Magic

Monday, 3rd June 2003
There is one project scheduled for last and coming week: Graphical redesign of www.huizentoppers.nl.

Old design Dutch on-line real estate advertisements
New design On-line property ads
I can spend weeks messing around with a design and it will never get really appealing.

Such a graphical redesign is pure magic to me. It is like the graphical designer circles his magic wand over a design, sprinkles a but of magic star dust and then suddenly switches on the light so everybody can admire his work of art.

How does a designer do that? What is going on in his head? I have asked several designers. And to my frustration, they don't know themselves. They create their artwork, within minutes, hours or days and see that it is beautiful.

For years I'm looking for a theoretical definition of beautiful, matching colours.

I visualise this as a rotating triangle in a colour circle. The edges of the triangle point at the matching colours. To me it is a nice mental model and yes, it's resulting colours do match.

But unfortunately there are many more colours outside the circle.

So, the circle is too simple. It should have been a filled cylinder. I can imagine this visualisation, but it does not help me. Why do some colours in that cylinder match, while others don't? Is there a pyramid or other polyshape within the cylinder that points at matching colours?

I don't know. The cylinder of colours is a closed book to me, a black-box. Or should I say a black cylinder.
 
 
Hmm, the only missing items are two white ends. Yes, this is going to be a magic wand. Didn't I tell you? It is magic!

Till next nut,
Nut

See The real estate site picture gallery for a photo of the graphical magician: Erik Spinhoven