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the subconscious mind is energized when jumping to the next line (as long as it doesn’t happen too frequently, see above bullet point). At the beginning of every new line the reader is focused, but this focus gradually wears off over the duration of the line (“Typographie”, E. Ruder).

this trend is not always about skeuomorphism – which implies a connection to a past incarnation of a similar design – but rather often about realism [2]: a purely visual style that tries to imitate real-world materials and textures, exemplified by Apple's tacky over-use of leather textures in some of their own apps.

skeuomorphic designs tend to look realistic (to make the connection with the original object clear), and realistic designs tend to be skeuomorphic (otherwise the realism would look out of place).

touch target couldn't be smaller than a certain size (Apple's Human Interface Guidelines recommend at least 44 by 44 pixels).

showing less on the screen, but doing more with it.

realism done wrong can morph into kitsch

the problem of getting skeuomorphism wrong: making something look like a physical object, but not work like it

That problem is that when borrowing elements from a design's previous incarnation, you often also bring its limitations along for the ride, even when these limitations have no reason to exist anymore

When done right, skeuomorphism and realism will trigger strong associations with real-world counterparts. This is both a strength and a weakness: sometimes, the association can be so strong that it will stop you from improving on what's already been done.

Gone were the shadows, highlights, gradients, and textures of iOS apps. Instead, Metro offered flat squares of color with big typography.

Microsoft's new design philosophy certainly seemed to strike a chord within the tech sphere, with many praising Metro's strong focus on typography and colors.

And while flat design is often purely visual, it does resonate with designer's love of minimalist concepts, embodied by the famous Antoine de Saint-Exupery that “perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

Two of the most talked-about games in recent month, Letterpress and Hundreds both feature flat designs. In fact, Letterpress creator Loren Brichter even revealed that the whole game only uses a single image!

When you have a high-definition display and screen-optimized fonts, you quickly realize you don't need much else to create beautiful work.

is pushing many designers towards prototyping in the browser directly, foregoing static mockups entirely.

Add all this together and you begin to see why many designers are moving away from texture-heavy realism towards the more flexible and lighter-weight flat style.

keep in mind that the needs of users should always come before our aesthetic pursuits

visual style is nothing more than a means to an end [15]. If the situation calls for realism, go nuts on textures and highlights. On the other hand, if a flat aesthetic achieves the design's goal better then it might be time to go on a gradient diet.

With the recent releases of their newer mobile apps, Google has started pushing a style that some describe as "almost flat" [18], or maybe "skeuominimalism" [19]. Unlike the drastic visual wastelands of Gmail or Google Reader, this new style uses elements like shadows and gradients in a tasteful, subtle way. This style offers the best of both world: realism's affordances and subtle hints combined with the purity and simplicity off flat design.

another way to look at it is that it's simply design done right: seeking efficiency and simplicity without sacrificing usability to the altar of minimalism.

I will pick a camp and put my chips in with flat design (specifically, Google's less-extreme variety).

Google is not so much pioneering a new style as showing us what digital design looks like when it's done right

catch up with what the web has to offer, we'll have to get our hands dirty and start coding [21]. And when you're both designing and coding a layout, you start to appreciate the value of keeping things lightweight.

Flat design also forces you to really care about typography and layout, two areas where web design has traditionally lagged behind its more established print cousin.

When you hover over a menu item, a submenu appears. But apart from hovering over an item, you can also simply click on it to follow the link. Now, what should happen when you tap on the item with a touch device? Should the submenus appear, or should the link activate? Or both? Or should something else happen? On iOS, something else happens. The first time you tap a link like that, the submenu appears; in other words, the hover event fires. You have to tap a second time to actually follow the link. This is confusing, and not many people will tap a second time. On Android, the submenu appears and the link is followed simultaneously. I don’t have to explain to you that this is confusing.

It’s very well possible to think of complex solutions11 whereby you define different interactions for different input devices. But the better solution, I think, is to make sure that the default interaction, the activate event, just works for everybody. If you really need to, you could choose to enhance this default experience for certain users.

The same principle that we follow for interactions — whereby we design the activate event first and enhance it later — applies to graphic design. We should start designing the things that we know everyone will see. That’s the content. No matter how big or small a screen is and no matter how minimal the feature set of a browser, it will be able to show letters.

rather than pollute the page with all kinds of links to get people out of there, we should really focus on that thing in the middle. Make sure it works. Make sure it looks good. Make sure it’s readable.

you start by designing the relationship between the different font sizes.

When the typography is done, you would start designing the layout for bigger screens; you can think of this as an enhancement for people with bigger screens. And after that, when the different layouts are done, you could add the paint. And by paint, I mean color, gradients, borders, etc.

When I say to start with typography, I don’t mean that you aren’t allowed to think about paint at the same time. Rather, I’m trying to find the things that all of these different devices, with all of their different screen sizes and all of their different features, have in common. It just seems logical to first design this shared core thoroughly. The strange thing is that this core is often overlooked: Web professionals tend to view their own creations with top-of-the-line devices with up-to-date browsers. They see only the enhancements. The shared core with the basic experience is often invisible.

