About
Stopdesign is my creative outlet. I am passionate about large-scale design projects, typography, accessibility, and the media and tools of my craft. This site is a (by now, somewhat dated) collection of creative thinking, writing, and work that represents the problem solving, simple solutions, and results I’ve produced and delivered for clients and readers around the world. This is also where I ramble on about design and all things that interest me.
Biography
Douglas Bowman is an influential designer, speaker, and advisor whose creations and experience in the booming tech industry have pushed him to the forefront of modern design. Most recently, Bowman served as creative director at Twitter, where he established and led its product design, marketing design, and user experience research teams. At Twitter, he oversaw an evolving set of design challenges for a rapidly growing list of features and uses of a world-wide service, directed large-scale branding and product design across web, mobile, and broadcast media, and helped change the world, one hundred forty characters at a time.
Prior to Twitter, Bowman was the first visual design lead at Google, where he built and managed a team to unify the identity and design of user-facing products and services throughout the company. He got his start at Wired, where he worked his way up to design director, and led a ground-breaking redesign of Wired.com in 2002. Bowman also runs Stopdesign, a consulting firm he originally founded in San Francisco. Under Stopdesign, he has designed for Google, Capgemini, Blogger, Cathay Pacific Airways, and Adaptive Path.
Philosophy
Design plays a primary role in the interpretation of message. It creates a crucial, lasting impression. It encourages examination and generates interest. Accessible, understandable information and beauty of form engages observers and arrests their attention.
A confusing, poorly designed project will miss its target almost every time. In a world where data flows abundantly, our minds filter and sift through the overflow of useless and badly designed products, services, and information. While design appeals to our sense of aesthetic, it must not stand in the way of delivery, cause complications, or introduce stumbling blocks. Rather, design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life, enable us to accomplish our tasks more effectively, and delight us along the way.
History
I founded Stopdesign in the late ’90s as a design consultancy while working at Wired in San Francisco. I continued taking on outside projects while working at Wired through six years of ups and downs, drastic market swings, and two acquisitions by Lycos and Spanish media portal, Terra. After leading a successful, game-changing redesign of Wired.com in 2002, I left to dedicate my full attention to Stopdesign.
Previous versions of this site’s design have been partially archived for posterity:
