will be another 100 new fonts available. By the way: We are discussing typefaces when talking about the design and look, but it is a font when I am talking about the file, the digital incarnation of this typeface. The thing with many designers though is that the increased use of such lucious fonts often times results in a frenzy of overdosing websites with these fonts. They are being used everywhere. Unfortunately that leads to a Playfair fatigue and many other fonts suffer from the same tsunami of uses. That is no bad thing in general, but it is less than perfect when you do not reflect whether the usage of this particular font is actually the best way to go. I have seen sports websites using Playfair where it made no sense at all. Not even in the most creative way imaginable. So please think before you dive into the Google webfonts vault. It pays to have a well educated font choice executed on the website. And do not get me wrong, I was one of the first to jump on the band waggon when David Carson emerged from the surf and started going wild on his Mac. But what it taught me was that not every chaos is the same. I started learning why some things need to be the way which they are by throwing myself into mayhem and climbing back out of it. ## Random reading rule rejection Sounds a bit like a disease, doesn’t it? It kind of is. I am surprised over and over again when it comes to typography on the web why so many websites, and especially themes and templates available for sale, are suffering from such poor typography. The worst is probably the superlongrunninglinesyndrome (this is no typo but to bring my point across): Text uses 1400px in width to be thrown in front of the reader. No matter what you tweak in terms of line-height or font-size, it will be insulting to the reader. It is physically impossible for us humans to read such long lines of text. Applying for the Art Director job at Chameleon’s Weekly you might be a top condidate, but nowhere else. There are many rules one should learn in design school explaining what to do to create good and readable type, if you are uncertain what to pay attention to it might be a great idea to visit [Typewolf’s Typography Checklist](https://www.typographychecklist.com/?ref=janpersiel.com). ## Too wide, too bulky, too display, too aliased, too thin When choosing typefaces and implementing the fonts it pays to test them: The combination of the fonts, as well as the way they render. Is there a bold version, or do you have to have a faux bold which often times looks like … well I save you the description. Are you in need of italics? Are there any available? What about small CAPS? Make sure you have the fonts available if you need them at some time later on. When the combination of headline, decorative and copy text fonts fits, ensure that great readability of the typefaces is ensured. Let other people look at demos. The [webfont specimen](http://webfontspecimen.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) might help you with that. It pays to take breaks when working on the fonts as well. We designers often times sit there for hours and loose ourselves in the details. Stepping away from the computer helps a lot to get a fresh look at your work again. The devil is in the details, yes, but it is possible to hide things in the open, just like we make mistakes and they are so obvious that we do not spot them when looking at them all the time. ## Retina vs. Retina Attention, here comes a common pitfall: Retina devices! I have met so many designers not checking their work on other machines and devices. Here they are with their shiny Macbook Pros and Retina displays, their high density iPhone screens and everything is great. And yes the client likes it as well on their Samsung S7\. But what about the rest of the users/readers/visitors to the site? What is the type like when being looked at at the not so uncommon Windows 7 machine from hell with IE9 and the not-so-Retina-screen? Oh dear Lord, is that a poor quality all too often. And only when the site launches people start to notice because the feedback comes in from the real people. Get yourself a really crappy external display and check your fonmt rendering on a screen coming straight out of hell. Please. Thank you on behalf of every future visitor. ## Würden sie Fréderic beißen? – Umlauts, accents, slavic languages, … There are many awesome fonts out there but please make sure they cover all glyphs which are needed. Some even miss a Euro sign. Simple thing, but unfortunately it needs mentioning. ## Contrast and letter-spacing When you buy a book on typography some things apply to print design but not to screen design. But whatever you might read, and again the typography checklist is a good idea to consider buying, it makes sense to check the result in terms of readability, again! Those small font sizes you are using in the footer might actually be more readable when you have a bit of letter-spacing injected into the text. The headlines in those huge 5em heights feel to loose and might like some tightening. The line height in general might be at a 1.1 and would love to be presented at 1.45 or something similar. Please get some demos up (the webfont specimen is great for being hacked) and try the details on different screens and with different settings. For all sake, try the fonts in the browser, not in Photoshop or Sketch. ## Loading times: Hey Veneer, I am looking at you! I have been working on a project where webfonts were generated via [fontsquirrel’s webfont generator](http://fontsquirrel.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) (please consider a donation if you ever use it!) and the webfonts came out at 1.3 MB per font. A font like [Veneer](https://www.fontspring.com/fonts/yellow-design-studio/veneer?ref=janpersiel.com) simply has way too many details. This makes the size inflate far beyond the acceptable limits. Please make sure your load times are in a range where visiting your site does not feel like downloading the latest OS update. Google offers you a visual gauge indicating how many fonts are acceptable and how many are not. And to make sure I did not leave Veneer standing in the cold: The webfont version you can buy is way smaller: They took out many of the details which even a retina screen cannot show anyway. So the webfont is a bit less detailed, but it is 15× smaller. And guess what you will barely notice this below 970 rem ;) ## You rock! I love the fact that you have placed a few things on your mental or physical to-do list and want to pay more attention to the typefaces and the way their fonts render in the future, no matter whether you are a designer or someone hiring a designer. The web will be so much nicer and your site in particular. Let me know when it is ready. No seriously let me know! The next thing I would love to invite you to read about is about frameworks. They help us a lot in moving fast, but we tend to loose a few things when embarking on a framework ride when not being careful. ## In this series 1. [Parallax until you vertigo](https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/) 2. **Bad font decisions** 3. [Frameworks which break design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/) 4. [Boring responsive design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/) 5. [Adopting UX flaws](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/) 6. [Icons without cause](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/) ### Why 'open' does not mean 'exposed to attacks' URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/why-open-does-not-mean-open-to-attacks/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:16:04.000Z During the last few years I have noticed something I would like to write about today: The fear of opening up your company and communication to the public. I am not talking about showing everyone on the planet your bookkeeping or the deepest company secrets, let alone the really valuable stuff from your research and development labs. No I am talking about the way people work at the company and what they produce and achieve. I have not studied anything like management and/or economics and therefore I have no idea what people are being taught in the respective classes at universities. But I have a feeling that it is something which is quite different from what the world expects and feels like out there. Text book company guidelines seem to be different from what one expects from a modern corporation. ## Driven by fear and competition ### Wonderful people to work with When I am working for and with bigger corporations I have had the chance to work with some of the brightest people in my industry and I am happy and thankful to join forces with them to get projects up and running. Many of them were external consultants in their field, some worked within the corporations. Working on and communicating the idea of [UI engineering](https://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) with [Dennis](https://dennisreimann.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) is one of the outcomes of such wonderful working relationships. ### The setup So the setup is a bit like this: Company hires external people who have lots of knowledge gathered in many projects and situations. Why do they have such exhaustive knowledge? Because they have been in many projects, yes. They have seen it all (until they encounter yet another new dimension of –placetopichere–. ### Smart people do not keep things to themselves But: Probably just as important is the fact that all of them read a lot, surf the web in search for ideas, and discussing theories or proposals which are being published by other smart people. They listen to podcasts where other experts share their experiences. People get into an open discourse and exchange ideas, sometimes they even fight about it. Why? Because they care. Are they afraid to give away too much of their knowledge? Do they think that someone else is taking away their business because the readers or listeners just have all their knowledge after consuming their published thoughts and content? Of course not. ### What are smart companies doing? Now what about many large companies. Let me take an example: Twitter developed bootstrap and open sourced it. They created a styleguide with all bells and whistles. In public. Available for everyone to take a look at and learn from it. So did Fontshop, and Starbucks, and and and … Why did they do it? Because they love the products they created. They felt like showing everyone what they have been working on and how they feel it should be. Are they afraid to loose business? Will another company selling overpriced coffee kick them out of business because they can copy or borrow their styleguide ideas? No, not at all. Do you think Starbucks attracted a few new developers because they were attracted by the cool styleguide? I am pretty sure they did. How often has Starbucks been referenced as a leader and progressive company in presentations around the globe when consultants pulled up their styleguide website or just screenshots of it? Often, super often. Did that hurt their brand? I would not bet a single penny on it. I would bet my entire savings that this made the brand even more interesting to many in the audience. I would consider this a smart move by starbucks, twitter, and all the unmentioned open-minded companies. Yes, you can disagree with the way companies buy their coffee, rice, steel, diamonds, kill the rainforests, use non-renewable energy sources, polute water or whatever. But you have to love them for their openness and willingness to share knowledge. ### OMG! This was expensive! We cannot show this for free. So, some of my clients and corporations I worked with or had the chance to consult, thought they would give away trade secrets when they would publish their styleguide for instance. The fear of having invested in developing something and having paid a lot for it made them think that this needs to be protected: „Hey, Frodo, gimme that ring …!“ ## Why giving is stronger than locking up But why, they asked, should we make things public? No one needs our exact styleguide. Why tell our competitors what we do? ### Attract the smart ones First of all: I mentioned the HR department already. You have spent a lot of money on your pattern library? Make the money work for you. Let it recruit developers who love it and love what you did. Save some hiring fees for headhunters and let the halo effect of the pattern library recruit for you. But here is the catch: It should be a living pattern library. Show the folks out there that you are actually working with your pattern library. No commits to it in the history? Not attractive because it seems doomed and abandoned. ### Give and take and give Why is publishing your work a good thing beyond that? Well it is probably not just your work. How many open source libraries have you used in the process? What is your server running on? Is there an obligation to give back? I think so. Would you like someone who always shows up for dinner at your place, stuffs himself and never invites you back? What do you think is the reputation of someone like that? Now think about taking all the open source libraries and not showing others what you have done with it? See any differences? Go figure. Potential job candidates see this as well. ## Who wants to work in fear There is more to it: When you work in a culture where information is not shared by default, you have the problem as an employee, and as a freelancer working for that company, that you live in constant fear to reveal too much. Am I allowed to share this information? Not only because you feel like sharing but for instance when you want to discuss a task or problem with others outside this company. Basically you cut off your easily accessible resources. What a trade-off! You loose access to information plus you have people working on a project being hindered by the fear that they could do the wrong thing. Can it get any worse? From my point of view this is stronger than any great retreat where employees are supposed to build trust and get motivated. I have seen this happening more than once. And some of those companies have a great (meaning: sick) sense of humour by putting up signs where it says that they are an open company and foster curiosity and adventurous attitudes. And to be crystal clear about it: I did not finish all of my engagements with these companies. in two cases I enabled others to take over and left them, advising them to figure out what they really want. ## Handling mistakes Now, let’s talk about the „secret stuff“. Obviously there are information which are not supposed to be made public. Financial information, personal data, etc. should be protected. And even when many complain about European data protection laws, I am happy that we have them. The devil is in the details of course. ### Oooops, now this is public … So you have made a mistake, despite the fact that your company is promoting transparency and openness. It is probably a matter of severeness but I feel that there is only one real way to deal with it. Tell people why it was wrong. Make sure everyone understands the implications. Discuss why this was wrong. And try to avoid finger pointing. This again will create an atmosphere of fear. Again people will start worrying about what they say and what not. If this happens, you are back to square one as a company. ### Everyone loves cakes and nobody hates Frank I learned about a fail cake a few months ago at a conference. People are supposed to bake a cake to show that they understood that something went wrong. And then while everyone gets together to talk about it they have the cake. I love this idea, because it is barely possible to have cake and go ballistic on a colleague. Cake brings peace to the table. Are you blaming and shaming someone in public? Only when people start complaining about a person continuously. When you foster and cherish an atmosphere where it is „Frank tripped over this topic. How can we help everyone to avoid this in the future now as we know that there is a need to change something. Frank took one for the team. Let us make the most of this!“ instead of „Frank failed! We need to make sure that this mistake is prevented. We do not want more people behaving like Frank!