{"id":1847,"date":"2017-02-02T11:24:14","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T11:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2017.london.wordcamp.org\/?post_type=wcb_session&#038;p=1847"},"modified":"2017-09-09T13:13:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T12:13:55","slug":"the-unbearable-likeness-of-design","status":"publish","type":"wcb_session","link":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/session\/the-unbearable-likeness-of-design\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unbearable Likeness of Design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why do so many websites look the same? As our tools have improved and we&#8217;ve been able to do more with the web, there&#8217;s been a growing trend toward websites that look exactly alike. Why did this come to be, and what can we, as designers and curators of the modern web, do to avoid it? We&#8217;ll touch briefly on the history of web design, and examine how modern tools and practises have contributed to a more homogeneous-looking internet.<\/p>\n<p>In order to answer these questions, we&#8217;ll explore on the history of web design, and examine how modern tools and practises have contributed to a more homogeneous-looking internet. We&#8217;ll examine the web design process from two perspectives &#8211; the designer&#8217;s and the developer&#8217;s &#8211; and discuss how the blurring of those roles impacts the design process. Along the way, we&#8217;ll discuss the various merits of following or bucking trends. Finally, I&#8217;ll offer some constructive advice to help you &#8211; whether you&#8217;re a designer or not &#8211; add an individual touch to your work.<\/p>\n<section id=\"slides\" class=\"session--slides\">\n<h2>Slides<\/h2>\n<iframe src='https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/74058942' width='604' height='495' sandbox=\"allow-popups allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation\" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"video\" class=\"session--video\">\n<h2>Video<\/h2>\n<p><iframe title=\"VideoPress Video Player\" aria-label='VideoPress Video Player' width='604' height='340' src='https:\/\/video.wordpress.com\/embed\/BnI4RTPG?hd=0&amp;cover=1' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen allow='clipboard-write'><\/iframe><script src='https:\/\/v0.wordpress.com\/js\/next\/videopress-iframe.js?m=1674852142'><\/script><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"transcription\" class=\"session--transcription\">\n<h2>Transcription<\/h2>\n<p><b>MARK: \u00a0<\/b>I\u00a0want to introduce Sarah. \u00a0Sarah is a\u00a0designer, developer, and self-confessed introvert. \u00a0She works for Automattic, and designing and building WordPress themes. \u00a0When she&#8217;s not busy making things, she likes obsessing over typography, collecting impractical footwear and going to new places, and she&#8217;s going to talk to us about the unbearable likeness of design. \u00a0So, Sarah.<\/p>\n<p><b>SARAH: \u00a0<\/b>I\u00a0spend a lot of time on the Internet. \u00a0Over the last few years, I&#8217;ve started to notice something. \u00a0Everything kind of looks the same. \u00a0Sorry, technical issues. \u00a0If you spend a\u00a0lot of time on the internet as well, which I&#8217;m guessing you do, you&#8217;ll know what I&#8217;m talking about. \u00a0Websites that look like this. \u00a0And this, and this. \u00a0They all sort of follow the same pattern, at the top you have a\u00a0logo on the left, and navigation to the right. \u00a0Beneath that, you have a\u00a0full-width hero header image. \u00a0On top of the hero image there&#8217;s san serif type, usually white, and a\u00a0big white button that is usually a\u00a0call to action. \u00a0Below that, featured items, often three, and always illustrate with an image, photo or icon.<\/p>\n<p>And this looks nice. \u00a0It works well, but it&#8217;s so common as to have become a\u00a0clich\u00e9. \u00a0These are websites for different things, they&#8217;re communicating different messages. \u00a0Education software isn&#8217;t the same thing as a\u00a0water filter. \u00a0When everything looks the same, how do we distinguish between them?<\/p>\n<p>So the web didn&#8217;t always look like this. \u00a0We&#8217;re going to take a\u00a0look and see how we ended up here. \u00a0How many people here got into web design relatively recently? \u00a0Over say the past 5\u00a0years? \u00a0Okay. \u00a0What about the past 10\u00a0years? \u00a0And has anyone been doing it for longer than ten? \u00a0Wow, that&#8217;s a lot. \u00a0Okay, so for some of you, this is going to be a\u00a0blast from the past. \u00a0And for others, this will be a\u00a0chilling vision of the past.<\/p>\n<p>The Internet has been in development since the sixties, but what we know nowadays is the modern web is the worldwide web, and that really came about in the early nineties. \u00a0And when it started it was just text.