11 result(s) found tagged: Design
A List Apart has kicked off the second annual Survey For People Who Make Websites. The call to action:
Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.
If this applies to you, you know what to do.
Earlier this year, Pentagram redesigned the trade publication Dairy Today. While not the most interesting topic, Pentagram did an amazing job. Not only did they introduce a strong logotype, but the cover features a new dairy cow portrait each month. You really need to see it in person, but even on the web it's easy to see the cover's potential impact.
Every now and then I come across a designer who doesn't see what's so great about Pentagram. It's true that they get overhyped occasionally, but the Dairy Today cover shows their strength. They can tackle virtually any topic with ease. Nothing they do is overstated, but instead strives to set a new visual standard. In that way, the intention is to be timeless, which is lacking in most design today. Rebrand your company to the hot new trend and you'll be back to square one in two year's time.
You might remember that Studiobanks gave a lecture for AIGA a few months ago. It was a part of their A Lecture by Your Next Door Neighbor series. Well, this month Muzak's in-house design team has been invited to speak. We have been working closely with their team on Muzak's various website projects. It will be interesting for us to hear more about what their offline design process is like. The event is next Thursday. Make it out if you can. You can find details on the AIGA Charlotte site.
About Muzak Design Team:
As the world’s leading provider of business music, Muzak creates experiences that reach more than 100 million people daily. Some of the biggest brands in business, from Aveda to Sur La Table to Boeing, work with Muzak to enhance their brand image in more than 350,000 client locations. Based out of its home office, Muzak’s in-house design group creates everything you can think of—from sales collateral and web sites to environmental design and apparel. The team of three designers and one copywriter create award-winning work to promote sales and the brand.
CommandShift3 is a new site created by Jelly in New York. In short:
You are presented with the screenshots of two websites side by side. If you click the screenshot of the site you think looks best, the page reloads and you start all over again. It never ends.
Basically, it's Hot or Not for websites.
We've submitted the Studioblog and the Studiobanks website (they just recently added the ability to thumbnail Flash sites) and they've had their fair share of victories. Regardless of the outcome, it's good clean fun.
More and more, web designers and developers are coming to the realization that many of the established guidelines set for traditional, print design can be applied to the web.
Typography seems to be getting the most attention these days—for good reason, as the web is mostly text. Richard Rutter did a great service to web typography and transposed Robert Bringhurst’s typography bible, The Elements of Typographic Style, for the web and published it online.
However, defining areas for the placement of type is achieved through layout, which is equally as important. Specifically, grid layout is something every designer should know. Photoshop facilitates the usage of grid layout when designing, but there’s no simple answer for web developers. Thankfully, Teevio has created a Javascript include that works with jQuery to toggle a grid over any design without affecting the existing code. Use it next time you need to markup a site under a strict grid layout.
QBN recently held their first QBN Sessions lecture at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. The event brought together 12 preeminent designers, artists, photographers and film makers to speak about their creative process. They've just posted videos from the event on YouTube, including clips of Shepard Fairey, Michael Muller and Joshua Davis. Moreover, there's plenty of additional photos on Flickr. It's good to see QBN doing it up right and saturating all the outlets. In case QBN sounds familiar, they are the group behind Newstoday.
With the launch of their new, hyrid XHTML/Flash website, MTV kicked off a new project called MTV Hats (aka Header Art Treatments). With some flexibility in the layout, due in part to templates from Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits, MTV is able to accept, approve and drop a variety of header artwork from artists and designers into rotation on mtv.com. Anyone that has ever watched MTV knows they've applied many different treatments to their logo over the years, so this project is not surprising. It is, however, very refreshing for the MTV Design Team to figure out a way to pull more designers and artists into their community. The MTV Design Team says it best though:
We love our logo. For real, we wanna take it out for an expensive candlelit dinner... TWO appetizers. Since MTV's inception in 1981 our brand's been the subject of countless artist interpretations by some of the world's most beautifully warped minds. We plan to keep that spirit alive with the new mtv.com and push it to the next level... YOU.
Sooner or later every designer has creative block. It's a fact. First thing to realize is you're not alone. I've never met a designer, not one, that hasn't struggled with creativity. What is unique, however, is how to handle it.
Here is what I have found that works...
Do you make websites? If the answer is yes, be sure to go take The Web Design Survey 2007 from A List Apart. The goal of the survey is "to increase knowledge of web design and boost respect for the profession."
Last month, Digital Web Magazine published an article about the redesign of EllisLab’s ExpressionEngine site by 31Three. In the article, Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, the man behind 31Three, walks through an abridged version of his entire design process. From a change in work environment to wireframing to design exploration, Bennett-Chamberlain provides some great insights for designers to reference and apply to their own process. As evident from the finished product, the attention to detail put into the project is admirable. The gist of "It Doesn’t End Here," the closing remarks, is one of the most important ideas contained in the article.
In that regard, a website isn’t a static design, and once it launches, it’s not mine anymore—it’s a living, breathing entity that will change as others interact with it, and as it grows.
Designers and clients alike would be better for making Bennett-Chamberlain's sentiment their mantra; our work is never done. Not only are projects that continually change and grow more successful, but they end up staying relevant longer and out of that undead state too many projects slip into.
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