iOS Designers: Say Goodbye to Pixel Perfect (natashatherobot.com)
almost 9 years ago from David Barker
almost 9 years ago from David Barker
Bad advice. Pixel Perfect means attention to detail, taking pride in a final result, being satisfied and feeling validated when you ship something.
Please, please continue to strive to make things you are proud of.
On top of that, I think pixel perfect means that you'll notice if somethings even slightly incorrectly positioned.
Doing this job you get quite good actually, at estimating how many pixels an element has to be pushed up or down. In fact, I normally make that a game. Try to guess it.
I’m often concerned when we, as designers make blanket statements like "I stopped interviewing with that company immediately after that call".
We must be the change we want to see, and it’s our job, if anything, to educate people about newer methodologies, ideas and ways of thinking.
Also, it’s important to note that "Pixel Perfect" can also mean attention to detail. If your primary candidate for design is a specific platform or device, you do need to be accurate (and I dare say perfectly accurate) to that: other platforms will then be the best equivalence to this "perfect vision".
iOS and Android Designers: Please do NOT say goodbye to "Pixel Perfect". Responsive design is great. Dynamic, fluid, all that… Wonderful. Do that. But please respect the pixel grid and design your mocks at 1x (mdpi) so scaling up is easier. As a production person, "pixel perfect" does not mean static. It means you know what the hell you're doing when turning your mocks into a live product.
But please respect the pixel grid and design your mocks at 1x (mdpi) so scaling up is easier.
Yep.
Even if your design is responsive, even if your design is fluid, even if your design targets many different pixel densities, it will still be displayed on a screen with pixels. And, if you know what you’re doing, you still get to control where things land.
Designing for Android and designing for iOS with multiple display targets in mind doesn’t mean forgoing pixel perfection.
Wait, people still think pixel perfect means static psd's?
It's about building a framework / a set of rules. It might be a 22px margin on mobile and 60px on desktop but that doesn't negate the need for these rules to be defined and followed. Text sizing (or language translation) is hardly a new concept either. You can be pixel perfect at 14pt or 18pt in English or Dutch.
Probably not a great idea to publicly denounce terms you demonstrably don't understand.
Apparently, the author doesn't realize that "pixel perfect" is a turn of phrase for detail oriented.
The Dynamic Type section seems to think of type in isolation from the rest of the design which is troubling. Overall, I think the author is being a bit too literal with more than one subject.
I find it too focused on the idea that design is just translating a PSD to a finished app. Its hard to read because its unfortunately how many engineers and designers think about it.
This article really makes me want to dive into iOS design, too bad I have no time :(
Apple's Human-Interface Guidelines are a great place to start. Even if it's just reading for 15mn a day. Once you learn what's expected it becomes much easier to design for iOS.
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