Top all-time · #3911
Cameron Moll
Personal blog · cameronmoll.com/journaldesignweb
Cameron Moll's personal blog at cameronmoll.com covers design and web. Since 2007, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Why thinking in the shower may be an ideal model for "creative pause"”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Cameron Moll's design writing on grids, borrowing and inspiration, showering and thinking, and HTML and CSS practice, along with his portfolio, which commenters call influential and quality.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why thinking in the shower may be an ideal model for "creative pause"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-11-15
- /archives/000016.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-06-19
- Abraham Wald and the airplane diagram with red bullet holes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-19
What Hacker News says?
I think this is the reason: http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/2006/12/gridding_the_960... . 960px was the "standard" for so much time (before RWD was a thing) that I still use it as the default width when designing new stuff. Maybe this is a bow to the old masters of our craft.
Comment linking /archives/2006/12/gridding_the_960/
on “Skeleton 2.0 CSS Framework”Submitted Why thinking in the shower may be an ideal model for "creative pause" as a story · 66 points
HN discussionSurprised to see nobody yet mention here Edward de Bono's concept of creative pause. It's through activities such as purposeless walking — or showering, or doing the dishes — that we allow our consciousness to subside into a routine task while subconscious feedback is allowed to subtly rise. In theory this allows for more of a connection to the deeper going-ons in the brain. More thoughts on the matter from designer…
Comment linking /archives/2008/11/showering_and_thinking/
on “The slow death of purposeless walking”Submitted Nine skills that separate good and great designers as a story · 17 points
HN discussionTo me the issue is what people read in data. There are many suffering numberitis or they trust ANY number or "data" completely ignoring how it was established, errors and so on. Some even read the summary of an article stating their conclusion came from a certain dataset and do not even try to see that said dataset. It's not a "data" issue per se of course, but it's still an issue coming from the present data-bound…
Comment linking /journal/abraham-wald-red-bullet-holes-origin-story
on “What If Data Is a Bad Idea?”Submitted Abraham Wald and the airplane diagram with red bullet holes as a story · 14 points
HN discussionMoll's comments on his porfolio page: > While overseeing the redesign of LDS.org, the LDS web team asked me to step in towards the end of the project to add my take on the visuals, resulting in a few comped ideas within a very short timeframe. [1] That sounds like he did just a bit of work late in the game. (Maybe you meant that, but my first take was "designed the whole site" from reading your "The designer of the…
Comment linking /projects/lds/
on “Mormon Church website a good example of SEO”Submitted Is it time to move beyond 960 pixels? as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI think they just hire great people and trust them. The designer of the LDS website is someone who I look up to, wrt/design: http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/
Comment linking /portfolio/
on “Mormon Church website a good example of SEO”Submitted Mobile web usage nearly equal PC web in Japan as a story · 10 points
HN discussionNo, this is the only standalone article from them I've seen over the years and I assume it was the prototype form of what became the Getting Real series of essays: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php This particular approach (design all the UI "bits" first, then glue them together like legos) is a classic and I return back to it about annually. I use it in combination with another great bit of advice, Cameron M…
Comment linking /archives/000016.html
on “37signals Paper: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design”Submitted Extensible CSS - the most basic things your site's css/html should support as a story · 7 points
HN discussioni've not read any books on it, so i'm just going to throw up what i use and read for quality information and inspiration online: http://www.zeldman.com/ (and his book) http://www.alistapart.com/ http://www.cameronmoll.com/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ (inspiration and tools) http://www.thinkvitamin.com/ http://psdtuts.com/ (for photoshoppy help)
Comment linking /
on “Ask YC: Where to learn web design?”Submitted Overcoming blankcanvasphobia as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is a great article on why designers should seek visual inspiration from pre-existing work and I know exactly one on how to do it: http://cameronmoll.com/archives/000016.html Cameron Moll calls it "nodes of inspiration" and this was highly influential on my budding young design career at the time. In essence, never rip off one interface entirely, instead you should rip off many elements from different sources an…
Comment linking /archives/000016.html
on “Why Great Designers Steal—and Are Proud of It”Submitted The "5 P’s" of Twitter’s Runaway Success as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've been asking the same questions lately and trying to find the answers. The problem that I've run into is that a lot of designers just feel what is right. It seems very instinctive, which makes it hard for them to pass on knowledge. One designer that I found who seems to know and actively apply principles of good design is cameron moll ( http://cameronmoll.com ). Cameron gave a great talk a while back at the HOW…
Comment linking /archives/2009/05/free_download_good_vs_great_design/
on “Ask HN:How do you become a really good web designer?”Submitted 12 resources for getting a jump on HTML 5 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAgreed. Recognizable lyrics is usually not good, unless its music that'll pump me up when I need it. I've been trying out listening to some sort of white noise, ie. running water, static, etc., borrowing from the idea on this post: http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2008/11/showering_and_thinki... It can get pretty noisy where I work, so something that distracts me so constantly and blocks the noise out helps me focus.
Comment linking /archives/2008/11/showering_and_thinking/
on “Ask YC: Does music help programmer concentrate better?”Submitted The Highly Extensible CSS interface as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI was the same way honestly, but I switched back to HTML4 Strict. It's not that hard of a switch, and you can still keep your xhtml practices and write very clean layouts with it. Here's some food for thought by Cameron Moll: http://cameronmoll.com/archives/2009/06/coding_like_its_1999...
Comment linking /archives/2009/06/coding_like_its_1999/
on “HTML 5 Starts Looking Real”Submitted On writing more betterer as a story · 1 points
HN discussionEven though every screen I use on a daily basis runs at least 1280x1024, in general, I still tend to work off 1024x768 as my baseline. My feeling is that - as with 800x600 - I will likely stick with 1024x768 as the baseline for a little longer than I should... Just to be sure. A site that takes up a bit to little room is less annoying that a site that takes up too much, IMO. See here for a somewhat old but useful di…
Comment linking /archives/001220.html
on “Ask YC: What resolutioon do you design websites for?”Submitted The Highly Extensible CSS Interface as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBe intentional with what we steal Here are some great articles on the topic: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/copy-great-designers-steal/ http://www.alistapart.com/articles/redesignrealign http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000016.html http://www.ryanbrill.com/archives/stealing-design/
Comment linking /archives/000016.html
on “Ignite Show: Jeff Veen on great designers and cargo cults”
