I stumbled across this useful little article from Jason Fried from last year on ‘Epicenter Design’ this morning.
As Jason points out, it’s easy to get into the habit of starting a page layout with the ‘givens’ — elements such as the logo, search boxes, footers, etc — and finish by ‘pouring in’ the purpose of the page into whatever remains.
‘Epicenter Design’ reverses this process by identifying each page’s epicenter — the element that gives the page it’s purpose — and designing outwards from it.
A simple and relatively subtle change, but I think one that puts what the user is trying to do in sharper focus.
Alex has been doing cruel and unusual things to CSS since 2001. He is the lead front-end design and dev for SitePoint and one-time SitePoint's Design and UX editor with over 150+ newsletter written. Co-author of The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Now Alex is involved in the planning, development, production, and marketing of a huge range of printed and online products and references. He has designed over 60+ of SitePoint's book covers.