“ you win. The latter is just plain horrible for the person who made the mistake. It is blamed on them alone. But is that true? Was he really the only guilty one? Were the circumstances and the fact that information was not labeled classified a mistake by Robert and Julia as well? Probably to some extent. So why stigmatise Frank? I am not promoting a culture of not caring here. When people go overboard too often one has to find the root of why this is happening. Potentially this could not work out, and yes maybe that person „does not fit“, but that should be the very last resort to turn to. ## Open the gates ### Send the haters to hate somewhere else So, coming back to my initial approach and example: Try to bring an open culture to the company. Make it a part of your companies DNA to accept failure and mistakes as trigger points for everyone to learn and grow. Support others to admit problems and failures and offer help and transparency. Do not accept the, rightfully hated, corporate bullshit and betrayal culture. When the employees are busy covering their behinds and setting up traps for others to trip on, only to distract from their own shortcomings, you have created a class A rotten company culture. People will only work there because of huge salaries, because it is a great thing to have a huge name on the cv, or something like that. But not for long. They will leave sooner than later. Why? Because of this culture. It nurtures stress, burn-outs, hate and makes people sick. We need to go to work because we need a purpose in life, we need company (what a great dual meaning for the word!). We cannot accept to spend too much, if any, part of the day in poisonous environments. ### Shiny happy people = shiny company Open the gates, the windows, and your communication to let the bad air out, and the sunshine in. As soon as things are open and people can freely communicate this will start a cleansing effect within the staff as well. Where open discussion and communication, fairness and freedom dominate the haters and tactics driven opportunists tend to leave as well. They simply cannot advance with their rotten tactics. And right after the dark forces leave your company it will shine and glow. I am confident about that. Just start doing the right thing. I am looking forward to work with you and your wonderful colleagues! ### Design trends and their caveats (part 1) - From parallax to vertigo URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/designtrends-and-their-caveats-part-1/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:15:38.000Z By popular demand I would love to share a few thoughts which keep moving me for quite some time now. Actually It is not by popular demand that I am writing but I am writing about popular design trends/decisions/patterns. Many of these are so extremely common and popular that it makes me wonder why so many people do not reflect whether these actually do make sense or whether there is a better solution at hand. But let me get into my little top 5 in the upcoming blog posts. We start with a popular effect which is present in oh so many websites and themes: The parallax effect. ## Hold tight, we are moving your world in 3, 2, 1 … We all know these websites where a page starts of with a huge image, a [hero](https://www.janpersiel.com/from-hero-to-zero-tales-from-above-the-fold/), and as soon as we scroll down the page this image starts moving in the background. It often times moves at a slower speed than the foreground, or in an opposite direction, in oder to reveal a bit more than the part of the image which was initially visible. The effect is a smart idea and nothing new, but in combination with responsive design being a de facto standard they have turned into little horror shows in many implementations. ### Smart phone or big screen? The hard thing to figure out is to find the right image and combine it with the proper movement (i.e. speed and direction). This technique relies on the fact that the image in the background is partially covered up. We can only make best guesses which part of this image will be visible since visitors will use all different kinds of browser window proportions (smartphone vertical at 9:16, tablet vertical 3:4 or 4:3, netbook at 16:9 or your desktop at anything from a 1:1/square to 16:9). In case you do not choose different images for different breakpoints you have to find a picture which brings across your idea with lots of excess pixels that can be cropped away later on. Basically you will have to limit yourself to the center of the image area, everything else might be cropped. Now in a parallax scenario this becomes even harder since you have to deal with yet another dimension, i.e. time and which part of the image can be seen at certain times. You guessed it, often times this goes wrong. Unfortunately the images chosen, by an untrained Wordpress user for instance, seldom work as well as the demo images from the sales demo. Often times the effect is being tested on one breakpoint and optimised for that very one. In case that is the main breakpoint where most of the traffic is happening that is fine. But who can honestly say that this is the case in an era of more mobile devices on the web than desktop machines or laptops? Last but not least the parallax is often times not properly implemented causing it to jerk around when one scrolls. The nice effect goes down the drain because the CPU or GPU is completely overloaded with handling the movement and rendering everything properly. By the way: A bad implementation even drains a mobiles battery faster! ### How to fix parallax effects from hell? Now let us take a look how we can make Parallax great again ;) - Check whether there is a better way of implementing the effect. A smart front-end developer will be able to help you to fix this. They might be able to get things from the CPU onto the GPU for example. That might help a lot already. - Do you need the effect on all breakpoints? Is there really enough space on the smaller mobile devices? Do people actually see what is going on? Or is all the fancy image transitioning happening behind teaser texts and headlines anyway? In that case it is worth considering to disable it on small screens, to a save the visitors of the site some battery power and improve their download speeds. - Choosing the images with large bleed and crop zones helps to keep the important things in perspective. In addition to that it makes sense to define a [focal point](https://designshack.net/articles/mobile/focal-point-intelligent-cropping-of-responsive-images/?ref=janpersiel.com) on the images or at least consider making use of background positioning properties in CSS. - Last but definitely not least: Do you really need the effect? Does it contribute to the story you are telling or does it help to bring your point across any better? If it does not you might consider dropping it all together. I am partially guilty of having done things like this in the past: [SysEleven](https://syseleven.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) wanted to have parallax effects and never got the proper images for it. And now 15 hot-fixes later by at least 20 different people the effect is a perfect example of what you are NOT supposed to do. I should have prevented this in the first place. Luckily a new version of the site is planned and the current site will hopefully be a thing of the past very soon. Be responsible and verify that you design with the proper outcome on all devices. If you cannot control the effect properly see whether it is better to disable the effect instead of having it go balistic on you. Up next: Fonts that make you go mmmhmhm. ## In this series 1. **Parallax until you vertigo** 2. [Bad font decisions](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-caveats-bad-font-decisions/) 3. [Frameworks which break design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-3-framework-vs-design/) 4. [Boring responsive design](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-4-boring-responsive-design/) 5. [Adopting UX flaws](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-5-adopting-ux-flaws/) 6. [Icons without cause](https://www.janpersiel.com/design-trends-and-their-caveats-part-6-icons-without-cause/) ### Do it once. Fine. Do it twice – document it! URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/do-it-once-fine-do-it-twice-document-it/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:15:17.000Z We have all been there: There is this job we are working on. Something needs to be done to get it off of our table. Like converting a few videos to be used on a website. So we quickly do it. Done. Great another thing ticked off. But after a few weeks we get a new video to convert and upload. But how did I choose the settings the last time? Was de-interlacing on or off? Was it HD oder only 720p? Stop wondering and get your (digital) notepad out! You are at the beginning of a process. ## Writing things down is the smart people's choice The introductory example says pretty much all of it already: We simply forget things. Especially when those are tasks which we do not do or perform on a regular basis. Well and we tend to forget certain things faster than others. We are exceptionally good at forgetting those things which we do not care too much about, those tiny bits. There is just too much going on in our lives to keep everything readily available in the quick access areas of our brain. And that is a great thing to keep us sane. Imagine having all those tiny things piling up day after day. Madness awaits you. So, knowing and accepting this is the first smart thing to do and understand. Personally I have always loved and embraced my Evernote premium account for that very reason. See something, dump it in there. No matter whether it is a note, an email or a photo (Evernote's text recognition in photos is badass by the way!). But even a simple analogue notepad or anything else that can be stowed away and archived later on is fine. When writing things down we prepare ourselves for two things: 1. We organise our thoughts and reflect what we are doing or what we are about to do and … 2. it simply records your thoughts or actions in a log which one can refer to later on. ## When to start logging your actions and thoughts Now as a computer it is easy to log things: Do something, log it, do something, log it, … but as humans we need time for that and cannot simply have a subroutine run and operate our left hand which might be logging while we do stuff with the right hand. So the natural question is whether it is worth logging something or not. When do we need logs? Usually it makes sense to document thought processes and action sets when we know for sure that this will be an action that needs to be done again. Maybe not today, maybe not even this month, but the potential is there. Well, the further down the calendar it is the more important it is for you to write things down. But even simple steps like what you have tried when developing a logo make sense to keep. I usually clone a version I have worked on before moving on and modifying it. This way I see all the versions afterwards, I have an idea of how I decided upon things, it gives me lots of material to choose from, and lastly it is proof of what I have been working on. And this applies to so many things we are doing every day. Unfortunately cloning is not always an option in real life. But a documentation is a great fallback because you know which steps you took to get to the desired outcome before. ## Documentation to the rescue It is great to have a manual to refer to when we need it. And it is a pain when the manual let's you run into a dead-end street. Or it might be missing the essential details to achieve what it describes as the outcome. ### Test your documentation In order to avoid a flaw like the above it is important to test your documentation. Why don't you ask someone who is not familiar with your process to follow the process once and see whether he or she gets to the last point. If so: great. If not, go back and fix the documentation. In case you hand the documentation over to your client, it makes sense to go through it with them. This way you can even charge for an introductory session and pass the documentation on to them. In case they want to do things for themselves they have been the testing people and the target-group at the same time. In case you need to explain a bit more in your documentation you will find out about it when you train them. ### Documentation as a chance Should your clients not be too excited about doing things themselves, hey, no problem, either you can do it for them, or, since you have a great documentation now, outsource it to someone else. As a matter of fact, it is one of the key ingredients for successful outsourcing to have a gapless and detailed documentation. The fewer questions will be asked after having read and followed the process documentation, the less time it will occupy on your busy schedule. ### Putting the pro into productivity It might be a clear thing but when you have a thorough documentation it shows that you are an organised person and that you know what counts when it comes to efficient working and task-solving. Your clients will love the fact that all the work you do is documented and could in theory be passed on to the next person should you ever be not available. No, nobody wishes you any harm and that bus hopefully never runs you over, but think about something way less critical: You are taking a longer vacation and decide on digital detox for a few weeks. With a proper documentation anyone can update your client's website now, be it the clients themselves or a friend/colleague. And you can digital-detox while sipping Margaritas on the beach. Now that is how you run a professional business and cover all the aspects of your work. "But wait!", I hear you scream. "Doesn't that put my business at risk? I am giving away my trade secrets! Now everyone can do my job." Okay, fair dinkum. The question is: What is your business? Is it to do the things and run the process described in the documentation? Or isn't it the actual process development and monitoring in the first place? Your clients probably hired you because they know that you have the expertise to devise a website's design and the respective maintenance, rather than just doing simple tasks. And isn't that the thing you actually want to do? ## Peace of mind In summary the documentation of a process will help you to be more professional, work more efficiently, be more flexible, and get other people to help you without wasting a lot of time on the on-boarding procedures for the task. In case you are not documenting you work yet, consider doing so for a small part of your work the next time you start a project, or write a process documentation for some maintenance tasks the next time you hand over a project to a client. Based on that gather experience and grow it from there. The benefits will become clear quite quickly. Just think about the vacation example above! ### When style guides are documentation done wrong URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/when-style-guides-are-documentation-done-wrong/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:14:51.000Z If you would ask me which topic I would recommend to get an article written up for your blog which people might ignore right away I would probably think for a moment and recommend something like "anything about documentation" along with half a dozen other topics as well I guess. So why the heck do I write about documentation then? Hear me out: ## Documentation sucks Coming from a design background I have been in the documentation business from the very beginning. We designers are awesome at documentation. No, really! We call our documentation efforts style guides and brand manuals. Oh boy, are we good at those. We can create documents which are several hundreds of pages long. They scare the s\*\*t out of a clerk working for the EU in terms of extensive coverage. We are leaving nothing to chance. We tell people how to position logos, re-create letterheads, use pictures and how many pixels there need to be between the third and fourth menu item on a mobile website. ### I love to hate you So we love these documentation efforts, or don't we? Actually no. We hate them quite frequently. Everyone who needs to work with a style guide hates them most of the time. But why? We create them so often that we should be more than happy to get one in front of us. As a matter of fact, it is no surprise: They are hundreds of pages long, they tell you down to the pixel how everything needs to be, … okay I have talked about it earlier on. Now what exactly is the problem then? Are all designers bi-polar freaks? (Some actually are, and they even need this to come up with the great ideas, but keep calm, it is only very few of them). We create them and hate them as soon as we need to use them? That sounds like a classical case of Do-as-I-say-don't-do-as-I-do. ### Precise, but not helping The problem with the afore-mentioned style guides is that they are often times super precise in what they describe. They meticulously tell you how business cards are supposed to be "designed", but they often times lack a clear description to tackle a new problem which no one has worked on before. For that very reason it turns out to be a pain to read style guides most of the times. Do not get me wrong: They give you a good idea about what the general idea about a corporate design is. But who in their right mind wants to wade through pages of stationary design guidelines when your task is to design a website or banner. Instead of writing a documentation which actually helps someone to work on or with the design, it is not seldom to find a poor trainee tucked away in the basement of some design agency working through the endless layouts and things which were created before, only to "enhance" PSDs with website designs and Illustrator files with stationary designs with measurements. ## Fire and forget Guess what, the(se) style guides are barely respected by anyone, really. They are deliverables and are outdated the moment they are being exported from the authoring program. No one wants to update them later on. The process to create these shiny objects of design documentation in full PDF galore is tedious and annoying. Where does the thing live and come from in the first place? Does the brand agency hand over the open files for the style guide so that employees of the stye guide's company can update them? I bet you they do not in most of the cases. So the thing is that even when new stuff gets created, it will most likely not end up in the style guide. Maybe a new one gets created because no one can edit the