Well said Robert. This is a very useful article for me right now. I am currently designing a one page internal sales support site in order to educate, inform and inspire the sales team to work on techniques, numbers, selling points, costs, savings etc… I am filtering the site through this thought process and asking myself, within this environment and audience, what fonts are appropriate, what colors will inspire them and how can our the copy cut to the core of their being. Thanks again.

This is a very well written article. Examples made sense and easy to understand.

Thank you for writing this up. One of the point I learned from reading this is the fact that the tone of voice does matter. I would have never thought of it that way when writing up captions.

Hey, I just read your book on this a couple of weeks ago! It immediately started affecting the way I work. Thanks.

I particularly like the point about black and white having different connotations in different cultures.

I think designing for different cultures is something that needs more attention. Paul boag mentioned it, saying that whilst most users in (Japan, I think, but could remember wrong) used smartphones, they mainly used some old version of mobile opera.
Another point is covered in a w3c article: names. I never knew that in some places your name was still derived from your hometown. An interesting read: http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names

As mentioned in the article, it is very important to follow the standards, including the design of web pages: underlined links, if possible keep the default blue, …

It’s interesting that you bring up the red-check, green-x example, because it is another case where culture matters. In Asia, the meanings of red and green are reversed from the West. Exit signs, warning instructions, and fire extinguishers are commonly green, whereas entrances, good luck charms, and anything meaning “ok” is red.

A great article Rob! Thanks for mentioning some great points on the subject.

@nicolas I tend to disagree with link underlining and making them blue, have a read of this article from Jared Spool

http://mtresidence.net/jared-spool-what-color-should-your-links-be

Another top notch article again this year @24ways! Cracking work!

Great post! I agree about the importance of researching your target audience before designing for them.

Great article, just convinced me to buy your book, you can’t break the rules without knowing them …

Thanks for all the comments guys.

Alex thanks for buying the book. It’s very flattering to hear that it has changed how you work. For the better I hope!

Barnaby and Adam, cultural conventions are definitely the one area that fascinates me most, especially in relationship to colour. That topic alone could lend itself to an article.

Theo, great to hear that you are going to buy the book. Would love to know what you think of it once you’ve read it.

Thanks Seth. I really think that it is this attention to detail that can make a site inspirational and asking yourself questions with the audience firmly in mind is essential.

Hope your project is a success!