The guys that brought us all the previous iPhone OS GUI’s are at it again. What stands out in their work is both attention to detail and a very nice organization of the content. Everything is sorted in groups (including nested groups for smaller elements). This is priceless for UX people, who can now design the interfaces for their own apps with the right elements. It’s more of a drag&drop of lego bricks into place, than anything and we like it here.
When the web first started, all websites were just about presenting content. Or to be more precise – information. It was a simple, high contrast design, with white background, black text and blue, underlined links. It’s been many years since then, although I remember using a lot of these principles when building websites back in 1998. They were easy to read, and the lack of multimedia due to slower connections at the time, was in fact a blessing that let us fully appreciate content.
Now all of that has shifted towards shocking the user with jQuery animations, smooth scrolling, effects and gimmicks. I’ve been browsing through a lot of award winning websites – mostly portfolios for online companies – and I noticed that the amount of content they communicate now can be summarized in a few bullet-points. Surely if it’s purely about the design, it’s not a bad thing, but sometimes we really want to read more and don’t want to be treaded like idiots who can only comprehend ordered lists.
What do you think? Should we simplify the websites, relying more on bullets and eye-candy, or should we balance it better with longer pieces of text, that actually say something?
A flyer is a simple, little poster to hand out, which should be informative about an event (usually) but it also should catch the eye visually, because you know, flyers usually travel in packs. And the ones that are handed out on the streets are pretty terrible. So let’s take a look at some cool examples:
When people use the term “business card” we usually associate it with the boring rectangle in 2 or 3 standard sizes and forget about it. Well ok, sometimes someone uses a crazy color. But that’s not enough nowadays to catch the eye now is it? Here are 20 business card ideas that I’ve found that experiment. And surely having one of these given to you, you’d remember the company. Some are even edible!
Apple has always been known for superior product design. But does it also apply to it’s website? We looked back into the web archive and came up with images from nearly every year, starting in 1998. The last picture is from 2011, and there’s very little change between 2008 and today. Take a look:
Whoa, that’s a pretty cool example of what web-apps are capable of. Sure this is actually pretty pointless, but proving it can be done, it opens a window for more advanced web applications of the future. Check it out here: http://alexw.me/ipad/
Sometimes it’s cool to get off the computer and work on our creativity in a different kinda way. Like with some paper and scissors. See what people on flickr are making, and make your own maybe ?
The Picasso’ painting “Two characters” looked a little similar to me, when I saw it in a photobook recently, so I searched the web and noticed that some other sites also picked that up. It seems like the finder icon is strongly “inspired” by the painting. Sure it couldn’t be exact (aside from the obvious reasons) because it’s a bit too sad and depressing. But still, can u see it?
We tend to go towards perfection of many kinds constantly in our lives. Technology gives us HD and megapixels for clearer images, higher sampling rates for better audio. Everything is better, faster, stronger. Or whatever.
But at the same time the rising popularity of the imperfections of the yesteryear (especially in visual and sound arts) are a thing that’s really hip today. Yeah, vintage is pretty hip, but it’s not really because of the hipsters, because most of them are way too young to feel nostalgic about these things. They kind of made it their style, but the world doesn’t follow just one group. And yet the world likes noise. The world likes vintage. The world likes slightly warmer colors in photographs, and grain, and smudged borders. Why?
As I said before, it cannot be nostalgia, because yeah, some of us (like me) remember the days of the 80′s point’n'shoot kodak’s but most of the internet now doesn’t. It cannot be just a trend too though. Why you ask ?
Well let me answer that.
A good example is with sound – you take a simple sine-wave and play it. It’s the most basic sound and it’s pretty boring. But when you add some whitenoise, and some crackles, hiss and vinyl distortion you get something far warmer, harmonic and what’s more important natural. Sure we see and hear the world mostly in HD, but we don’t want the reality to be exactly what we see and hear. Especially since it actually never is. Want proof ?
Go record a concert with your phone’s camera. The sound might be getting better with each year and each phone, but it’ll never beat being there. Even with the most pro equipment (like 20 microphones everywhere and preamps) it might sound clear but it still lacks something.
Another example – colors and noise in images. Take a simple square and paint it red. Then take another square, paint it red as well but add a small amount of noise to it. Which one looks “better” or “more natural” ?
In most cases it’s the noisy one, the imperfect one. Because the computer monitor is pretty perfect already, so everything that’s just one color (or even a gradient) looks kind of like plastic. And we don’t like plastic, right?
It’s not even about a regular texture on a color, it’s about making the color a little bit imperfect to make it more real. Because in real life if we look at a red square somewhere it won’t be 100% completely red, unless it’s printed on a glossy high quality paper and it’s not worn out in any way. But give it some time and it will look different.
Those imperfections are of course also present in the videos, with more and more artists adding noise, scratches and discoloration to their videos. And the results? Well we tend to like those videos more for some reason than the crisp and clear HD footage that’s well lit and almost resembles a plastic version of reality. The video below is of an iPhone app that let’s you record some vintage videos. If you watch it you’ll see that it can make even simple shots look nice, without anything going on in them. We’ll probably see a lot more of that vintage trend to come. Because vintage is (in our heads at least) closer to that warm reality we live in.
When the web first started, all websites were just about presenting content. Or to be more precise – information. It was a simple, high contrast design, with white background, black text and blue, underlined links. It’s been many years since then, although I remember using a lot of these principles when building websites back in 1998. They were easy to read, and the lack of multimedia due to slower connections at the time, was in fact a blessing that let us fully appreciate content.