original document. The web style guide for instance. Great two documents now. Both waiting to be outdated. And even when the agency in charge of documenting the brand does take care of the document and keeps it fresh and updated, there is the problem of the old versions still floating around on peoples hard drives and external suppliers servers. I have never ever encountered a brand book ever with an expiry date. And that would be the only way to communicate that you are using a wrong documentation PDF. ## No documentation? Sucks as well. So what is the solution? No guidelines at all? Definitely not. We all want a design and brand to be consistent. There are many people out there who have no idea about how things should and have to be in order to maintain a visually consistent appearance. And to be honest with you they do not have to. That is what the designers and people in the design role have to take care of. But how can we avoid being in the position of having a documentation but not getting the information we need to know? We have to ask ourselves what it is that we need from such a document. Do we need the stationary x-rays? Do we need the distance measured in pixels between menu items? And even if we get the information we need: Do we have the tools to follow the guidelines? Or whom do we have to turn to? ### What do we want from a style guide? First of all we need to understand that these manuals are being read by different people with different assignments and tasks to be completed. There are designers who know their stuff. They will roll their eyes when you bombard them with the measurements of the letterhead. What an idiotic idea to document this anyway: Someone creates a letterhead, another pour soul has to measure everything and write it on a layer above the design, create a PDF and share it, only for a third person down the documentation chain to read the measurements and recreate the document. Whoever creates things like this is guilty of wasting gigantic amounts of resources and employee happiness. You get the point: Why on earth would you not pass the original template to the designer who needs to update the letterhead or create a new one for the branch in Milan, Italy? Yes, no sane or non-money-making reason here. So, make the templates and assets connected to them available and write a quick info about what should be paid attention to when one breaks the current proportions or text amounts change and break the layout. And a quick word to those agencies out there who do not release open documents and files to clients because they want to gauge them every time they need more letterheads or new business cards for new employees: You can do better than that. What a pitiful way to make money, holding your clients documents ransom. Is that what you wanted to do when you started your company? Wouldn't it be better to do more design work and convince your clients to invest in more design rather than a new box of letterhead A4 sheets? Yeah, that's what I thought. (Sorry little side-beef here. Back to the main topic …) Then there are project managers for instance. They might hire an external software house to get a new application developed. What do they need? They need something to pass on to the designer and/or front-end person to create an interface that matches the brand guidelines. But how can they do that when there is a style guide for the marketing website which does not feature many UI elements needed in the application? They need these UI elements and a direction on when and where to position things. Furthermore there should be something on user flows and what it should feel like. They would be a lot better of with a style tile in many instances than with a micro-measured style guide page about the homepage of the marketing website. A document like a style tile or a description with general UX principles helps to understand the reasons and ideas behind a design philosophy, the design system and the values to communicate. And that is exactly what people need: They need brand guidance and not asset assembly plans. A brand is not a concrete structure, it lives and breathes. When you put it into a rigid suit of armour it will be stiff and not fast to respond to changes and requirements. So you should ask yourself these questions when creating guidelines, brand manuals, and style guides: 1. Who will read this document? What do I need to explain and what is to be neglected in order to keep things short and precise? 2. Which tools do they have at their fingertips to achieve the results? 3. What is the idea and reason behind this? With this knowledge it is easier to come up with a plan b in case one cannot recreate the solution chosen in an earlier implementation. 4. What are we trying to avoid? This is not the typical list of examples of how not to position the logo (although these are helpful from time to time) but an idea to support the reader of the guidelines in where the company does not want to go because it might be the competitions terrain. This last point is completely optional and might not always make sense. It is actually covered by number 3 implicitly when done right. Paying attention to these questions will dramatically improve the usefulness of such documents and make them more readable and worthwhile. ## When is the right moment? So when do you write these things down? I think I made it clear that this is no job to be done by the trainee afterwards. If you are serious about making this a living brand and a useful document you as the creator should write it while you work on it. If things change, change the documentation. Only when you capture the ideas right away you will not miss a thing. This is true for all kinds of things, be it a front-end topic, a logo positioning, or even the choice of a font. ### Web trumps PDF Even the last person on earth has figured out by now that this is not scenario for a massive InDesign document. We are talking Wiki-style collaboration and ease-of-editing now. Hey, and guess what: When it is on the web or the intranet, well, in a browser, there is a central location for everyone to go to and to look up what they need. No multitude of old and outdated PDFs on hard drives distributed across the planet. There are so many simple HTML generators out there which allow for collaborative work that there is no excuse to use them. The sky is the limit really. ## The value of documentation So is there value in documentation? It depends: As long as documentation is only to prove that you have done some work and is a mere write up of the obvious … maybe. But if the documentation is written in a way that it can actually be used to look things up in order to not just reproduce them but to actually create new things there is a lot of value in every documentation offering that option. Coming back to the style guides from earlier on in the text there is a definite value as soon as you start creating it in a way that it is user-centric, offers guidance for everyone who needs to get things done related to the brand and anything involving corporate identity and design. And as long as it is kept current. ## Getting good with documenting things Documenting things is not easy. It involves a lot of brain work. Yet another reason I never really understood why the most essential work a brand agency is doing is stuffed into so many flatulent PDFs with just measurements. When creating and working on things you should document as you go. Actually, start even before that: The idea and the assignment of what you are working on is part of the documentation as well. It usually describes the job to be done. And to document that task is essentially the core reason for a style guide to exist, isn't ist? As mentioned before: Make documentation as easy as possible. Lower the barrier of engagement, make the tools super simple, make the updates a piece of cake. Last but not least remember a thing: Keep the documentation open and accessible. Only when everyone has access to it and gets the latest and greatest version of it, they will be able to work with you on getting it better and telling you what they need and do not understand. Only when you get this feedback and work on it, a documentation turns into a living thing everyone values and wants to work with, be it a style guide or a guideline for taking calls. Alright, that was a tough one. I hope it did not end up being too boring. I always feel passionate about proper documentation and offering useful information, so that is why this topic gets me fired up 'a little'. Take my ideas with a grain of salt and feel free to let me know whether you agree or whether you do not. What are your thoughts on documentation? In another blog post I am planning to write about documentation of processes. Stay tuned and let me know your thoughts on this. ### From hero to zero - tales from above the fold URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/from-hero-to-zero-tales-from-above-the-fold/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:14:15.000Z It is no secret: Heroes are everywhere. In Marvel films, in comic books, in newspapers, and yes, on websites. The huge images with a bit of text on them. So are they serving website owners well in their function as super heroes? ## Who doesn’t like a good hero? They are everywhere indeed. Since the first ones popped up a few years ago, these mega large images opening up a website and greeting you, the reader, with impressive stock photos of mountains and roads in a slightlz subdued vintage look. Or with a bold saturated product shot. All of that mixed with a catchy headline or mission statement, sometimes with the obligatory ‘hi, my name is X and I am a webdesigner’. I guess we all have a picture in front of our inner eye. By the way, this very website is no difference. And that is no excuse or justification for these heroes. Quite the contrary: I need to change this. ## The good (and beautiful big picture) To be honest with you, even though I might sound a bit ironic in the previous paragraphs, I love a great photo, think that a good mission statement or clear communication of what a website is about. This is what you get with the heroes. Unfortunately not every solution performs well at showing the imagery or the text. Quite often the photo is drowned behind a dark layer or hidden by strong parallax effects. That does not serve the image well, but often times makes the text readable. In other cases the images are beautifully presented in full colour and all their details but the text is barely readable in fromz of the image. In an age of responsive websites and layouts using images to cover a hero area it is seldom to know exactly where text will be positioned on the photo. ## The bad (a.k.a. where can we improve things) In addition to the aforementioned problems with text readability and photos darkened to an unrecognisable texture there are more things to worry about as a website owner. Some sites fail to communicate that there is more to the homepage than the hero or the good old ‘above the fold’ area. You get to the page and think: ‘Great, that looks okay. Thanks. Bye.’ Ooops, nobody saw your blog, your other products, your whatever you are doing on the site. Indicating that there is more by showing at least a little arrow or something alike would be a great idea. The other option is to not cover the full height. 90% might serve you just as well and indicate that there is more than the big stage at the top. ## Blame it on the theme As I mentioned earlier on I am guilty of many things I am writing about. It is mainly due to the fact that I am using a ready-made template for the blog. I thought to myself that it is better to start writing than building a site first. That is the case for many people I guess. A lot of them do not even have the chance or capabilities to have a theme build for themselves and have to resort to the ones you can buy on [themeforest](http://www.themeforest.net/?ref=janpersiel) or similar sites. But that means the responsibility is shifted to theme authors to some extent. When you build a theme and it is used by thousands of people it is your responsibility to make sure the theme follows best practises. If that means you have to teach the people buying your theme how to deal with images and text or settings for your theme in order to get the best out of you should do so. Do not rely on your fancy demo and sell as much as possible, but make sure you are not clogging the web with obese data transfers. ## Responsive, but responsible please But the responsibility is not just on the theme developers/designers side alone. In case you have one of these heroes on your site, or maybe even many like I do, it is a great idea to think about the usefulness in small viewport sizes. Do you really need the image as a background on the smartphone when it is and 87% are covered up by the text anyway? Probably not. And while we are at it: If you should really need it to communicate your message why not serving a smaller version for the smaller screens. So, you need an image? Move it to the top and put the headline underneath the image on the smartphone. That way people have a chance to actually see it. ## Cropping, ratios, and the need for more bleed difference As mentioned above there are many themes and websites out there using images in a good and responsible way. People crafting the most advanced responsive sites are actually paying a lot of time to how images should behave and where virtual cropping takes place. A great moment to pledge for more developer/designer interaction when it comes to developing these modules (read more about that on [uiengineering.de](https://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com)). When you are not in the position to change the templates and the behaviour it is your duty to check whether your images are fine on all different kinds of devices. Ask yourself and check this: - Does the image look good on smartphone, tablet, and desktops? - Do I need to have the focus point of the image on either side or rather dead centered? - Should I scale or crop the image when the device viewport is changing? - Does the text reside on areas later on which make it readable? ## Play nice and save your readers some download time If you cannot change anything about your website, or as an additional measure if you can, it is a great idea to save your images at decent file-sizes. Many content management systems work on the images anyway, recompressing them, rendering smaller versions etc. but it is a great idea to save your original 12 mega pixel photo at a small file size. You can compress it fairly hard (10-20% is often good enough) because it will most likely be squeezed to a smaller size anyway. And when that happens you do not see the artefacts anymore. This can easily shrink your hero images from 1 or 2 MB down to 0.1 MB (100 kB). That is a huge difference! Go the extra step and save your readers some time and bandwidth. Hey, and Google likes that as well. ## Things to do Personally I have to get to the theme and setup of my site and blog as well. I am guilty of doing many of the things mentioned above, and I am anything but proud of it. If you can do any of the things I mentioned above go ahead and make your site even better. In case you have purchased a theme or site design, go and ask the developers and designers to improve them. Feel free to point them to this article. Hope this helps you to make your site even better. Happy optimising! ### Why bundles with design assets are worthless after a while URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/why-bundles-with-design-assets-are-worthless-after-a-while/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:13:50.000Z The internet is full of sites selling bundles with design assets and fonts. It is an amazing thing to watch how these sites crank out deals every week or so and chuck more and more assets in a bundle. And these cost you only as much as two lattes. But are these bundles worth the money? ## Which bundles Bundle sites are everywhere. Some sell fonts in bundles, some sell assets plus fonts in bundles, yet another site sells courses and books plus assets and so on. It is easy to get hooked on theses bundles. Guess why I am writing about them: > Hi, my name is Jan. I am a serial bundle purchaser. Some of these bundles go up to prices like 29 or even 69 USD, which by itself can add up considerably if you feel like not wanting to miss a great deal. There is always something nice in these bundles which one might consider **usable in an upcoming job**. Hell, who knows what will come up one day? I might actually need all of the stuff in order to buy me some time later on in a tight project setting. Compared to buying a font at [myfonts.com](http://myfonts.com/?ref=janpersiel.com), [hype for type](http://hypefortype.