All of the things we created first — the navigation, the widgets, the footer — they all helped the visitor to leave the page. But the visitor probably wanted to be there! That was weird.

To build a responsive website that works on all kinds of screens, designing for a small screen first is easiest. It forces you to focus on what’s really important: if it doesn’t fit in this small square, it is probably not terribly important. It forces you to think better about hierarchy, about the right order of components on the page.

Once you’re done with the content, you can start to ask yourself whether this content needs a header. Or a logo. Or subnavigation. Does it need navigation at all? And does it really need all of those widgets? The answer to that last question is “No.” I’ve never understood what those widgets are for. I have never seen a useful widget. I have never seen a widget that’s better than white space.

does the logo really need to be at the top16 of every page? It could very well go in the footer on many websites

the option to add extra luggage to a flight booking might be most effective right there in the overview of the flight, instead of in the middle of a list of links somewhere on the left of the page.

does the main navigation look more important than the main content? Most of the time it shouldn’t be, and I usually consider the navigation to be footer content.

Designing for our readers requires us to understand the information that they will find useful and relevant and then shape that content into a beautiful experience.

From our sample size, we saw a clear tendency towards sizes between 12 and 14 pixels. The most popular font size (38%) is 13 pixels, with 14 pixels slightly more popular than 12 pixels. Overall, the average font size for body copy is 13 pixels.

Heading font size ÷ Body copy font size = 1.96

The overall value, then, is 1.96. This means that when you have chosen a font size for your body copy, you may want to multiply it by 2 to get your heading font size.

line height (pixels) ÷ body copy font size (pixels) = 1.48Note that 1.5 is a value that is commonly recommended in classic typographic books, so our study backs up this rule of thumb. Very few websites use anything less than that. The number of websites that go above 1.48 decreases as you get further from this value.

line length (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 27.8The average line length is 538.64 pixels (excluding margins and paddings)

space between paragraphs (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 0.754

According to a classic rule of Web typography, 55 to 75 is an optimal number of characters per line.

In the last update, Google changed the layout of posts so that you only see three lines of the original post before you see “Read more” link. In other words, your first sentence has to be a gripping teaser to get people to click “Read More.”

The ideal length of a Google+ headline is less than 60 characters To maximize the readability and appearance of your posts on Google+, you may want to keep your text on one line.

Many different studies over the years have confirmed that shorter posts are better on Facebook.

Writing for KISSmetrics, headline expert Bnonn cites usability research revealing we don’t only scan body copy, we also scan headlines. As such, we tend to absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline. If you want to maximize the chance that your entire headline gets read, keep your headline to six words.

some of the highest-converting headlines on the web are as long as 30 words. As a rule, if it won’t fit in a tweet it’s too long. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count. Especially the first and last 3.

The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words

to ensure maximum comprehension and the appearance of simplicity, the perfect line length ranges between 40 and 55 characters per line, or in other words, a content column that varies between 250-350 pixels wide (it depends on font size and choice).

Consider that shorter lines appear as less work for the reader; they make it easier to focus and to jump quickly from one line to the next. Opening paragraphs with larger fonts—and therefore fewer characters per line—are like a a running start to reading a piece of content. This style gets readers  hooked with an easy-to-read opening paragraph, then you can adjust the line width from there.

In September 2012, MailChimp published the following headline on its blog: Subject Line Length Means Absolutely Nothing. This was quite the authoritative statement, but MailChimp had the data to back it up.

Beyond the perfect length, you can also adhere to best practices. In general, a 50-character maximum is recommended, although MailChimp does point out that there can be exceptions: The general rule of thumb in email marketing is to keep your subject line to 50 characters or less. Our analysis found this to generally be the rule. The exception was for highly targeted audiences, where the reader apparently appreciated the additional information in the subject line.

The ideal length of a title tag is 55 characters Title tags are the bits of text that define your page on a search results page. Brick-and-mortar stores have business names; your web page has a title tag. Recent changes to the design of Google’s results pages mean that the maximum length for titles is around 60 characters. If your title exceeds 60 characters, it will get truncated with an ellipse.

Finding a hard-and-fast rule for the maximum recommendation of a title tag isn’t as easy as you’d think. Quick typography lesson: Google uses Arial for the titles on its results pages, Arial is a proportionally-spaced font, meaning that different letters take up different width. A lowercase “i” is going to be narrower than a lowercase “w.” Therefore, the actual letters in your title will change the maximum allowable characters that can fit on one line.

Each pin is an impression. One that garners no re-pins or likes is a wasted opportunity.

Have a voice. In their pin descriptions, most users simply state in words what the image is already showing. Wasted copy! Express why you're pinning something, what you like about it, some cheeky comment. Pin something you don’t like, and say why! You want followers to get to know you, to engage with your personality and/or your brand.

Have a vision. A corollary to the previous tip. Your boards should reflect a consistent, unique visual identity. If they don’t, you may want to consider whether your brand does.

Post lots of content from outside Pinterest! The site tends to become an echo chamber, with most users finding everything on their boards from other boards. Be a source of fresh content to those people. The re-pin has it’s place (a strategic tool to grab someone’s attention). But really, 98% of your pins should be from external sources.