<\/p>\n<p>The first website was published using HTML in 1991. \u00a0It is still up. \u00a0And it is just text, as well. \u00a0There are links to other sites, but there are no images, no colours, just text. \u00a0It&#8217;s still very early days here. \u00a0In November of 1992 there were 26 web servers in the world. \u00a0That&#8217;s it. \u00a0By mid-90s our browser technology had advanced a\u00a0bit, and we could do more. \u00a0No, sorry.<\/p>\n<p>We could do more. \u00a0We could embed images in our sites. \u00a0We could use colours. \u00a0Not necessarily good colours but colours. \u00a0We could use tables to start implementing layouts.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, the best way to design a\u00a0website was to build a\u00a0layout in Photoshop or in design or cork, and then slice it into components images, every header text, every line needed to be its own image, and then you&#8217;d put all those little bitty broken up images into tables. \u00a0Invariably, to do more complicated layout, you&#8217;d need to nest tables inside tables inside tables inside other tables, you&#8217;d end up with something a\u00a0lot like code soup. \u00a0If you think the code looked bad, the designs looked worse. \u00a0This wasn&#8217;t a\u00a0great time for websites. \u00a0We still didn&#8217;t have CSS, so everything had to be declared manually using HTML tags, so in order to make every link on that page yellow, you&#8217;d have to define the colour for every single link individually. \u00a0It was a\u00a0lot of work to make something that looked this terrible. \u00a0But everything at this point was quite new, and even bad tools are better than nothing. \u00a0So we used everything we could get our hands on pretty indiscriminately. \u00a0We had frames, animated gifts everywhere, and hit counters. \u00a0It was a\u00a0new and exciting time for the web. \u00a0The concept of building a\u00a0personal site was completely new, being able to communicate with people on the other side of the world. \u00a0This is a\u00a0really powerful thing. \u00a0In all that excitement we sort of didn&#8217;t develop any restraint.<\/p>\n<p>But things moved along, and by &#8217;96, 1\u00a0per\u00a0cent of the global population was online. \u00a0CSS was introduced. \u00a0And CSS afforded us more tools to control the way things look.<\/p>\n<p>This wasn&#8217;t always a\u00a0good thing. \u00a0So you can change the browser&#8217;s scroll-by properties to make it three times its original size, and change the lighting effects and make it purple and yellow, and you can turn the cursor into a\u00a0unicorn and have it shoot out rainbows, there are still multiple WordPress plugins that do this. \u00a0Let&#8217;s not look them up. \u00a0Let&#8217;s not forget the lessons brought to us by Spiderman. \u00a0With great power comes great responsibility. \u00a0But at this point usability and accessibility wasn&#8217;t a\u00a0big concern. \u00a0We just wanted to make stuff that looked cool. \u00a0Flash came out around the same time, and this allowed us to experiment more and also to have more control. \u00a0We had a\u00a0fixed box for our layout, we could use any typeface we had on our computer. \u00a0We could position elements visually rather than manipulating them in tables, and we could play with animation. \u00a0So this allowed us to design in a\u00a0more visual way.<\/p>\n<p>By the early 2000s things started to change again. \u00a0The web was no longer a\u00a0new medium, and with increased knowledge and awareness of what we could do versus what we should do, this led to a refining of tastes.<\/p>\n<p>At this point web design starts to feel like a\u00a0thing. \u00a0Websites begin to feel like they&#8217;ve been deliberately designed, like they&#8217;re a\u00a0cohesive whole. \u00a0And we begin to see the rise of new and distinct trends within web design. \u00a0One of my personal favourites was a\u00a0gringe-grained used textures, pattern and handmade elements to give an imperfect and tactile feel to sites, and the web 2.0, one of the most poorly named trends in existence, was effectively the same idea but different implementation. \u00a0So it mimicked real-life objects as well, it used shadow and light effects, it used lots of gradients, every button was glossy or beveled or both, and there was always a\u00a0mirrored effect, even if objects weren&#8217;t sitting on a\u00a0mirror. \u00a0Both techniques were very image heavy, and again mimicked real-life objects.<\/p>\n<p>The iPhone built on these ideas. \u00a0The first iPhone came other in 2007, and it presented a\u00a0new challenge. \u00a0Suddenly we had this new device that was being introduced to a lot of users who maybe weren&#8217;t that technical. \u00a0So we needed a\u00a0way to introduce, to teach those new users without alienating them, to teach them how to use the interface. \u00a0We saw the rise of skeuomorphism, a derivative object that mimics designs of the original and what that means is this: if you understand how a\u00a0book works, when you read a\u00a0book, you pull the bottom right-hand corner in order to get to the next page, and then you build an interface that looks like a\u00a0book. \u00a0It has pages and a\u00a0spine, and maybe a ribbon down the middle, and when you touch the bottom right-hand corner of that interface, you move to the next page. \u00a0That is what skeuomorphism is. \u00a0It links a\u00a0new interface with an object you already know how to use, this allows users to intuitively learn an interface without having to read a\u00a0giant manual.