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) or similar sites the fonts are **amazingly cheap**. Sometimes a single font can be more expensive than the whole bundle. And the bundle even comes with web font licenses in some cases. So is there a reason not to buy the bundles? Yes and no. ## "I think I have something to fit the job" I am not sure how many times I have thought that I should buy a font in order to get a head start in terms of achieving the right look. How many times have I thought that I have purchased a filter to get my images prepared in a certain way? How many times have I had the need to get an icon set? The problem is this: I get newsletters a few times a day about a new deal here and there. They **all offer more or less the same stuff**, well, at least it feels like it. Bundle A mixes font 3, 4, 5, and 9 with assets c, d, g, and k. Bundle B mixes font 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, and 11 plus assets a, c, d, and l. I bought bundle A but saw all newsletters. So I go hunting for font 2 on my hard drive and cannot find it. No surprise: I did not buy it. But I thought I did. So here we go, complete overload and lack of knowledge about what I have in my archive. Next up: digital dust settles over my assets. I have purchased assets and fonts for several thousands of dollars. Recently I had to organise my backup structure in a different way due to canceling dropbox.com. Now I had to get my files stored somewhere else and I (re-) discovered stuff which I had totally forgotten about. ### Use once, pay twice Actually I found stuff which I could have used just a week prior to my file clean-up. Damn, that made me angry. I paid for assets again, only because I could not remember that I had something similar already. And the second time around it was actually at full price a.k.a. "expensive". The same thing happens with fonts, at least to me: I love fonts and I think one needs a great vault and archive to dig into in order to find the right candidate for a job. The more choices you have, the closer you can get to finishing the job perfectly right. Plus: one needs to collect something for a hoobby, right?! I will keep to myself how many fonts I have purchased more than once … ## Search and forget So what I do now is that I start **tagging my assets** and **sort them** in ways that **make them searchable**. As soon as I need a filter I will search for it. I scan folder names and Finder tags. I use Alfred / Spotlight to search a bit more thoroughly and I am just evaluating an **asset management system** as well. It does not help to try to remember what you have. I bet you that even with a single bundle you will forget what it offers. If you do not use an asset or font at least once, you will forget it. So there needs to be a system helping you to find your stuff. ## Asset management to the rescue As mentioned before I am evaluating a system to support me in my browsing efforts and the storage of the assets. My [Protonet Maya](http://protonet.info/?ref=janpersiel.com) is great for browsing pictures stored away (like stock images), but fails when it comes to other assets like filters etc. So for that I need more searchability. A positive approach to **making bundles more useful and accessible** are the bundles sold by **[Dealcuts](http://dealcuts.com/?ref=janpersiel.com)**. They have understood, that you will eventually run into those problems. So they give you a folder within every bundle with an overview of all the assets and demos what can be done with the things. Basically you get a **complete overview of the bundle's contents in a single PDF**. Other bundles vendors just send you a ZIP and wish you well. That ZIP will never ever serve you well. You will forget what it contains. And even unpacking it does only help to some extend. There are no previews or cryptic short read es which are anything but what you are searching for. So the only way to go, and that is how I do it, is to save the web page selling the bundle as a web archive or PDF and have it for reference later on. ## License pitfalls Oh happy day: I found an asset in my bundle! Great! I will use it for my client project. Err, no … wait. I am not allowed to use it for anything that is not for me. Some bundles are real suckers in terms of licensing. You should **invest the few minutes to check the basics of the usage terms**. What good does a bundle do you if you want to use it for client work and you are actually not allowed to do that. ## Updates are a major pain Back in the day I was even buying **bundles containing wordpress themes**. Those are often times completely ridiculous: You buy an exact version of the theme because you have no chance to get the latest version. You cannot go to creative market or theme forest and get an update because they did not sell it to you. The seller usually **does not provide updates** and that is pretty much all you could hope for. Those themes are worthless, unless you accept that you buy it as it is and work from there (in case the licensing allows that). I have a few monster PSDs with mockup scenes. To update these is yet another pain. Depending on the author it is not an **incremental update** or something which you **could easily merge with existing files**. One constantly fears to kill files which are only in the initial file stack. I stopped updating these and will buy it again in case I need it. It costs way too much time. ## Collect and archive But despite the fact that I complained a lot in my article I love the bundles and think that they are **a great way to build up a decent archive of fonts, filters and assets**. You just have to **make sure that you have a system in place which makes it easy for you to find things and maintain them**. If you don't, they will "deteriorate" because of compatibility and visibility when searching for them. What I do once in a while is to browse my summary PDFs and remind myself what I have in my archive and check which assets might need updating. That helps a lot: One has a fresher memory when "brain-browsing" your library. Do not forget that some of the bundles are only **available for download for a limited time**. Download all of it, including the **free fonts which are often used in demos or templates**. They can disappear and you are left with fragments of unusable stuff. And of course remember the most important thing: **Backup all of your archive**. Have a second hard drive with a mirrored version, use [Backblaze](http://backblaze.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) or whatever you like. But do backup, because even if the bundles where cheap they are too expensive when you loose them. Let me know how you handle your bundles and manage your assets I would be happy to hear from you. ### The blog which got neglected culpably URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/the-blog-which-got-neglected-culpably/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:13:06.000Z Today I would like to write about the fact that I have not been writing for quite some time. As a matter of fact I am by far not the only one to stop writing after a while. ## Blogs tend to get ignored and forgotten When you surf the web you come across them all the time. They lay at the side of the browser road and die of neglecting like the zombies do in the walking dead series when they have deteriorated to far: Blogs and websites. They are usually being started with much enthusiasm and often with a high pace of output. There are many posts when you start from the very first post. Then after a few posts you realise that the author tends to skip a day or two. Then the next post is week later, two, three, then it is a few months and then … well, actually sometimes the pace comes back on. Not daily but a few posts are being written again. Usually someone thought „hey I can do better than this!“ and started to get into the habit. Only to loose it again all too often! ## Why I have neglected this blog Here we go, you guessed it, this is not a rant about someone else, it is a mere observation which describes me quite well. So why have I neglected the writing? Why did I start off all charged up with enthusiasm only to loose it all to quickly? I can only assume why this is the case, but I guess I am close to the truth. The problem is that the initial output is usually based on the fact that I write at a time where I feel it is great to do so. That might actually be during the day when I have other things to do. But since I figure within a few days that that is not the way to do it, I start pushing the writing to something like 20:30 at night. Guess what: Really bad idea! I am moving the writing, which is supposed to be something where I want to focus on a topic and work highly concentrated, to a time of the day where I have barely any real energy left. How is that supposed to work out well? You would not go on a trip from Sweden to Sicily in Italy with a car running low on fuel, would you?! The obvious thing to happen is that you start feeling the burden of writing against your inner energy level warning. That is impossible to keep up for a longer period of time. The first thing to die is the enthusiasm (now you are down to weekly posts) and it is followed by his buddy motivation (welcome monthly posting). ## The plan to tackle writer’s block Since I am training myself differently this time around, I hope to do better with the posts in my various blogs. The key seems to be that you form a habit for your writing. The writing needs to be an essential part of your daily routine. As advised in many publications, was the latest I came across, one needs to connect the writing, which is supposed to be a natural thing during the day, to an existing habit or repeatedly present thing during the day. In my case: After breakfast. So for a while I have started doing a writing training with lots of files in my diary so far, where I learn to write and pay attention to things. But the most important thing is that I do it at the same every day. Saturday and Sunday are usually a bit different, actually a bit later, but I do write just after breakfast. ## Plan ahead As I have learned there are so many things to stop you. You name it, I have been stopped by it. The Wordpress looks mediocre? Work on the theme and ignore the writing. The topic is not perfect yet? Think about another one. Bye bye writing. The Words sound lame. Edit the texts while writing and time is over before you notice it. So what helps is to get your topic ready before you actually start writing about it. Plan your outline for the text. Templates help with that. In case you need to research things, plan ahead and research before you sit down to write it up. Need images? Get them first, or decide to get them after having finished the text but not while writing. Write down your ideas in an outline and let it sink in. You will subconsciously work on the text already and notice that you will be ready once you get to sit down to write. Your outline is great to dump into your document before you start. This prevents you from fearing the empty screen. ## Show up daily, no matter what happens Well, I have not spent months so far, but I do have noticed one thing after a doyen days of writing at the same time: It gets easier and you do not feel like having to work hard against yourself to start the process of sitting down and typing. The daily routine has helped a lot. During the weekend (it is Saturday right after breakfast while I am typing this) things feel a bit different from the Monday through Friday routine but I am getting there as well. It is like brushing your teeth. You do not think about it anymore, you just brush a few times every day. And yes, it is often after a meal. ## Train your writing like a professional athlete What I have learned so far is the fact that my writing has improved in terms of speed. In addition to that I get into the zone a lot easier already. It does not feel like the annoyance anymore which it used to. The brain says: Ah, okay, it’s that time again. Alright, let’s go. Before the training it was more like: Oh dear, typing again? Alright, I guess I have to. But should we not rather pay attention to this … or that … or? Shut up brain! A brain is smart. It knows when it has lost it’s fight and will accept it’s fate after all. ## Outlets and opportunities For me this is a chance: I have a few places to start working on in terms of my writing. You are here at the first location. There is my [interior design blog Stilheimat](http://stilheimat.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) or my [Gin Tonic Blog](http://gingingin.de/?ref=janpersiel.com). With my buddy [Dennis](http://dennisreimann.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) I am currently working on promoting the idea of [uiengineering](https://uiengineering.de/?ref=janpersiel.com). Many areas that need texts. So with variety to write about, a daily routine to keep me going and the help of friends who I have asked to tell me to keep going, I am certain that there is enough to get me writing regularly. Not all of it will be public, but I will have something to do every morning. ## See you tomorrow The best thing by the way, is the fact that you have a big fat tick on your daily to-do-list right after breakfast. How is that for motivation? Looking forward to writing here and for you soon. ### Why designers and frond-end developers should talk more often URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/why-designers-and-frond-end-developers-should-talk-more-often/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:12:20.000Z # Learnings from 3 years of working on major shop relaunches ## Try walking in my shoes ### Imagine you are a designer ![Designer](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-designer.png) Here is a typical situation designers come across: They have carefully designed and crafted layouts, polished buttons, took care of shadows and many other tiny details. After these designs were sent to the developers it took some time and today is the day: The layout is presented in the browser! But what is that? The details are lost or completely different from the designs and some things are not even there. „We were not able to get this developed.“ is the simply comment. #WTF ### Imagine you are a front-end developer ![Developer](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-developer.png) Today you start on the new project and the designs have been worked on for ages now. But what you get in the mail must be a joke: The file homepage\_2\_final-new-updated-FINAL.jpg is everything but a feasible web-design. Thank you very much design team. When will you start to understand how this internet thing actually works? But you are motivated and make the impossible true and deliver on time and get everything done like in the layouts. But what do you get? A mockup of the original layout at 50% transparency layered on top of a screenshot of IE6 with all differences highlighted. In addition to that the words that make your day: „Did you even look at the layouts before creating this?“ #WTF ### Cracks in the team’s spirit This is not a healthy setup. In case you are either a developer or a designer this has probably happened to you before. But it is a situation we all laugh and/or bitch about in order to deal with our annoyance. We hate this – to the bone. So for teams to work efficiently this is not a feasible situation. And it does not matter whether this is a virtual team casted from different companies, or a „real“ team inside a corporation or agency. It hurts and sucks all your positive energy away. ## So you are doing completely different things … not ### Designers Designers are trying to **arrange** things, make users’ eyes **follow** a certain path, help users to **identify** things, define the layout’s **style**, and **communicate values** while doing so. ### Developers Developers **write** documents, give **structure** to elements, make these elements **behave** in a certain fashion, add **machine-readability**, and, hell yeah, they make stuff fast. ### Apples or pears, or just fruit? ![Tasks](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-tasks.png) Both groups are essentially doing very similar things: - analysing - organising - structuring - adding visual style or meta data - defining flows both visual and functional - orchestrate all of the above It is of importance that you understand that the underlaying similarity of what both trades are doing is the basis of a common ground, the root of a better team-work. It is the different treatment and understanding as well as the way solutions are being approached which can cause misunderstanding. ## Where exactly are similarities between design and front-end development Developers use **mixins** in their CSS/SASS/SCSS/Stylus/… (I’ll refer to it as SCSS for simplicity reasons from now on, for brevity reasons, not based on preferences. Designers use **consistent visual elements** which are similar but not identical. ![Vars](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-colorsVars.png) Developers use **variables** for spacing, padding, colours, whereas designers use **tool presets** or **style formats** for consistent type sizes, colour palettes, and visual appearance. ![Grids](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-grid.png) Developers use **grids**, so do designers (most of the time at least). ![Functions](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-repetitive.png) Developers write **functions** to avoid painstakingly repetitive tasks, designers have **smart objects**, **slice-saving** and **Photoshop Actions**. ![Measure](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-measurements.png) Developers hate to measure things in flat layout files, obscured by JPEG artefacts, designers hate the details being ignored or being overseen. That, again, sounds like a lot of similarities. ## Common ground: style guides, pattern libraries, or whatever you want to call it ![styleguides](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-styleguide-2.png) So when there is such a basic similarity it is obvious that one should find a tool which caters towards both parties. Style guides, could be such a thing, and to mind are actually a great fit. ![old](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-brandbook.png) DISCLAIMER: Not the bloated, print or PDF style guides which are outdated the second they leave the printer, being border-line useless examples of TL;DR documents. The fact that these cannot be sufficiently updated or „live“ in a single location and authority, but with every copy of the PDF there does exist a new entity which can not be kept up to date until someone replaces the file. But how should readers actually know that they look at an outdated copy without having to visit a website. Shouldn’t there be a website with the style guide in the first place then? ### How can a style guide website be built? So, if the idea of a style guide in a centralised location is great, and if, being a website, can be updated a lot simpler than a PDF, how can one go about it? What could we do and use to cater towards the needs and wishes of both designers, and developers, heck potentially even the whole team or company while we are at it? ### A pattern library is a great starting point ![Atomicdesign](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-atomicdesign.png) A modular / atomic design approach is a great starting point. In case you are not familiar with the idea I urge you to go and read all about it over at [patternlab.io](http://patternlab.io/?ref=janpersiel.com). The idea of creating a pattern library is not new anymore but it is well worth mentioning since it is a great tool for many parties to collaborate, especially our two parties „at war“. ### Next up conceptual work and basic version Since the early days of people creating websites, content developers or concept developers have sketched and kicked of the process of getting sites online. Well, surprise, essentially that has not changed. Without a plan you do not need to get started after all. But here comes the change: Now it is well worth considering to have the developers take over those ideas. They could start setting up the basic markup and build up the pattern library as well as all the connected services like deployment pipelines, tests etc. We’ll get to that a bit later. ### Style tiles to get the design started ![Styletiles](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-styletiles.png) „But what about the designers?