Breaking out of the Cubicle: How a Small, Swiss Company Got its Groove On

In the mid-1990s, Makiko Itoh and her partner left New York's cubicle land for a web shop of their own in the suburbs of Zurich. Learn from her tips on running your own web agency.

Itoh, Makiko. List Apart, A (2001). Careers>Management>Web Design

The Delicate Art of (Web) Design Critique

Since I tend to hang around on various web-related mailing lists, I often see numerous requests for design critiques. Increasingly, this leads me to wonder about the process of critiquing other people's design. It's quite one thing to criticize someone's code; one can argue the merits or not of being a stickler about standards compliancy, or using CSS, or whatever. But design is more personal than writing code. (Writing on its own is also very personal, but that's not the topic here.) How do you constructively critique someone's work without being taken the wrong way? How do you accept criticism without feeling hurt or angry? Here are just a few ideas, gathered from observations and comments from others.

Itoh, Makiko. Digital Web Magazine (2000). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Assessment