<\/p>\n<p>The popularity of the iPhone led to the adoption of many mobile devices, and we were suddenly reading the web on phones. \u00a0This led to the rise of responsive design around 2010, and another shift in design practices. \u00a0Ultimately, as our technology changes, so does the way we design. \u00a0And we needed now to scale our designs to lots of differently sized devices and different resolutions. \u00a0We didn&#8217;t have that fixed box any more. \u00a0It was hard to use a\u00a0lot of images, and so we saw flat design come around. \u00a0Flat design was actually pioneered by Microsoft with their metro UI which is now Microsoft design language. \u00a0Metro ditched old gradients, shadows and just used flat-box of colour for everything. \u00a0This approach makes it a\u00a0lot simpler to adapt any design to different devices and resolutions, but in testing, they found users missed things\u00a0&#8212; important things, sometimes. \u00a0If your buttons don&#8217;t look buttony, people won&#8217;t realise they&#8217;re buttons. \u00a0So a\u00a0lot of flat design today isn&#8217;t totally flat.<\/p>\n<p>Material design is a\u00a0good example of this. \u00a0It is mostly flat, but it does use some shadow and light effect to differentiate important objects, like floating action button. \u00a0Material design is a\u00a0design language intended primarily for use in Google products, but I&#8217;m seeing it cropping up everywhere in themes and frameworks. \u00a0It allows non-designers to easily make something that looks good, but the trouble is, it is rather prescriptive and it is not intended to apply to everything.<\/p>\n<p>Bootstrap suffers from the same problem. \u00a0For a long time it was a\u00a0most styled repo on github. \u00a0It was originally called Twitter blueprint and it was built as an internal tool for Twitter to use, so if you had an idea and wanted to test it, it would work or not. \u00a0You&#8217;d use this tool to get something up and running really quickly, and if you decided you wanted to go further with\u00a0it, you could go through the design phase.<\/p>\n<p>You can do lots with Bootstrap, and it is very easy to use it and make something that looks different, and is individual and unique. \u00a0But oftentimes people don&#8217;t take the time to customise it, and the result is you can oftentimes see when something is a\u00a0Bootstraps site.<\/p>\n<p>So the rise of flat design, and all these new tools and frameworks, gives non-designers an easier entry than ever into design. \u00a0It is easy to build something that looks good without ever using graphic editor or having a\u00a0knowledge of the underlying design principles. \u00a0And while ultimately that is a\u00a0good thing, it can also contribute to the homoginification of the web. \u00a0In order to build something great, you need to have an understanding of design.<\/p>\n<p>Now you may think I&#8217;m not a\u00a0designer, this doesn&#8217;t apply to me, but if you make websites, if you pick out a\u00a0theme for your site, if a\u00a0hire a\u00a0designer, if you choose colours or typefaces, you&#8217;re making the web, you&#8217;re involved in design decisions, and design isn&#8217;t just about making stuff pretty. \u00a0It is also about solving a\u00a0problem. \u00a0It is about understanding the needs of your client, and your audience, and communicating a\u00a0message that isn&#8217;t any one-size-fits-all solution for every problem. \u00a0Historically, designers and developers have been very different people with different approaches, priorities, and goals.<\/p>\n<p>More and more, this isn&#8217;t the case. \u00a0It is rare to find a\u00a0web designer who doesn&#8217;t know HTML any more. \u00a0I\u00a0like to think of web design and development as more of a\u00a0spectrum than\u00a0a binary. \u00a0Most people in the field fall somewhere in the middle. \u00a0It used to be that you&#8217;d have designers with a\u00a0print background who would build a\u00a0layout in Photoshop, and then they&#8217;d hand off the final files to a developer who would be responsible for implementation. \u00a0But now, most web designers are aware of the technical constraints while they are designing a\u00a0site, even if they don&#8217;t do the implementation themselves.<\/p>\n<p>And that prior knowledge of the technical constraints I\u00a0think might be holding us back. \u00a0Now, constraints often engender creativity. \u00a0We devise clever solutions to work around them. \u00a0But with web design, we literally think inside the box. \u00a0The technical constraints of the web require box-shaped elements and so we build box-shaped sites.