“ I hear you scream? Don’t worry, there is enough work and potential to excel for everyone in this newer approach. Designers could start to create style-tiles. There is an extensive description and templates for you designers to read and download at [styletil.es](http://styletil.es/?ref=janpersiel.com). The great thing about using style-tiles is that you, as a designer, can focus on the discovery of the general style. You do not have to worry about the details of links and Buttons, the organisational structure of a navigation and it’s responsive behaviour or whatever one could think of. You just focus on the style. The cool thing about that is the fact that you do not steer into shallow water with the stake holders for the design because you named a link wrong or have a rough idea of a logo placement which could easily hijack the whole process of discussing the design. Well, we have all been to meetings like that where some extraordinary smart person cannot concentrate on the things on the agenda and get distracted. Hey, design is one of the few things on the planet (together with being the football coach of one’s national team, and being a politician) which everyone can do after all. Many agencies and teams still work with the designers first setup. This is still happening everywhere, just like people still using fax machines. Go figure … but seriously. I think there are reasons for designers to start first, but there are many projects and situations where the above mentioned process is way smarter. Hey, and when you have a tight deadline there might actually be no way around it because this gives your developers a head start. You might not be in the position to have them wait for the first final designs to surface. So, with the danger of distracted stake holders almost entirely taken out of the equation, the discovery of the design process can get started. And chances are a lot higher that people focus on the general appeal rather than details which are of no interest as of that point in time. ## Are the developers the new designers? So if designers do not come first, how can we actually design things? We are given everything pretty much in a final state! All the atoms, molecules, and organisms are done by the time the designers get to them. Really? No! You still have to get the basics right. The developers create a plain vanilla solution. Without styling (as far as that is possible as you cannot not style something). That basic styling should not take that long anymore. Actually it is a great process to verify things from the ground up coming from the atomic level. You still have to decide and verify what a link looks like. Only because it is underlined and blue, does not mean, that it needs to be that way. Your job is not replaced, but someone carved out the rough shape for you already. You have to make it look mighty pretty, slick, awesome, fresh, or whatever the intentions are. So when you are faster getting this basic styling out of the way, especially with all the style tiles to use as another support to get that task done, guess what: More time to focus on the real challenges. Work on sophisticated layout grids, how things behave across breakpoints when they are complex, etc. Is that not the thing you really want to do? Working on something great and demanding opposed to just typing dummy copy in Photoshop over and over again? See, that is what I thought. ### A „new“ responsibility ![Responsibility](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-protect.png) Developers pay attention now: After years of bitching and moaning about being the last one in the process of creating things (and quite rightfully so, not being the last, but the bitching about it) you got promoted from the guys „in the basement“ who never get things right, to the folks in charge of the projects fundamental setup and production processes. That is a huge responsibility and burden I know. All of a sudden people say you are the important ones. Heck, yes you are, and you secretly have been the real makers ever since. Now everything is depending on your work, how you have set things up, how far ahead you have planned, and how flexible your system is. But as long as you fill others in to your ideas and concepts (the designers / UX people), the more questions you ask and educate yourself the more this load can be distributed, the responsibility split. ### All aboard the team train Make your work everyone’s business, make them care, make them own it, make them be proud of it. It is their product as well. How can you get them to be part of that style guide? Get them to contribute. Listen to their needs and ideas as well. ## A shared style guide: a water cooler everyone loves to hang out at ![shared](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-styleguidemix.png) So if the style guide is supposed to be a product which everyone loves and feels like cherishing what needs to be done and what are the necessities for it to be loved? ### Documentation for everyone and every aspect The documentation for everyone and every aspect of an element, be it just a link or a complex process navigation, must be nearby. This involves code, design, UX, and business aspects since people do not know what to use and why. But keep it short and precise: People need to get it as quickly as possible. TL;DR is the main problem with the old, bad style guides. ### „living style guide“ as in, no-dead-screenshots ![realStuff](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-realthing.png) Only the „real stuff“! One should see the actual, current version of everything in the style guide. As soon as there is a delta between the style guide and your real website people will not rely on it anymore. PSDs, PNGs, etc. are only assets to continue development, not the actual documentation of your front-end. And the great thing is: You can actually see things on all devices, which helps you to test and therefore avoid surprises. ### Educate People will love to find everything in the style guide. But maybe you need to introduce them to it when it is a large one. People will not explore it by themselves because they do not know what to expect. ### Fresh and updated – no discussion ![fresh](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-fresh.png) The team needs to keep everything up to date or you loose the power of the tool. It is like a well: The whole village will gladly come to get their water supplies, but only until the water smells and is polluted. There is no use in a style guide which leaves the readers/users with questions only because it contains contradictory, or outdated information, or is simply missing the information at all. Make it a routine to keep the information fresh and up to date. ## How can we improve design and front-end developer collaboration? What do the parties need to bring to the table to improve a) the workflow and b) the level of sanity for each member of the team? 1. Open-mindedness helps a lot in this process: Both parties need to move from their current position and closer to the „other side“ to be able to understand what their reasons and values are in order to get the project done. 2. Joy to learn things and willingness to team-work are no-brainers but for completeness sake I do mention this. You never know. 3. The will to improve, both personally and efficiency-wise. With these things in mind let’s get to the things I believe to be of importance for the situation to improve. A disclaimer up-front: There is no group which needs to move more than the other, no attitude worse or better than the other, there is only one common goal: A smoothly operating team with members who do love their jobs. ### What do designers need to do 1. **Get off your high horse!** You might think you are doing awesome work and that is true. But without the rest of the team your stuff remains a dead PNG file. 2. **Explain what you are doing and why!** When the rest understands your decisions it is easier for them to work in the interest of your concept. When your work behaves like a free radical particle, you will get cancerous results back from the implementation team. 3. **Stop fearing code!** You design for the web, stop ignoring what the web is build with. Cooks know everything about ingredients and so should you. [Johannes King](http://johannesking.de/?ref=janpersiel.com), a 2-star Michelin chef makes new cooks in his restaurant learn how to fish and help with the harvest in the garden. You should know your ingredients as well in order to start creating great things and not just Mac’n’cheese style sites and apps. So go and learn the basics. [Jessica Hische](http://jessicahische.is/?ref=janpersiel.com) has created a starting point for you with the great domain name [dontfeartheinternet.com](http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) 4. **Stop being sloppy and messy in your work.** Define rules and stick to them. Exceptions are rules as well, and just like salt in the food some exceptions make your designs special whereas too many make things disgraceful 5. **Talk to the team!** The guys with stickers on their laptops and t-shirts with prints you do not understand that is. They only bite when they think that you are making their days miserable, actually they do not bite, but they might bitch, just like you can when someone makes your days a burden. 6. **Standards save you time** Understand, that the work you invest in standards will give you more runway later on when you want to spend time on the details and exceptions. 7. **Plan ahead** Stuff can go south and people change their minds. Just be prepared and join forces with the others who would be affected potentially. 8. **Use Terminal and the web inspector** Open the Terminal (Mac: Apps > Utilities > Terminal) and change the colours so it does not scare you anymore. Pink keeps many people away, almost better than a lock screen ;). Learn to live in the browser, right-click and Inspect. It might even be fun to change „the internet“. Do not worry: You can’t break things from there. ### What do developers need to do 1. **Get off your high horse!** Same thing as for the designers. 2. **Explain what you are doing and why!** It does not hurt to fill people in to what you are doing. The more they learn about your job the better they can react to your requirements. 3. **Prepare structures and offer tools to get designs delivered to you as you need them.** If possible lower the barrier of entry to your world. The more you open the gates to your tool chain the fewer things will break while entering your world. 4. **Ask and explain why things are different from the norm.** The thing is that this helps others to understand your problems and tasks even better. 5. **Get basic shit working and make it fast and fun** The quicker you have the first things up and running the more people will be motivated because they see things come to live. They will gladly help to shape it. 6. **Offer insights into what can be done.** You want to do the fancy stuff? Show what you can do, which options are on the table and again, explain why it is fancy and what it is really good for (remember: designers tend to choose eye candy over solid, simply-working things sometimes. Do not lead them astray!) 7. **Plan ahead** Just like the designers you might be confronted with last-minute changes to your work. Try to keep flexible as long as possible. ## A day in the life of the perfect team ![centerStyleguide](https://www.janpersiel.com/content/images/2025/10/illu-styleguidecircle.png) With all the preparation done so far I guess a quick run-down of the work might make sense. With the style guide concepts can be created by using the modules and building blocks at hand. Maybe even as a static mockup by copying code snippets into a new document (the designer’s sandbox). Great, that could be super fast and one can immediately see what it feels like in the browser on different devices. Developers build stuff based on the standard design or just a „vanilla version“. After that the designers get the chance to review and fine-tune. They can test by writing CSS, or maybe just playing around in the inspector. sometimes that might be enough to change the design to get to a great product. And it is soon easy to communicate a few lines of CSS, trust me. And there will be no time wasted by building the same stuff, in different teams, in parallel / at the same time when you keep your style guide up to date. No one wants to waste time doing things which have been done already. So, eat your cereal with a fork if you will, but do not fork the workforce by generating tasks which have been done before. ## Stylegen At [GALERIA Kaufhof](http://galeria.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) I was part of the team to bring the new shop to life (it launched in 2015) and we developed a tool which goes by the name Stylegen, a generator for style guides. It is currently an alpha version but go and have a look at it or ask your developers to check it out for, or even better, with you. It is open-source and on [Github](https://github.com/Galeria-Kaufhof/stylegen?ref=janpersiel.com). The documentation for your styleguide can easily be done by writing markdown files. [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax?ref=janpersiel.com) is simple and easy to pick up and so it should be a breeze for everyone on the team to get their share done without any problems. The design can be changed by the designers, the tool by the developers, the documentation by everyone, including „business people“ and UX. A real team tool. Feel free to join the developer team … More tools for style guides can be found over at [styleguides.io](http://styleguides.io/tools.html?ref=janpersiel.com). --- ## Conclusion I truly think that the quality of work can be dramatically improved if both designers and front-end developers move a bit closer towards each other. I have had the great opportunity to work with outstanding developers over the last few years. They have made it easy to wander into their terrain and I do hope I could give back where ever it was possible. We were able to achieve amazing results in short amounts of time and that is partly due to really working together as a team, sharing work and responsibilities. I hope you will be able to achieve such wonderful work constellations as well. #### Thank you - [Dennis](http://dennisreimann.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) and - [Michael](http://geers.tv/?ref=janpersiel.com) for enduring the pains of a designer trying to understand their trade and for repairing things that went nuclear even outside my sandbox - [Falk](http://twitter.com/nothing%5Fbox?ref=janpersiel.com) for sparing and many explainations during the stylegen creation process so far, and for taming my terminal All the wonderful people at [neuland](https://www.neuland-bfi.de/?ref=janpersiel.com), [breuninger](https://breuninger.com/?ref=janpersiel.com), [GALERIA](https://www.galeria-kaufhof.