User experience design, or UX design for short is the buzzword these days, and everyone seems to be appending it to their skill sets, sometimes with an additional ‘expert’ at the end. The sad truth is that no one can design user experiences. Not even the so-called gurus.

While our clients, bosses or peers might not always be able to communicate effectively their opinions when giving design feedback, it is by no mean an excuse for us designers to put all the blame of a faulty communication on them. We are equally responsible, if not slightly more.

Decontextualization, as you may have guessed it, is the act of stripping something out of its context. Design is intrinsically tied to the context in which it was brought into existance; decontextualizing it yields some devastating effects.

Africa was in the spotlight during the last world cup few weeks ago, but that might be just the beginning. In the not-so-far future, the cradle of humanity will likely steal the spotlight from Asia as an emerging economic power. As businesses are spawning everywhere, the challenge for designers to come with ever original and fresh logos will be getting harder and harder.

Few moons ago I had the chance to work on the UI of an iPhone application as a part of larger project. Unlike many fellow designers who prefer Photoshop to Illustrator for this kind of projects, I decided -after an educated guess- to go 100% vector. Few months later, the extra time I spent trying to get those inner glows to look right on Illustrator has paid off.