Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

What exactly is up with the silly and meaningless use of “Rockstar” and “Ninja” that is proliferating around the web? “Rockstar Developer”, “Rockstar Designer”, “CSS Ninja” etc. I know it’s a joke, but it’s also moronic.

Tell people what you do, and why you’re good — don’t pretend to be a musical genius or a silent assassin. You’re not. There was a time, pretty recently in fact, when we were all keen to “keep it real.” What the hell happened?

(Of course, if you actually are a rockstar or a ninja, then stop moonlighting as a web professional, you’re taking work from the rest of us!)

Myows is a service for helping creatives to protect the copyright on their original works. It launches soon and I was lucky enough to get an interview with the founder, Max Guedy, about this valuable new service.

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Title: Sexy Web Design: Creating Interfaces That Work
Author: Elliot Jay Stocks
ISBN: 0980455235

Note: This is an edited version of a review I previously posted on Amazon.

I rarely buy technical books these days since so much knowledge is available for free on the web, but I was excited to get hold of this tome by Elliot Jay Stocks since he’s an excellent designer and I hoped to tap into what it is that sets him apart from the rest of us.

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Accordions, colour attention grabbers, fading popups, expanding lists, overly complex slideshows. What do all these have in common?

They are largely redundant.

Since everybody discovered the pretty animation effects that JavaScript libraries can produce, they have ended up in practically everything. We’ve become very accustomed to them, yet very few people seem to be questioning their use. And some of the use is worth questioning.

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After the release of my new site a couple of weeks ago, I only promoted it in one place initially: CSS Mania. It was then rapidly linked from a lot of places and as a result I’ve had loads more enquiries; to the point where I’ve had to turn down work!

So, many thanks to everyone who linked to me or posted my site to other galleries, in particular:

• Rubiqube: 10 Great Website Designs Using Wordpress As CMS — in fact, I got three of my sites listed here! Thank you :-)
• WP Candy
• CSS Impress
• CSS Loaf
• Design Centre: Web design:Blue Layouts

Well it’s taken me quite a long time, but I have finally finished my re-design of friskdesign.com!

The new site has a much better portfolio than the old one. Now, the emphasis is put on my work — the homepage has a nice big slideshow and there are myriad ways of accessing the folio through various menus, options and random content in the footer. With the old site, you couldn’t really see good screenshots until at least three screens in so I’ve rectified that big time. (more…)

Just had to post a link to this fabulous web portfolio by Bryan Katzel. It has one of the most interesting and innovative uses of semi transparent PNGs I’ve ever seen. Simply scroll down to the bottom and keep an eye on the central area of the page with the rainbow. Gorgeous!

http://www.webleeddesign.com/

Note: Don’t even think about visiting if you use Internet Exploder 6 or lower.

Web 2.0 is not a design aesthetic. Yet that hasn’t stopped thousands of designers perpetuating a commonly understood “Web 2.0″ look: over used shiny reflections, rounded corners, subtle gradients, bold colours and the use of the word ‘Beta’ next to your logo (whether or not your service is actually in beta!)

However, I find the most annoying effect is the now ubiquitous ‘peeling sticker’. It’s everywhere, and not just on the web either. I confess I just don’t get it: what’s wrong with those stickers? Do they use cheap glue?

If you need to bring attention to something on your page, then be original about it. Don’t just follow the crowd. And think about your page structure — good information architecture should lead users to the pertinent areas of your page, and you can do this without having to resort to cheap tricks.

Still, if you really want to perpetuate this aesthetic, you don’t even need to do the work yourself. Just get an app to do it for you. *Sigh*.

How many badly PhotoShopped efforts do you see day to day? This site has some corkers:

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

I’ve been using the new Wordpress 2.5 on a project which I upgraded from 2.3.3. It seemed very swish, with some great new features: Media Management, multi-file uploading, Gravatars, tidier menus and — the big one — an improved Write screen. When Wordpress was in RC phase, this was said about the Write screen:

.”..only displays the information that you’ll use most often. It displays the most common fields in a way that makes posting incredibly easy. Additional options are hidden away until you need them. The new Write screen anticipates the natural flow of the way you write.”

Wordpress’ Write screen is the core of the software. If this doesn’t work well, it doesn’t matter how many nice new features have been included, you’re gonna have a bad time blogging. So it was encouraging to read about it’s improvments. But rather than improving the experience, they made it worse. Why? In short: Bad use of screen real estate. (more…)