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) and everyone I forgot to mention here. Get in touch, I’d gladly link you here. This blogpost is based on a talk I gave at the [E-Commerce-Camp Jena 2016](http://www.ecommerce-camp.de/redner-sessions/sessions-2016?ref=janpersiel.com). Image credits: All illustrations by Jan Persiel ### Do I have to have my steak and blog "Medium"? URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/do-i-have-to-have-my-steak-and-blog-medium/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:05:54.000Z It feels like ages ago that I discovered [Medium](http://medium.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) and thought to myself that this is different. I was not quite sure whether this platform would succeed but until then I would read the good stuff I could discover there. As I have just started blogging again, I am wondering whether I should rather publish on medium.com instead of here on janpersiel.com. ## Status Quo Let me get the steak question out of the way first: I actually do love my steak medium, actually a tad bit less done if possible. In case you came here for the meat I strongly advise you to visit my friend Dennis’ blog [Vom Rost](http://vomrost.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) where he serves you all kinds of delicious things straight from the „barbie“. Back to business: When looking at my Google Analytics reports I do see exactly when I promoted my blog posts on facebook and twitter. There is not much organic traffic on this blog as of now. What a surprise after a few weeks and a break due to too much workload ;) Certain things take their time, I did not work on any cross-promotion, did not write guest posts elsewhere, heck I did not even properly link to this site from my [design studio’s website](http://persiel.com/?ref=janpersiel.com). For those reasons it is no big surprise to so the numbers of visits per day still south of 100\. But there are at least 25% of returning visitors. Hey, and to my surprise I have a lot of Russian readers, or, well, at least visitors. ## Growing the audience So obviously I would love to grow the amount of people I do reach with this blog. And there seems to be a **huge community of good writers and opinion leaders** over on **Medium**. But do I actually have to [be there](https://medium.com/@janpersiel?ref=janpersiel.com) as well? The questions to be asked are probably different ones: 1. Why do I want my audience to grow? 2. At which cost? 3. And what do I want to invest? 4. Are there any caveats when publishing here or over at medium or, as many people do it, on either site? ## Growing as in excel For the last years I have been fortunate enough to work with amazing people. People I deeply respect for the work they do and the way they do business. Where there is light there is shadow and I had those shady colleagues as well. But life is too short to blog about that. At least for now. One thing I really love about the fine people mentioned above is the fact that they seldom keep things to themselves: They are being honest, open-minded, and care about sharing information and knowledge. Some of them teach despite the fact that they could earn a lot more money during this time, some help others to get their business off the ground for little or no money, but they all have in common that they all have an intrinsic drive to make each and every thing they do as good as possible. Oh boy do I love this attitude. It hits home with me and is exactly why I do the things I do. ### Good-bye "Herr Lehrer" – for now *"Herr Lehrer" – german, translates "Mr. teacher"* In 2013 I stopped almost all my engagements with schools, universities, and training organisations. I have been training journalists and designers from all over the world in multimedia story-telling, web-design, digital strategies, digital business aspects, typography, you name it. But in 2012 this led to the fact that I spent almost more time away from home than being there. From 2010 on I spent one in five days in India. Do not get me wrong: I loved every second of it, but this does not improve your family life. Another thing suffering from the fact that I had long stretches of absence from home and/or my studio was the quality of jobs I could work on: When you cannot commit a decent amount of time you simply cannot seriously work on larger scale projects. For that reason I decided that I should get my knowledge transferred to others in a different fashion. From 1996 until 2013 is a long haul of teaching and I will get back to it one day. For the time being I decided that I should use my energy and knowledge and opinion to write and give people a chance to follow along. Ideally this makes for some kind of replacement. That is why I write, and the more people read this the more I get the feeling it might actually matter to invest the time. The fact that potential and current clients read this as well is a great side-effect obviously. You do like what I write, come up with etc.? Well, feel free to [get in touch](https://www.janpersiel.com/contact/) to discuss any potential project we might be able to tackle together. ### Fruitful discussion and exchange are wonderful But what this blog offers as well is to communicate my issues with software, hardware, ideas, trends, anything I feel entitled to be able to comment upon and offer suggestions for improvement. And even if these are totally wrong because I might be missing a point, or have to little knowledge about the thing I am writing, or about people, well maybe even you dear reader, fill me in, fill the blanks: I love to learn and love to improve my quality of work, my writing skills, my knowledge about things: I love to grow better and I strive to excel expectations. Even when it takes a second shot, or a third. ## Which audience should I write for It is probably not the worst idea to think about your so-called target group when you do something and you do not want to keep it to yourself. This blog is my personal blog, personal as in my personal point of view. It might be the nucleus for a potential discussion, nevertheless it deals with things which I regard as potentially interesting/annoying/empowering/… for every single one reading this or using/visiting a product/website/thing. I have no proper tagline for the blog as of now but I might consider something like „If you would ask me how to improve this …“. Now who is that person to write for. Actually I have no clue, but I think there are many people out there interested in certain topics I do cover. Some have started to interact with me based upon the few post I have written so far. Great, exactly what I was hoping for. Now do I want to limit that feeling? Limit the people interacting with me? Probably not. Why limit myself to only my blog then? Posting on medium, or actually anywhere else in fact, would be a great idea. ## Publishing authority or the home of the content In many situations one has to discuss where to host your content. Be it your video or your info graphics, YouTube, Vimeo or your own server? Of course you do not want to rely on someone else who can go bankrupt or change the terms and conditions at any time, heck maybe even use your stuff to do advertising for themselves. Actually that is pretty much exactly what you allow every of those platforms to do with your content. Well, surprise, you have to deal with exactly that decision on medium as well. Many authors are mentioning their original blog posts on medium: So they publish on their site first and re-use the articles to gain a larger audience later on. That as a matter of fact sounds like a good plan to me. You still own the original content, but you offer it on another platform for a larger audience as well. And in case the readers on medium are interested beyond what is being published over there they are free to visit the original source and get to know more about the author and other stories as well. So, what is the catch? For starters the above mentioned referral traffic from medium to your site is something working in theory but you have to make it crystal clear and convincing why people should come over and visit you. Otherwise they will not really bother to leave the comfort of browsing medium. ## Search engines and duplicate content Of all things I am not a SEO expert, but from what I have read and tried to find out so far there is a chance of getting into trouble when posting the same stuff on different sites. A longer read covering some of the aspects can be found on [ryanbattles.com](https://ryanbattles.com/post/reposting-content?ref=janpersiel.com) with links to other articles and examples which report things a bit differently. Feel free to dig deeper over there. Basically the positions are a) to use `` and tell the Google bot that medium gets the credit or ask medium to add your site name to their source code … good luck with that :) or b) trust Ryan that it won’t matter really. One thing is probably smart, do not post directly to medium, but rather wait for a week or two. That way you earn the credit of being the original source for your post. Actually a good way to see whether you get traffic from medium or other platforms, since the first wave of visits to your site does not mix with the first wave of RSS-subscribers and social promotion visitors. ## Summing up What is the conclusion from this? Actually I will try to go the dual publishing way. As mentioned above I primarily want to reach people to share my thoughts. My domain janpersiel.com is quite fresh when it comes to the blog. It has a page rank of 4/10 and there is probably not too much to loose right now. I will keep you posted if I see a decline in whatever, and if it pays off, well guess what, I will keep you in the loop as well. But I guess the main goal to reach as many people overrules the potential danger when it comes to my sites rank. In case you read this on [janpersiel.com](https://www.janpersiel.com/) feel free to come over to get connected at [medium.com/@janpersiel](https://medium.com/@janpersiel?ref=janpersiel.com) and vice a versa. Whichever is the case: I am happy to have you here or there as a reader. And of course I am extremely interested in your thoughts and ideas when it comes to reposting. Let me know in the comments (below). ### Death by sketch knife URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/how-bad-software-ruins-your-brand/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:05:33.000Z This post is a post I hate to write: When you decide to use something instead of something you have used previously, and you think that the decision you made is reasonable because it saves time, makes your work better, simply put helps you to get your stuff done quicker, you do not want to be find out that you are wrong, at least for now. Welcome to [Sketch](http://www.sketchapp.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) by Bohemian Coding. ## My Weapons of choice For the last 3 years I had the great pleasure to work with some really great people. We relaunched two online shops with responsive design ([Breuninger.com](http://breuninger.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) and [GALERIA Kaufhof](http://galeria.de/?ref=janpersiel.com)). The people involved really pushed things forward and were extremely keen on getting things done in a very high quality. For me as a designer that meant a few things: I was actually able to get to work with the front-end developers in a very close fashion. We did not create indefinite amounts of photoshop layouts for up to 6 breakpoints but were able to work with pattern libraries and moved forward as things were defined and tested by the stake holders, concept and UX designers. A lot of things we were designing happened in the browser often times. Photoshop often served as a mere composer of fragments. Essentially I was free to use whichever tool was the fastest and most suitable for the job to be done. Perfect. ## Resistance is futile Now as of this writing I am working on a redesign of parts of one of the shops (actually it is an evolution of version 1.0). I figured that after using my RWD-Pad for the sketches I could finally install Sketch again after having played around with it very early on after it was released. ### Credit where credit is due: Fonts I loved the font management app by Bohemian Coding which was shut down after some time because they had trouble getting it to comply with the MacOS sandboxing as far as I remember. However I am still using Fonts by the very same company and think it is by far the best app for getting an overview over your (activated) fonts. So, I appreciate their work a lot. Since everyone in the industry is using the app I give in after not being convinced before. But the job to be done now is simply not a Photoshop job and I did not feel like coding stuff. Either way of working would feel wrong. So here I am, with a freshly installed version of sketch, and I get to work on a new template view in different viewports … ## Welcome to the Red October, in december Boy was I in for a ride for the last few hours. I do not know whether you know the film Hunt for the Red October with Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine captain. In the film he does a manoeuvre where at some random point in time he abruptly changes the course of the submarine to figure out whether some enemy vessel is tailing him. This manoeuvre is called "Crazy Ivan". Why am I writing about this? Using the Undo function in sketch (as of 3.4.3 and 3.4.2) is like that. You hit CMD + Z and you have no idea what happens next. You paste some text or move a group? Fine. You want to undo this? Fine. But instead of simply doing what you expect the app to do it deletes a completely other group and resets yet another text layer to the default text. Alright, that is not what I want, select REDO from the menu because a moved item is better than no item. Ha! Well, just like Marty McFly was not supposed to change history (luckily he did!) you do not get a box back which did not exist in the past. Result: Your work is gone and you cannot undo your (actually sketch's) actions which got rid of it. Well, why am I even getting annoyed by this? It is a simply rule of time travel: Avoid anything creating a temporal paradox! But wait! I simply wanted to design something and made a mistake. If I would want to create temporal mayhem I would buy a flipping Delorean and not a license for the sketch app. ## Sloppyness or lack of testing? Scanning the **release history** of the previous versions of sketch I see huge amounts of bugs related to the undo function. I am not an app developer and have no clue about what it takes to make sure that undo actually means undo and not do-weird-things-unexpected-and-unreproducable. But I know one thing: Despite the fact that the app has an enormous amount of kick-arse features which are just right for UI and app design, this renders the software to be something that is not worth a penny right now. The 3.4 release seems to be a disaster when you look around the web with even Bohemian Coding [admitting that they did not really get things right](http://blog.sketchapp.com/post/133342860170/sketch-342?ref=janpersiel.com). Well, to me as a new customer (again), I must say that I am extremely disappointed. > This must kill so many hours only because designers are trying to reproduce the work they already did. Releasing software which such major flaws is a really, really bad thing to do. It is a shame for every single feature that does work so well in the app and all the many great thoughts that went into it. After all you can sink a huge boat with only a few tiny holes. Well that is what this feels like to me: A tool going down on my list of preferred apps. I hope this will be investigated, I filed bug reports, but there is no system to this error as it seems: Crazy, as I wrote above. ## Please fix this Please fix this Bohemian Coding before that sinking feeling turns into pure frustration. You have such a great product – why risk it by releasing stuff that kills it? Looking forward to getting the fixed version asap. Thank you! ### Open the floodgates: Protonet's comments URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/open-the-floodgates-protonet-comments/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:05:16.000Z In my recent post on my new data vault, the [Protonet Maya](https://www.janpersiel.com/next-years-data-homecoming-queen-protonet-maya/), I offered you an insight into my shifting data storage from dropbox to my Protonet server. The server's operating system Soul OS offers a great web interface to get things done. But it comes with a flaw which one really needs to be aware of. ## Getting feedback on anything As you can see in the examples on [Protonet.info](https://protonet.info/de/soul-beispiele/?ref=janpersiel.com) (in German only) the Protonet Soul OS offers a widespread opportunity to leave feedback and / or discuss topics, to-dos, files, you name it. Basically everything on the server can be discussed. In case you install the Android or iOS app (Protonet Messenger) you can even chime in from your smartphone. Great! ### Perfect for remotely working, distributed teams When you work in one office chances are you can **easily get together** without too much of a hassle and quickly **sort things out**. Be it questions or gather around a conceptual drawing or the latest design mockups. But as soon as team members have to work apart from each other there is a need to communicate on **alternative channels**. The teams I work with use skype, [Hipchat](https://hipchat.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) and lately everyone seems to hop onto the [Slack](https://slack.