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A room that works well in January rarely works as well in June. The furniture has not moved, but the light has, and so has what the space is being asked to do. Planning for that shift costs less than rearranging around it later.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 417
Colour choices are usually argued about in terms of taste, which is why the arguments do not resolve. Contrast is not a matter of taste. It is measurable, and it decides whether the text can be read at all.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 243
Most materials fail in predictable ways. Knowing which way a given material tends to go is more useful than knowing what it costs, because the cost is paid once and the failure is paid for repeatedly.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 287
Maintenance schedules fail because they are too ambitious to keep. A short routine that actually happens is worth more than a thorough one that is skipped twice and then abandoned.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 302
Packaging gets specified once, at the point where the first order is going out and the priority is that it arrives intact. It is rarely revisited, which is why most of it is heavier, larger and more expensive than the thing now requires.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 236
A description that lists what something is will be read once. A description that answers the questions someone was already holding gets read to the end, and it is usually shorter.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 247
Most of what determines whether a problem is remembered badly happens in the first reply, before anything has actually been fixed. The fix matters; it just matters later than people expect.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 305
The instinct when work is going well is to add: another size, another finish, another variant. Each addition looks small at the point of deciding, and the cost of it only becomes visible much later, spread thinly across everything else.
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- Written by: Tim Davis
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 260
