Meanwhile

When you work on your own product every day, it gets hard to see it through your customers’ eyes. That is what the new UX Check is for. I go through your most important journeys on real devices, from the 32-inch screen down to the smartwatch, and rate what I find: usability, accessibility (WCAG 2.2), performance, content and consistency.

You get a prioritised report with quick wins for this week and a roadmap for everything after. What already works well gets named too, so you know what to keep. Two packages: Quick Check and Full Check. Curious? Write me.

Thousands of tiny lines drifting across the map: you see the weather instead of reading it. So I built a wind map for the browser.

wetter.serkanzararsiz.com

Wind, rain and temperature for the whole world, 48 hours ahead. Drag the timeline and watch fronts roll in, tap anywhere for the local forecast, or add a second clock for the team in New York.

Deliberately small: one static page, no backend, no cost. MapLibre, OpenFreeMap, Open-Meteo and OpenStreetMap, all free and open. The fun part was the detail: calm glass panels on an 8-pixel grid and particles slow enough to feel like air, not noise.

Have a play and tell me what’s missing.

How far can AI take visual storytelling? For a presentation I used it to tell the story of a public health workflow, from the first diagnosis to the informed citizen. A few of the slides.

Ten years of TEDxZurich, and a theme to match: The Power of 10. The stage was full of playful shapes in bright pastels, eyes, lips, towers and numbers, an illustrated Zurich you could almost touch.

After a decade the event still felt fresh: curious people, bold ideas and an identity that wasn't afraid to have fun.

At Martin et Karczinski we ran beyond talks: evenings to share knowledge with clients and friends of the agency, and a way to start new conversations. I designed the look of the series during my time there, from invitations and icons to the landing page.

1 March 2019, Zurich: a black notebook, a pencil with the agency's name on it and a welcome letter, waiting on my new desk. My first day as Digital Experience Designer at Martin et Karczinski, one of the leading branding agencies in Zurich.

For the next one and a half years I worked where strategy, brand and digital meet: corporate websites, digital style guides and brand experiences for clients in finance, medicine, print and industry.

The theme of TEDxZurich 2018 was Connection, and the stage looked exactly like it: a web of glowing blue and red lines behind every speaker, like a network diagram you could walk into.

A beautiful example of a theme turned into space. Before anyone said a word, the stage design had already told the story.

A full hall, three sessions and a lot of ideas worth spreading: TEDxZurich in November 2017.

What stays with me from days like this is less a single talk than the mix: science next to design, business next to activism, and a room full of people who came to listen.

A guest badge, a lobby with a glowing G and an evening of Google Assistant demos: in summer 2017 I joined the Local Guides Zurich Sessions at Google's Zurich office.

Local Guides are the people who review places, add photos and fix details on Google Maps, millions of small contributions that make a map useful. A good reminder that even a product that huge lives on tiny, human details.

Last December I announced it here, in June 2017 I was in the room: Forward Festival came to Zurich for two days of creativity, design and communication.

One highlight was NYCHOS, the Austrian artist known for his dissected animals. Watching someone turn anatomy into a visual language that holds up on a wall the size of a house was a good reminder: a strict system and a strong style are not opposites.

Fresh herbs right where you eat or work. Deskpot is a planter that hangs on the edge of a table instead of taking up space on it.

I started with cardboard, binder clips and a lot of trial and error to find out how the box could hold on. Then I built it in wood and filled it with basil, chives and more. Simple to make, and the table stays free.

Look at the “fi” ligature long enough and it turns into a chair. In 2014 I took that thought literally: on a whiteboard I drew the ligature in a range of typefaces, from classic serif to bold grotesque, and checked which one could actually carry a person.

Then came the details, a backrest in net or wood and an italic version that leans back, and finally a small paper model on the table. Furniture for typographers, at least in miniature.

My first book layout taught me more about typography than any lecture. Several hundred pages, chapters and sections, footnotes, quotes and running heads: suddenly every decision repeated itself a thousand times.

I learned to set a type area with proportion, to give a page an even grey, to tame widows, orphans and rivers, and to let a hierarchy carry the reader without shouting. The details nobody notices are exactly the ones that make a book easy to read, and they still shape how I design interfaces today.

Panorama mode is made for sweeping sideways. I turned the phone and swept from the sky down to my own feet instead: the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides dome, a cathedral, a palace, rocks by the water, each one ending with a slightly bewildered photographer.

A small series from the summer of 2013. Best seen full screen.

Imagine one of the most powerful tools in science, and no proper Ctrl+Z. In 2013 a group of frustrated users started a petition to change that, and I gave it a face.

The look: a warm coral red, a calm serif wordmark and a small cast of hand-drawn characters, each with a speech bubble: “We want undo.” “We want redo.” “Undo, how often we want.” From pencil sketches to vector avatars, Facebook covers, milestone badges for every signature goal, a petition website and a newsletter. A serious request, told with a wink. Within months, people from 16 countries had signed.

For years, Lürzer’s Archive was my window into the best advertising in the world. Issue after issue, I studied how agencies from São Paulo to Stockholm turn a single idea into an image that needs no explanation.

Walter Lürzer, who founded the magazine, also led the class for graphic design and advertising at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Before my Bachelor studies in Salzburg, I applied there two years in a row. I passed the first exam, not the second, but I stayed in touch with him, and one thing he said has stayed with me ever since: it doesn’t matter how something came about, only how it looks in the end. I still work that way. I rebuild things until the result is right, and the road there is simply part of the job.

The archive also led me to Durham. In one issue I came across an ad by THE REPUBLIK, an agency in Durham, North Carolina. When life took me there for a year, that is where I applied, and where I worked alongside a former Apple art director who, among many other brands, looked after Apple’s marketing and branding. I learned a lot from him. Funny enough, he is back at THE REPUBLIK today.