sans comic sans

I’ve been reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction on the subway which, despite its volume, is a perfect book to digest in five to ten minute chunks. It’s a collection of 253 patterns which, in two to three pages per pattern, guide builders toward humane ways of designing buildings, organizing public spaces, and facilitating interactions. This morning, I particularly enjoyed pattern #160, “Building Edge”:

But unless the building is oriented toward the outside, which surrounds it, as carefully and positively as toward its inside, the space around the building will be useless and blank—with the direct effect, in the long run, that the building will be socially isolated, because you have to cross a no-man’s land to get to it.

Look, for example, at this machine age slab of steel and glass. You cannot approach it anywhere except at its entrance—because the space around it is not made for people.

I couldn’t help but think of the “Skip Intro” splash page as the realization of a building’s edge on the web.