Presentation Zen. As a follow up to yesterday's post on Bill Gates' presentation style, I thought it would be useful to examine briefly the two contrasting visual approaches employed by Gates and Jobs in their presentations while keeping key aesthetic concepts found in Zen in mind.
I believe we can use many of the concepts in Zen and Zen aesthetics to help us compare their presentation visuals as well as help us improve our own visuals. My point in comparing Jobs and Gates is not to poke fun but to learn. SimplicityA key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist designer and architect Dr. "Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means NaturalnessThe aesthetic concept of naturalness or shizen "prohibits the use of elaborate designs and over refinement" according to Kawana.
The suggestive mode of expression is a key Zen aesthetic. The Inspiration Gallery - Free borders, backgrounds, fonts and unique graphics. Open Design Community - Download Free Web Design Templates - OpenDesigns.org. Free CSS and XHTML Website Templates. Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates.
The CSS Tinderbox - Open Source Web Design Templates. WordPress Tinder A small collection of very simple WordPress template frames that can be easily customized and adpated to suit your needs.
They’re built for WordPress 3.8 or later and set up to use widgets in multiple locations. CSST Simple Orange Another three column design but with the “heavy” column to the left and the other two narrow columns on the right. If orange is your thing, check it out. Screenshot / Download Zip CSST Simple Red To be totally honest, this one looks a hell of a lot like Simple Orange but with a cherry flavor though. Screenshot / Download Zip Installing A Template To install one of these WordPress templates: 1. 2. 3. As with any WordPress template, you’ll more than likely need to adjust the styles a bit to mesh with your current settings. (NOTE: Web geek tested and approved in Firefox 3.0 (Win), Firefox 2.0 (Mac), IE7 (Win), Opera 9.6 (Win), Safari 3.2 (Mac). Fixed-Width Templates Centered Box 1-Column 1-Column (2) 3-Over-4 Columns 3-Column 4-Column Now we’re talking! 2-Column. The only CSS layout you need(?) Rails Code Snippets. Programming is Hard. Open Web Design.
Layout Gala. All layouts use valid markup and CSS, and have been tested successfully on Internet Explorer/win 5.0, 5.5, 6 and beta 2 preview of version 7; Opera 8.5, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2.
Each of the columns could be the longest, and for testing columns length I've used the script filler text on demand. Each layout could represent a site with five main sections: header, content, navigation, other stuff and footer. The basic markup, common to every layout, is the following: <div id="container"> <div id="header">Header</div> <div id="wrapper"> <div id="content">Content</div> </div> <div id="navigation">Navigation</div> <div id="extra">Extra stuff</div> <div id="footer">Footer</div> </div> It's almost minimal, apart from an extra wrapper around the content. Talking about CSS: each of the layouts uses float and in most of the cases negative margins.