<\/p>\n<p>Modern web design is very literally stuck inside the box.<\/p>\n<p>Now of course, to stay relevant as a\u00a0designer, you do need to follow trends to some degree. \u00a0What we find beautiful is very much shaped by our culture and by the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time, and this is evident in all forms of art and design, from fashion to music to architecture. \u00a0There is a study done where they looked\u00a0at Amazonian tribes, and scientists assumed we had a\u00a0biological preference as humans towards harmonic sounds, but when they played music for these tribes who hadn&#8217;t heard any western music, they found there wasn&#8217;t any preference for harmonic over discordant sounds. \u00a0So an understanding of the world and its current aesthetics and your culture is vital to remaining relevant.<\/p>\n<p>The flipside of that, of course, is that an over-reliance on trends means a\u00a0design becomes dated very quickly. \u00a0Think about the swoosh logos that were ubiquitous in the nineties, or those glossy buttons of Web\u00a02.0, and following those trends really closely is fine if you want to redesign a\u00a0site every year, but most of us don&#8217;t have time for that.<\/p>\n<p>It is worth noting standard UI conventions are not the same things as trends. \u00a0This is how users find things. \u00a0It is how they make sense of an interface.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t rewrite convention just for the sake of\u00a0it. \u00a0The Nielsen Group found that if you moved a\u00a0logo from the top left-hand corner of the page, it was actually six times harder for users to navigate to your homepage.<\/p>\n<p>Only break the rules if you have a\u00a0good reason for doing so. \u00a0Don&#8217;t alienate your users.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00a0definitely got lost on my slides, so that&#8217;s exciting. \u00a0Cool. \u00a0Sorry.<\/p>\n<p>UI conventions, the same goes for accessibility. \u00a0Ultimately, it is better to have a\u00a0usable and accessible website than one that is really creative. \u00a0But I\u00a0believe that we can work within those constraints to build creative sites, whilst still maintaining usability and accessibility.<\/p>\n<p>Much of design is driven by trends. \u00a0Slavishly following those trends does not account for your project&#8217;s needs. \u00a0Design is about communicating a\u00a0message from your client to your audience. \u00a0If your audience can&#8217;t distinguish between a\u00a0hospital and a\u00a0music festival, your meaning is lost, and understanding is diminished. \u00a0Visual patterns are language, they have meaning. \u00a0Think about what you&#8217;re communicating. \u00a0What is trendy isn&#8217;t always going to be what is right for your project.<\/p>\n<p>All fields of design need innovation to drive forward. \u00a0And the web is no exception. \u00a0Web design desperately needs new ideas and thought leaders. \u00a0We need to buck trends in order to make new ones. \u00a0It is all well and good saying be different, be unique, buck trends and be a\u00a0special snowflake, but how do we actually do that and design websites that don&#8217;t look like every other website out there while still accounting for UI conventions and modern tastes? \u00a0I\u00a0have some ideas. \u00a0First of all, not everything needs to be totally flat.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00a0expect we&#8217;ll move away from flat design at some point anyway. \u00a0Designed trends tend to be cyclical, and flat design is going to look as dated as those swooshy logos into couple of years. \u00a0So try playing with texture and pattern. \u00a0When used well, they can add dimension and visual interest to design work. \u00a0As human beings, we respond to natural organic objects. \u00a0It is why we find emotional connection to hardwood floors but not so much to steel girders or glass windows. \u00a0These subtle imperfections humanise what can otherwise be a\u00a0sterile interface. \u00a0For the same reason, hand-drawn elements are effective, particularly if you want to impart an emotional reaction.<\/p>\n<p>Play around with typography as well, don&#8217;t just use proxima Nova and call it a\u00a0day. \u00a0It is beautiful, but it is really overused, and beware distinct but commonly used typefaces, some Google fonts can fall into this trap. \u00a0Lobster is one, Playfair is another, it is beautiful, one of my favourite typefaces, but I\u00a0have seen it used for corporate sites and it doesn&#8217;t fit. \u00a0Think about your message and choose something that suits. \u00a0Take inspiration from classic typography, try unusual combinations. \u00a0Try serifs, get crazy, you can get creative with typography these days. \u00a0Try using oversized type or type broken out of the box. \u00a0This can add interest, even if you&#8217;re using a\u00a0plainer typeface. \u00a0Blowing type up really big makes it become an illustrative element. \u00a0Dropcaps work on the same principle, and it is becoming easier and easier to do them in because CSS. \u00a0There is a\u00a0property called Initial Letter getting more and more browser support, and allows a\u00a0really fine grained control over a\u00a0dropcap.