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) train. Understandably so. Now these chat tools are great for getting stuff communicated, the occasional file transfer and for travelling back in time to see what people were talking about. Protonet comes with something similar: A group chat and comments. Unlike in other platforms the comments feel very much like a chat. Actually you cannot tell a difference. And that is the beginning of a small disaster waiting to happen. ## The problem with ever-present comments Let me be crystal clear: Comments next to all kinds of things are a great idea because it puts feedback where you need it: Next to the respective item/media/text. The fact that the comments in the Protonet Soul OS look like a chat though cause a flood of comments. ### Hitting the Enter-key every time you breathe Remember back in the dark ages before Online-Messaging? When you had to pay 20¢ per 160 characters? Well back than you tried to make you message fit to avoid paying 20¢ for 1 character too much. As you know: "Think don'r live here anymore." meaning: People hit Enter when they finish a thought. Or when they think they have to reply before the other end gets impatient, or … well you name it. They hit Enter or Return if you will all too often. Not too often in general but for the Protonet system. The fact that the comments look like a chat, makes people behave like in a chat. They go wild with the Enter key. And that doesn't help in finding things, or getting an overview. I was not sure about the comments when I started using the system but my worst fears have come true: **One needs to brief people how to use the system** in order to keep things clean and useful. And having to brief people and tell them what to do is not the best thing. Ideally things are understood without training time and just work in the best possible way. ## What goes wrong? As I mentioned above the comments and the chat look all too similar. For that reason they trigger the wrong behaviour. But there is yet another problem in the system: the chats and comments slide in from the right side. That makes sense as you usually see something on the left, click on it and the area shrinks ans the chat / comments slide in from the right. But the trouble is: You do not know what you are looking at. Is it the chat? Is it the comments for item XYZ? if you do something else or get to a comment via the notification panel (which moves in from the right as well) you need to pay a lot of attention to where you are right now. It gets even more confusing when you work in notes. Choose a note on the left, swooosh, it slides in from the right. Now comment on the note, and swoo… err, oooops, where are the comments? They did not slide in from the right. This time they are just there replacing the text. Not very consistent. ### Consistency is king? So we have a situation where different things (comments and chats) are similar in behaviour and graphical representation, but the same things, like the comments, are not being used consistently throughout the application. That ladies and gentlemen is a **first class example of a UI and UX problem: expectation ≠ experience**. ## Workflow disruption baked in While the UI and UX flaws make the work a bit tricky sometimes one can get around the platform quite well. Luckily ## Outlook Don't get me wrong: I do love the Protonet solution, and that is the reason I write about it so much. Because I think it is a well made product. But if one does not report the flaws they cannot get fixed. So I will stick to getting new team members on board by telling them what to do and what not to do and hope that this gets fixed at some point in time. In case you need help Protonet: Let me know ;) ### RWD-Pad: The fastest way to sketch web and app interfaces URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/rwd-pad-the-fastest-way-to-sketch-web-and-app-interfaces/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:04:59.000Z As a designer and a content developer or concept developer you can choose between a multitude of tools these days to get your ideas visualised, from Balsamiq to Omnigraffle, from Sketch to plain paper and pen. I felt that something was missing in the range of tools so I came up with the RWD-Pad. ## Too slow, too limited, or too unprecise Depending on the project I am working on I might have the luxury of being in a team with a wireframing person or not. Often times other people do the conceptual work and develop the rough structure or get us started by mocking up the first ideas. Especially when it comes to remotely working teams and people this tends to be in a digital format. That is great because you can easily change your Balsamiq-or-whatever-you-might-use-mockup and upload the changed version to Confluence, basecamp or whatever you might be using. ### Quick sketching vs. digitally editable Of course people work differently depending on their background and experiences, but I tend to feel limited by digital wireframing apps when it comes to the point of getting the first ideas visualised. There is no app that is as fast as me and my pen/sharpie/fineliner. I would rather draw something four times and see slight variations and the process on paper than a slick, pseudo-roughened digital version of a sketch. However, rough sketches do come with a built-in pitfall: You might be quite out of proportion. Even on checkered paper you might loose the orientation in terms of sizes and proportions. That could make your wireframes less usable. So how can one optimise that? ## Freedom meets minimal guidance In order to remedy the situation that there is a potential to be not very precise with the sketches I developed a template to use for my sketches. ### What do you need when sketching for Responsive webdesign or apps? Of course I did not feel like putting too much on my sketch template. The supporting elements should be barely visible, but still present enough to use them without thinking. I incorporated: - **a grid system** similar to Bootstrap / Foundation etc. which is based on 12 columns (6 in the small resolution) - **three typical breakpoints** based on desktop, iPad vertical and Smartphone vertical. - **pixel rulers** for a better orientation how big things might be on the screen later on - **fold markers** to see how much you might get to see above the fold - **label areas** for date, project name, page/screen name and a status area (approved, idea, to be finetuned, …) - **device icons** to make it easy to grasp which screen is which. ### Limitation and decisions I am a great fan to design for breakpoints not devices because you simply cannot rely on device widths, not even with Apple devices anymore. Nevertheless did I opt to create the first version of the **RWD-Pad** to use the **sizes 1024, 768 and 375 Pixels in width** representing the **typical iOS device screen sizes**. These tend to be the devices many people aim to test, use and care the mot about in many projects. Nevertheless, I am working on a second version with other breakpoints and a larger version with more than three breakpoints. Watch the skies, keep looking for an announcement. ## The finished product I have the first batch of RWD-Pads in beta test right now and they work great! I still have things to improve but the fact that I have **ready-made DIN A4 sheets** to start sketching at any time is wonderful and helps a lot. When done sketching I dump the sheets into my [ScanSnap document scanner](http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00BSR37G8/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&creativeASIN=B00BSR37G8&linkCode=as2&tag=janper-21&ref=janpersiel.com) (which is one of the best buys I ever made) and they are ready to go in a few seconds via email, basecamp, whatever. Or, I start choosing the best ones and get those into Balsamiq or the likes and saved time in finding the right solution. I will test a bit more and soon you will be able to get your hands onto your RWD-Pad as well if you like to work this way as well. ## Things nice to have in the next version As mentioned above I do have a few things to do: - more breakpoints per sheet - another selection of breakpoints - evaluating compatibility with [appseed](http://www.appseed.ca/?ref=janpersiel.com) to make it even more useful But even without these things done yet, the RWD-Pad saves me tons of time when getting ideas sorted out and concepts visualised. Hope this insight into my process was interesting and let me know whether you are interested in the product. Image credits: Jan Persiel, all rights reserved ### 'In Progress' a book by Jessica Hische URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/in-progress-by-jessica-hische/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:04:30.000Z For a few years now I have followed the work and art of Jessica Hische because I love the way she presents her work and let’s people in on how she achieved what and why. If I had to choose only very few books to take onto the deserted island (I could never settle for one) one would be In Progress. ## Lettering from sketch to printed book cover The book offers an insight into Jessica Hische’s work and process of working. It is not one of those boring portfolio books where you wade through endless pages of the same stuff without any meaningful texts. Yes you get to see some work here and there but never without being put into context. Often times one learns about the process and the decisions made along the way. ## Coffee table book meets tutorial What I really like about books of this kind is that there is a wonderful mix of illustrations and instructions, sketches and final results all paired with an easy to follow narrative. If you have ever watched one of the multiple videos on Youtube about Jessica, giving a talk for instance, you can sense that she has the come and see how I did it and try to do it yourself gen baked into her DNA. I never get the feeling that she is an arrogant person, no quite the contrary. This is what you get in the book as well: Helpful advise on how to do certain things like sketching and digitising your work, how to distribute things on the canvas, how the make your lettering stand out (without overusing swashes). ## Helpful links - [Buy In Progress on amazon.de](http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=as%5Fli%5Fss%5Ftl?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&field-keywords=jessica%20hische%20in%20progress&linkCode=ur2&site-redirect=de&sprefix=jessica%20hische%20in%20progress%2Caps%2C180&tag=janper-21&url=search-alias%3Daps&ref=janpersiel.com) - [Jessica Hische on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=jessica+hische&ref=janpersiel.com) - [Jessica Hische / official website](http://jessicahische.is/awesome?ref=janpersiel.com) - [Skillshare courses with Jessica Hische](http://skl.sh/1HSIzVN?ref=janpersiel.com) ### Next year’s (data) homecoming queen: Protonet MAYA URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/next-years-data-homecoming-queen-protonet-maya/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T16:04:59.000Z Working as a freelance designer and running a design studio at the same time demands a lot of flexibility when it comes to juggling your data and making them available to the respective team members or clients. Is there another option beyond email and Dropbox? ## Data, data, back and forth ### The simplicity of working at a corporate office Sometimes I envy my employed friends and colleagues for the little energy they have to waste on getting their work place up and running. Usually things are there: A computer of some kind, often times a server (or hordes of them), badass-web-connectivity. And that usually is available at an office which tends to be at the same address (street and IP). Okay, granted, there is IT making their life miserable (they sometimes rightfully think): No admin passwords, no untested software, last years Creative Suite, … well, life sucks, get a helmet. ### The proverbial grass Don’t get me wrong I am fully aware of all the implications, because I have to live with them as well: In previous times as an employee and now coming into these agencies, publishing houses or corporations. Coming from the outside, you are often prohibited from accessing the servers in-house, especially with your own laptop. Understandably to some extend! ### Email to the rescue? Err, no! But how can you get to work in situations like that? One needs to share files and bounce them back and forth. So what happens? What is the **common ground**, a tool everyone can use? Email to the rescue! Yay! Files to big? No problem: Corporate file transfer like yousendit or wetransfer make that process possible with huge files and archives. Seriously? Yes I do have a lot of stuff in my email, but that system is destined to fail eventually to some extent or the other. > Marc: "Hey Frank, we did not get the layouts yet!" > Frank: "Yes you did, I emailed the files to Peter two days ago." > Marc: "Can you mail the files again? Peter is travelling today." This made-up conversation can be changed in 2.73 gazillion ways and still take place somewhere as I type this. This system is completely insane if you are not trying to get the **non-productivity award of the year**. ### Dark clouds or little fluffy ones? But wait, there is Dropbox, and Seafile, and owncloud, and … Welcome to **Cloudistan**. Let us ignore for a second that many companies simply do not allow their employees to conduct any business on a (US-based) **cloud architecture** and in some instances rightfully so. So Dropbox has managed what no one has achieved before, at least not properly, to my knowledge: They have made file storage and syncing an Apple-esque-ly (not in a mobileme way) simple process, cross-platform. Stuff just works (don’t try to get huge spare-images with encrypted data synced, that caused some trouble for me). Wonderful. Does not solve the Project management side of things but at least you get stuff from a to b and c and back. Since almost everyone uses Dropbox, inviting and syncing is simple and at an affordable price. Setting this up in Seafile or owncloud is by far not as comfortable and easy to use. ### Unhooking myself from Dropbox Why did I stop using Dropbox? I am glad you asked: Personally I think it was all explained on drop-dropbox (link deleted). I really do want my data where I own them. Where I do not have to fear that some three-letter agency comes in with a load of SSDs and says "fill 'em up Bob!" (as if they would send someone to copy the data onto a physical volume, ha). And no, hold your breath, I do not have anything to hide. It is about **privacy** and wanting to define who gets to see what a.k.a. privacy control. I cannot sign NDAs and then leave my customer's data in the hands of some company which, even if they wanted to, cannot guarantee the safety and privacy of my data. ## Your data everywhere, every time, always up to date. Now with my Sync-service of choice being tossed out of my toolbox, I face a lack of a) **backup** b) **shareable storage space** and c) **cross-platform accessibility**. Previously I used two **[Synology Diskstations](http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=as%5Fli%5Fss%5Ftl?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&field-keywords=synology%20diskstation&linkCode=ur2&site-redirect=de&sprefix=synology%20diskstation%2Caps%2C152&tag=janper-21&url=search-alias%3Delectronics&ref=janpersiel.com)** to have access to my data and store backups. But they are not very performant for a fast access since mine are five years old and have HDDs and not SSDs built in. **[Owncloud](https://owncloud.org/?ref=janpersiel.com)** plus some DynDNS service, and a **VPN** were an option but I had trouble with Owncloud before. Files not synced and/or corrupted by it. **Google Drive**? Not really. I felt that this would not be too different from Dropbox somehow and it is not as slick. One morning the solution was there: Right in front of my eyes! An ad on a printed [t3n-Magazine](http://t3n.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) for the [Protonet](http://protonet.info/?ref=janpersiel.com) Servers. I was thinking about this as a solution for quite some time before, was actually in talks with the sales force a few times and back then did not feel like spending the money. Starting at 1800 € for the small MAYA with 512 GB SSD storage and no redundancy felt expensive. ### Who dares wins Dare is a strong word and I did not dare to spend 1800 € for the MAYA. I did chicken out and found a way for me to get it right: eBay classifieds for a MAYA and 300 € for a 1TB SSD, no guarantee for the MAYA anymore though. A few screw driver turns and 15 minutes setup time later my first Protonet server was online for the world to work with me and to share data. ### So what's in the box? The Protonet servers are **made in Hamburg** (Yay!) and run their own proprietary OS, namely the Soul OS. It is based on some UNIX version (I will find out what exactly) and comes with a very nice web-interface. This interface might remind you of services like [basecamp](http://basecamp.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) or other groupwares like [ActiveCollab](http://activecollab.