Yesterday’s post “Design Decisions: Campfire transcript headings” explained how we arrived at this new header for each transcript day:

New transcript design

Several commenters disliked the black border:

Wow. I like the update but it is almost impossible to read “Today, February 9 in…” since the black border takes all the attention.

+1, the huge, repeated back border takes all the attention and makes my eyes cry.

I also find the thick black borders more distracting than useful in this situation. Maybe you should make them a little less thick or give them a less harder black color (gray)?

Viewing the header in isolation, I understand their concerns. But I also see what our prez would call a “teachable moment.”

See, this is where using real content to judge a design becomes so crucial. When you fake it or use lorem ipsum or just view a design in isolation, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions. That black bar does look very heavy in this context.

But check it out once you start using real info:

cf_bars_long

Totally different story now. Now the black bar doesn’t seem that heavy at all. In fact, it’s a great way to break up the data so you can see a new day has arrived in the transcript.

Real designs come from real content. Anything else is an abstraction. And abstractions can be real tough to judge accurately.

Related: Use Real Words: Insert actual text instead of lorem ipsum [Getting Real]