<\/p>\n<p>Try getting creative with your layout to avoid that boxy syndrome. \u00a0The concept of breaking the grid is very traditional to print design, but we don&#8217;t really do it on the web very much. \u00a0If you&#8217;re not familiar with the concept, read Making and Breaking the Grid, which talks about building grids and then breaking them. \u00a0The basic concept is you want to align every element on your page to an underlining grid, so it is nice and orderly and feels well structured. \u00a0You can then pull an element outside of that grid. \u00a0This gives it more visual weight and adds dynamic tension to your page, so it is more interesting to look at.<\/p>\n<p>You can also try working with non-boxy shapes. \u00a0You can break your text around objects. \u00a0We have more tools to play with now. \u00a0We can use Flexbox or CSS columns, we can skew and rotate elements and use SVG clipping masks. \u00a0Even something relatively simple like using a\u00a0squiggle shape instead of an underline or using multiple borders around an image can add character and visual interest to a\u00a0layout, structurally, otherwise the exact same as every other website.<\/p>\n<p>Animation is also a\u00a0great way to add visual interest. \u00a0Again, these tools have been improving and expanding. \u00a0We can do a\u00a0lot of animation with CSS alone these days. \u00a0We don&#8217;t even need to learn Javascript. \u00a0This site does a\u00a0lot of\u00a0&#8212; that&#8217;s not going to move because it is a\u00a0PDF, but in theory, this site would have been animated and would have looked really great. \u00a0So it is very easy to go overboard. \u00a0When this site moves, it actually animates every single element as you scroll down, so as you scroll down, they start popping out at you and things jump out and move. \u00a0It is absolutely like madness to look at. \u00a0It is really easy to go overboard. \u00a0So as a\u00a0general rule, try to animate elements that are interactive. \u00a0And animate only interaction rather than on the scroll.<\/p>\n<p>All fields of design need innovators and the web is no exception. \u00a0So get outside your comfort zone. \u00a0Interact with design in a\u00a0new way, and bring that passion and learning back to your web work. \u00a0One of the neatest things and the things I love most about design is that it is everywhere: it is in airport signage, on packaging, billboards, restaurant menus, you can&#8217;t possibly escape it. \u00a0Go ahead and experience it. \u00a0Viewing design through a wider lens will improve your work and bring new ideas. \u00a0Look at packaging design or hand lettering where typography and illustration converge. \u00a0Read fashion magazines where colour can be amazing, look at film titles both modern and new, they&#8217;re a\u00a0great source of inspiration for animation. \u00a0This is a\u00a0theme on web.com. \u00a0It is super old, not responsive, but the sort of soul bassy style means it does interesting stuff, which makes it look different and interesting. \u00a0Look at interior design. \u00a0There is lot of pattern and textile inspiration that can be found here. \u00a0Magazines are a\u00a0great source of layout and breaking the grid. \u00a0Get out and go to museums, not just art and design museums but also science museums, history museums. \u00a0Displays are a\u00a0great way to understand interactive design, experiencing design in the real world and interacting with\u00a0it is a\u00a0great experience.<\/p>\n<p>Read print media. \u00a0Book covers are a\u00a0great source of inspiration for illustration and conceptual thinking. \u00a0There are so many things to inspire you out there. \u00a0Embrace a\u00a0multi-disciplinary approach to design, don&#8217;t just look to the web for inspiration. \u00a0This is a\u00a0vicious cycle that means everything keeps looking the same. \u00a0Look outside the web for more inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;re expired, experiment. \u00a0Try taking a\u00a0magazine layout and recreating it in CSS as an exercise to learn new tools. \u00a0Try your hand at calligraphy or hand lettering, build furniture, paint stuff. \u00a0Make time for creative play, even if it is only a\u00a0few minutes a\u00a0week. \u00a0And not just with code, but also with other disciplines. \u00a0Experimentation is how we discover new things. \u00a0Bucking trends is how we make new trends. \u00a0So take risks, don&#8217;t be afraid to make mistakes. \u00a0You can make the web more diverse, better and more interesting. \u00a0So go out and experiment. \u00a0Thank you. \u00a0[applause].