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) (read more about my take on the current [ActiveCollab version](https://www.janpersiel.com/the-problem-with-ugly-software/)). The Server offers to connect to it via **Network Shares** in the **MacOS** Finder, via the **Windows** Explorer or any other OS as well to exchange files but a lot gets done on the web interface. In addition to **file storage** and **sharing** you can **discuss projects**, view files on the web, **chat about topics**, have one or many **group calendars** which can be imported in iCal or Exchange, **manage to-do lists** etc. Basically everything a digital nomad needs to get projects done. My MAYA server is connected to the web via a 50/10 Mbit/s connection which makes it fast enough for remote access and offers 1GBit/s connections via LAN or built-in WiFi. **Backups** can be done **via CronJobs to a remote site** (like my Synology Diskstation at home for instance, or to a **USB-HDD** or **\-SSD**. The latter needs to be executed manually by default, the remote backup is a job for your local UNIX expert ;) > 'Perfect!' I hear you shout. Yes, almost, but … ### Happyness comes in small doses This cute little orange box is a great solution in general. I will definitely write more about it in detail as I gather more experiences with it. But despite a fresh UI, very fast loading times even via slow connections, fairly easy to understand even for the ever-present noobs. ### I've got that syncing feeling Where is the the problem? It lies within the Sync feature or a bug in the software to be precise. At least for now. Reading from the promo website and testing the cloud version of the Protonet Soul OS I was fine with everything. But now as I had cancelled my Dropbox Premium account and wanted to move my **Dropbox Sync** folder over to the MAYA via my **Protonet Sync folder** I hit a wall. Just start it in the evening, be done with it in the morning I thought to myself and jammed the Ethernet cable into both the MAYA and the MacbookPro. In case you feel like killing every single process on your Protonet server use the current Sync version on MacOS and dump 40 to 60 GB of data onto it. The result is what one could describe as a 'terminal nuclear shutdown'. Reboot by pulling the plug required. Ouch! ### Support, you wish every company would offer In support of Protonet: **They were extremely helpful**, immediately hooked me up in a Teamviewer session, checked everything and told me that the bug won't be fixed since the new, completely overhauled, version is almost ready for public release. Not what you love to hear but completely understandable. Here I am eagerly awaiting the release of the new software and will update the article when the app is ready for Prime-Time. The last missing feature on my quest to get independent in terms of data storage, syncing, and collaboration. Until then I will not touch the sync client and copy my data manually. ## Is my data at home yet? Well, no. But then again, yes. Sync is still an open issue, hopefully to be resolved soon. Personally I need to finalise my new backup strategy with the new kid in town now playing a central role. Don't get me wrong, my data is safe, secured and backed up multiple times, but one does not need 7 backups ;) ## Show me more Are you interested in seeing the Protonet Soul OS in action? Feel free to get in touch and I would be happy to show you around on my server. Drop me a line or get a test account over at [Protonet.info](http://protonet.info/?ref=janpersiel.com). ### Sign painters Movie URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/sign-painters-movie/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:03:38.000Z One of the nicest documentaries of the last few years is the [Sign Painter Film](https://vimeo.com/61006621?ref=janpersiel.com). Well at least to me since I totally admire the guys being portrayed. And I am pretty sure you will love then as well! ## The Sign Painters film Personally I bought the **Premium Edition** with additional interviews which is totally worth the extra money. I am not the kind of guy who is easily pulled into additional material on DVDs or Blurays. Often times I simply could not care less about the polished and often times boring PR stuff that gets pressed onto the discs. But I that is a different story ;) Watching the film will take you on a little journey with some real characters: You can almost smell the paint when you see what they paint. I was super motivated to get my s\*\*t together to start with my lettering and type design after watching the film the first time and it got better ever since. When you hear these people talking about their jobs and why they do it you cannot help but feel deep respect for the craft, the dedication, and the achievements they talk about. I could go into detail about every single person interviewed but I would rather urge you to see the film without knowing too much. In case you feel like seeing it on a big screen the official site has [global screening times](http://www.signpaintersfilm.com/screenings/?ref=janpersiel.com). ## The Sign Painters book In addition to the film there as an accompanying book as well. Yes you have guess it: It is called **Sign Painters** as well. Many of the things from the film can be found in there and it is a nice addition to your design library and/or your coffee table. I like the book because of the nice selection of work examples and bought it before I actually realised that there was a film to watch as well. Have a look at it when you stop by at my office. ## Helpful Links - Watch the trailer [on vimeo.com](https://vimeo.com/61006621?ref=janpersiel.com) - Buy the book on [amazon.de](http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/1616890835/ref=as%5Fli%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&creativeASIN=1616890835&linkCode=as2&tag=janper-21&ref=janpersiel.com) - Buy the disc/download on the [official website](http://www.signpaintersfilm.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) - See it on the big screen? [Global screening times](http://www.signpaintersfilm.com/screenings/?ref=janpersiel.com) ## Keeping it to myself? No! Since this is my personal blog, I have decided to talk about things like the Sign Painters film as well as books and other things as well. I hope you like my recommendations. Feel free to share this and other posts if you like them or leave a comment. Or, hey, do both things in case you feel that it is totally rad. ### Developing a versatile info screen for our co-working space URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/developing-a-versatile-info-screen-for-our-co-working-space/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:03:13.000Z Back in June we joined forces with a few people in the quest for finding a nice office space. By September 1st we moved in and we thought about how to organise a few things. One of the ideas, inspired by the original [panic blog post](https://www.panic.com/blog/panic-status-board-2013-edition/?ref=janpersiel.com) about their status screen, is to have a screen in the kitchen where everyone will be at any random time for at least a few times per day. This screen can act as the center of information distribution, and in addition to the screen we could have the same information available via the web as well. This post is the first in a series of posts, journaling about the process of getting things up and running. So feel free to come back for more… ## Features for our info system To start the whole project it makes sense to list what we want to get up and running. This list is by far not complete and might change over time by adding ideas as they come up and by deleting things. So please follow along to see the respective process of each functionality. ### Our wish-list - **errands list**, universally accessible for everyone to edit, the thermal printer should print the list on demand and delete the entries - **metro bus time table** for the nearby stop - **wind prediction** for the wind surfers in our office - **client alert** to let people know when to behave ;) - **message board** in case someone needs to "broadcast" some information - **upcoming birthdays and events** so the others can make sure there is cake and/or beer - **booking of the conference area** in case the client alert above is not enough - **Mario Kart high scores** and the current champion - **email list** for those times when we need to reach everyone whether they are at the office or not - **night time surveillance** with video recording at night - **busy / available indicator** for our "phone booth" room And there is probably more stuff we did not come up with as of now. In order to make this possible we will rely on the things available to us in terms of budget, hardware, and software skills. Until someone else rises to take over the role I will claim ownership for this project and I am fully aware of the potential to run this thing into a wall and/or possibly waste endless hours on it. Neither of these options is my plan but in case I do run into problems I will try to write about all of the potential and actual pitfalls as well. For those of you who are interested in not wreaking havoc in your similar project this might be beneficial. ## Potential hardware candidates As mentioned above I would love to use hardware already available to me as far as possible. Potentially this biases me in my thinking and evaluating choices but for now I have a feeling that this is a meaningful way of going forward. As a matter of fact it will save some money upfront. ### Available hardware - Raspberry Pi 1 B+ - Raspberry Pi 2 B - camera module - USB-WiFi-dongle - 16:9 TFT screen (23") - wall mount for the screen - thermal printer [mPrinter](http://themprinter.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) which does not work properly right now because of the poor build quality. Well, do not get me started about this fraudulent project… - [domain name](http://loft74.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) - RGB-LEDs - breakout boards - sensor for temperature - sensor for humidity - sensor for motion - RGB-light bulb - iPad 2 - USB power sources - cables, cables, cables - micro-SD cards Obviously WiFi internet access is possible and power will be present as well. So theoretically there is a lot of stuff to get started with. ## Outlook In the next post I will focus on the ideas in more detail and roughly set the scope for each of the sub-projects. I guess there are projects which achieve a lot with less hardware so for that reason I am fairly confident that we will be able to get a nifty little system up and running. ### ActiveCollab: The problem with "ugly" software URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/the-problem-with-ugly-software/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:02:47.000Z For over a decade I have been using various types of groupware and/or collaboration software. From Lotus Notes to Wikis, from Basecamp to ActiveCollab. Some of them did suck, some were great. Sometimes it was easy to use them, sometimes it was barely possible without having a PhD in Weirdthinking. However, one thing which all of the software I dropped, more or less quickly, had in common was the fact that the design was bad. ## Design as a game changer I recently came across an article by Petar Perovic on [Medium](https://blog.activecollab.com/redesigning-active-collab-393608cb019b?ref=janpersiel.com) in which he described the painful but successful process of bringing ActiveCollab up to par with what you would expect from a 2015 web-based software. Years ago (2007?) I started using [Basecamp](http://basecamp.com/?ref=janpersiel.com) and I loved it. Back then it was a great inspiration for us to redesign [macbay](http://macbay.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) and add functionality and take functions away (which is probably the best thing to do most often times). I loved it but could never really come to terms with their price models and the fact that I did not really control my data or the data of my clients. ActiveCollab started out as an open source clone of basecamp but soon turned into a product by a company and well, it rushed towards the state of being a basecamp clone only featuring poor UI, UX and lacks of all kinds of things. And poorly enough: It stayed that way for years. Personally I had never felt so annoyed about the hundreds of dollars spent for my license, espacially since clients rejected using the software simply because they did not understand it. And who could blame them. Now this article pops up in my reading list, scented with the sweet smell of change, improvements and slick design. Hey, great, I thought to myself, take my money you finally got it. What took you so long? My hopes were high, everything looked great, stuff got dumped from the feature list but I never used those things anyway. I even tried the first tiny client project on the platform, well at least I wanted to … ## Roadblock ahead: The infamous installation from hell So here I am: I have accounts for various hosting accounts with [HostEurope](http://hosteurope.de/?ref=janpersiel.com), [Domainfactory](http://df.de/?ref=janpersiel.com), [1&1](http://hosting.1und1.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) and [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=1fae793ac69c&ref=janpersiel.com). No root servers, just managed servers, typical shared web space. Well I will save you the complete story but I gave up. A combination of preventions from my hosting, additional installs via ssh pretty much demanding a PhD in SysAdminology (at least it felt like that), and the frustration of hundreds of error emails while trying to set this puppy up did not really help. Here we were again: A software had moved from ugly and bloated to slick and lean, at least from a conceptual and interface point of view. Unfortunately this had not been thought through when it came to the guts of the software. From my point of view you either design something in a way which covers all aspects of the software, or you will face disappointment on your user's side of the fence. Why polish everything, turn the frog into the pretty princess and keep the process to get the princess shining as "ugly" as hell? Come on ActiveCollad, you started something here, try harder to get everything sorted out and make people happy. All I feel when I read your name now is the urge to embrace for impact. ## Missed opportunity ActiveCollab had a second chance (maybe it was even the third or fourth). I even spent money again on extending my update subscription. But things went wrong, maybe because I am not smart enough, maybe because I use the wrong Hosting. Actually I stil have some 10 months on my update subscription plan. We'll see what they can make of it. However, I added [Uberspace](http://uberspace.de/?ref=janpersiel.com) to my list of trusted hosting providers to avoid trouble in the future and changed my plans for collaboration software to [Protonet](http://protonet.info/?ref=janpersiel.com). Protonet is not perfect but that is a different story. Personally I hope the guys over at ActiveCollab continue on their path to improve their software. It is a great step forward to completely overhaul your interface and application structure and achieve great results like the ones you can see on the marketing site. But it's a long way to tipperary as my Mum always says. Good luck, I'll be watching you. ### I am a Ghost writer URL: https://www.janpersiel.com/i-am-a-ghost-writer/ Last updated: 2025-10-27T12:01:14.000Z I have started many blogs. Actually too many. I am not sure whether this will be the last one, but this time I hope to be a bit more organised and potentially bring more writing stamina to the table. ## What is different from my last 20 blogs In the past I have noticed that my writing and posting was driven by adding something to my site which brings new content, drives traffic, enhances my public perception. That might have been a reasonable approach, but it does not work out as a sustainable motivation source. This time I am actually doing something different: My focus will be on stuff I do care about and that is not enhancing a website, driving traffic, decorating a portfolio with content. No, I will just write about stuff I love, I like and I do. ## Choosing the right tools Something I found out in the past was that I felt inhibited or distracted by tools. Wordpress is great and I love the fact that it has grown into something big and versatile. But on the other hand that is exactly the thing which let's my brain start spinning and craving for adding stuff and features and images and stylesheets to each post. Just because I can. Not helping! So I have decided to "limit" myself on every level: Hosting for this blog is at [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=1fae793ac69c&ref=janpersiel.com) because they offer dead simple hosting for my CMS. And I love their simple interfaces and neat design and illustrations. One simply has to support good work I think. Which brings me to the CMS. Back in 2013 I helped to bring [Ghost](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-blogging-platform?ref=janpersiel.com) to life and now it is ready for prime-time (or at least Jan-time). The interface is super clean, the options are super limited and I am writing in [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/?ref=janpersiel.com) most of the time anyway. Although the setup was a bit challenging at times I got this blog of the ground. Yay! ## Topics and timing I do not want to give an outlook here and now. I have done that so many times and did not deliver. Let me just go ahead and fill this thing and a structure will become clear to you my dear first post reader. So be patient, stay curious, and please let me know if you like stuff, and if you don't feel free to help me improve things. Thanks for coming along on this little adventure.