<\/p>\n<p><b>MARK: \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Thank you very much. \u00a0Is this on? \u00a0Brilliant. \u00a0We&#8217;ve got some time for questions, we&#8217;ve got a\u00a0mic runner in the middle there, so if you want to ask Sarah a\u00a0question then please raise your hand and we&#8217;ll get a mic to you. \u00a0There we go. \u00a0Anyone?<\/p>\n<p><b>FROM THE FLOOR: \u00a0<\/b>What have you been inspired by lately?<\/p>\n<p><b>SARAH: \u00a0<\/b>That&#8217;s a\u00a0great question that\u00a0I don&#8217;t have an answer for. \u00a0Clearly that&#8217;s a\u00a0sign I\u00a0need to go out and experience more design in the real world myself.<\/p>\n<p><b>MARK: \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Any others?<\/p>\n<p><b>FROM THE FLOOR: \u00a0<\/b>Hello, do you have any sort of thoughts on what you think is next in terms of web design from, you know, what you&#8217;re thinking about, or what you see as going on at the moment?<\/p>\n<p><b>SARAH: \u00a0<\/b>So I&#8217;ve been starting to see more skewed lines, which is a\u00a0start. \u00a0A small step, but a\u00a0start. \u00a0Oftentimes when things used to be very straight lines, sometimes people are now using skewed to move that. \u00a0So I\u00a0think that&#8217;s the first step, and I&#8217;m starting to see that crop up a\u00a0bit more now.<\/p>\n<p><b>FROM THE FLOOR: \u00a0<\/b>A\u00a0really good talk. \u00a0I\u00a0have a\u00a0question about where do you keep, in a\u00a0sense, the line, the boundary between experimenting and keeping the interface usable? \u00a0Could you elaborate maybe a\u00a0little more on that?<\/p>\n<p><b>SARAH: \u00a0<\/b>I\u00a0think it is worth considering your audience there. \u00a0If you&#8217;re building something more that is more experimental, you can push the boundary a\u00a0bit more, but if you&#8217;re building something that people need to use, you probably want to gear yourself more towards the sort of usability aspect. \u00a0But testing is a\u00a0great way to find out if your experiment will work or not. \u00a0So I\u00a0thoroughly recommend testing all your designs, even if it is just giving it to somebody in a\u00a0coffee shop and seeing if they can use it.<\/p>\n<p><b>MARK: \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Any other questions? \u00a0No? \u00a0Okay, thanks again, Sarah. \u00a0Okay, we&#8217;ve got a\u00a0short break. \u00a0We&#8217;re back in here at 11.20 with a\u00a0talk from a\u00a0cartoonist, which should be interesting. \u00a0Don&#8217;t forget if you haven&#8217;t collected your WordPress T-shirt, please do so. \u00a0It is downstairs in this building. \u00a0The Happiness Bar is open at ten to 12 today, so if you&#8217;ve got any questions about WordPress, anything you want to ask the experts, I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;ll be happy to help you so head down to the Happiness Bar just downstairs, and go say hello and ask any questions you can. \u00a0We&#8217;ll see you shortly.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do so many websites look the same? As our tools have improved and we&#8217;ve been able to do more with the web, there&#8217;s been a growing trend toward websites that look exactly alike. Why did this come to be, and what can we, as designers and curators of the modern web, do to avoid &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/session\/the-unbearable-likeness-of-design\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Unbearable Likeness of Design<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653248,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wcpt_session_time":1489918800,"_wcpt_session_duration":3000,"_wcpt_session_type":"session","_wcpt_session_slides":"","_wcpt_session_video":"","_wcpt_speaker_id":[1786],"footnotes":""},"session_track":[446812],"session_category":[],"class_list":["post-1847","wcb_session","type-wcb_session","status-publish","hentry","wcb_track-track-b"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p833Rb-tN","session_date_time":{"date":"19\/03\/2017","time":"10:20"},"session_speakers":[{"id":"1786","slug":"sarah-semark","name":"Sarah Semark","link":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/speaker\/sarah-semark\/"}],"session_cats_rendered":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_session"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3644,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/1847\/revisions\/3644"}],"speakers":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/1786"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wporg\/v1\/users\/tinkerbelly"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_track","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_track?post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"wcb_session_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/london.wordcamp.org\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/session_category?post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}