Design Inspiration

35 Stunning Elevator Advertisements - FrancescoMugnai.com

Very cool showcase. Advertisements that go beyond the usual and take full advantage of the medium they're presented. Going to advertise in an elevator? In which case, why not make the elevator an integral part of the ad. Some really imaginative stuff. The forklift truck one is particularly clever.

Niche Showcase Galleries - Mogdesign

Yeah, I know there are a bunch of submission sites for design, like Design Bump, Design Float, etc. They're for overall design though, all aspects. This is a great selection of sites that drill down into a smaller niche. There's a site dedicated just to showcasing horizontal scrolling, another for church websites. Some awesome content.

Retro Futurism At Its Best - Smashing Magazine

I adore this kind of style. Along with steampunk it's one of my favorites, and it probably translates much better to the web than steampunk does. Not only is this a great showcase of art, but it all links back to tutorials and techniques for how to achieve the same kind of graphic effects yourself. Brilliant.

Design Resources

16 Free Hand-Dyed Paper Textures - Lost And Taken

I love playing with textures in design, and Lost and Taken often has good selections. This is a particularly good one though, some really cool effects from dyed paper, with water, color and even tea stains.

SEO And Social Media

How To Compete With Yourself In The Search Engines And Win - SEJ

This was a really interesting piece. Explains how expanding a single site so that it covers lots of different topics might not be the best idea. Instead search engines might rank you more highly if you keep sites to very specific niches, and expand the number of sites rather than the size of a single sight. Thought provoking.

10 Social Media Campaigns That Rock - Thoughtpick

Good overview of how social media and viral marketing can have a real impact on products. Much of the corporate world still hasn't really caught on to how they can use social media, but these are some great examples of companies who seem to have worked it out.

Popular Design Blogs Share Their Stats - Lee Munroe

Useful statistics overview here. Covering a good number of design blogs from the well to the lesser known. Examining how user numbers change depending on the day of the week, popular resolutions, popular blog posts and unusual keyword searchs. It's a great sample of the kind of helpful data you can get from analytics software.

Design Technique

Flash #FAIL - The Design O'Blog

Why Flash is useless as a foundation of web design. Pretty much fully in agreement with this article, which points out the negative factors of basing a website off Flash. Seven reasons why people should be looking away from Flash for website design.

5 Disciplines Of Successful Design - This Is Aaron's Life

Sensible and informative article on some best practices, useful for any designer. Disciplines to follow to ensure that you're always producing your best work, tailored to a client, and that you know when to stop.

Behance Portfolio Highlights

Simple Girl - Natalia Pokrovskaya

This is such a fun photography collection.  In some ways very simple, but I imagine it must have been hard work for the model! But it comes together brilliantly in concept, and I found it fascinating.

Bodies Of Work Series 2 - Brian Cummings

This was gorgeous. I'm a big fan of good tattoo art in general. This took a really original slant though, using tattoo art but also trying to use the lighting effects used by Rembrandt. Combining an old master's techniques with something more edgy like tattoo art works great.

Just Great Sites

"I Shot Him Because I Loved Him, Damn Him"

Of course, having highlighted the 'Flash #Fail' article, now I end up showcasing a Flash based site. Proves there's an exception to every rule. What a great name for a design agency (...or any company) - I visited this site purely because I was fascinated by the name. The site itself is also great fun, with a lovely vintage look, simple and informative about the company and its services. Well worth a look.

From The Couch

I've talked about From The Couch before, but I'll highlight it again. And it's another exception to a rule (for me at least), because I don't like video blogs. From The Couch is just awesome though, and consistently so. Posts that are just long enough to cover a topic in a worthwhile way, but not too long as to get boring. I feel almost fanboyish, definitely my favorite blog these days.

In addition to all the web pages linked to here, I'm choosing one of my favourite Flickr images from the past week available under Creative Commons. This week's original image is by Flickr user whoALSE.

Twubble

I'm not a big fan of #followfriday, because it's just lists of "people to follow" without context. My preferred tool for finding new people to follow is Twubble. It's a simple tool; it will search through people you're following and give you a list of suggested links based on who they're following. I check out the site at least once a week.

Why I Like It

I like to be able to make a quick judgement of who I want to check out further from a suggestion list. Twubble gives me three important pieces of information:

• Profile picture
• Link to their Twitter profile
• Which of my friends follow them

I can make a good judgement based on those factors. I'll check out their Twitter profile and posts, and their blog/website, but the gut feeling from the Twubble list is usually right. It's also useful that Twubble keeps its list manageable and expandable.

TwitterCounter

The best analytics tool I've found for measuring raw data. The site tracks your follower growth over time, details the average growth of your followers and gives overall Twitter ranking as well as geographical options. It provides raw data and graphical representations, future predictions based on past statistics and allows you to compare statistics between any two Twitter users.

Why I Like It

TwitterCounter gives me the most useful overview of the general trends of my account. I love the prediction tool, flexible enough so that you can predict follower numbers at any point in the future. For those who have more than one Twitter account then the comparison tool can give you a handy overview of the differences between the two.

Tweepular

Tweepular's over the top color scheme hides a solid management suite. It tracks your following/followers and allows bulk management of these users. You can see reciprocal follows and one way follows, and sort and manage your account in various ways. It also ranks you based on your "Tweepularity". That's a good idea but  it would help if we had at least some hint as to what factors its measuring or there's no way to judge what Tweepularity actually means.

Why I Like It

The color scheme is kinda fun, but it's the functionality that's attractive. Bulk follow/unfollow is invaluable. It's also helpful to be able to sort out people you're following who don't tweet any more (you can sift by date of last tweet). Unlike many web based Twitter services you don't have to proceed to someone's Twitter profile to get more information - a mouseover of a user in Tweepular will give you their username, screenname, location, bio and latest tweet. With the promised addition of adding "recent unfollows" to the statistics Tweepular is a serious piece of kit, even if it looks a little crazy.

At the start of May, Britain's broadsheet Daily Telegraph newspaper started a series detailing expense claims filed by British Members of Parliament (MPs). In the month since this story began it has become the biggest ongoing news story in the UK, has led to a number of ministerial resignations, caused a collapse in support for the Labour government. At the same time it's seen the Daily Telegraph increase its readership and significantly improve its advertising revenues.

A Powerful Influence

The MPs' expenses story is a demonstration of the continuing power and influence of the print media. It may well lead to the resignation of the Prime Minister before the next election. It has probably confirmed Labour's defeat in that election and therefore a change of government. Only the wider demographic reach and most trusted nature of a major broadsheet newspaper could have achieved such an impact.

If a similar story had been released on a blog it would have reached a much smaller audience. It would have been more subject to being "brushed under the carpet" by British politicians. Few blogs would have had the investigative capacity to continue to dig for the story, uncovering new revelations at regular intervals. It's unlikely that a story on a blog would have been picked up so quickly by the wider television and news media outlets, and at such length.

Learning Lessons From Online

That's not to say that online journalism doesn't have an impact. We saw that over a decade ago when The Drudge Report was the first outlet to break the news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. That was a demonstration, however, of the internet's capacity to break news but not to reach the widest audience. The Lewinsky scandal may have broken on Drudge, but it didn't become the massive news story until it was picked up by traditional and trusted media outlets. Things have changed little in the last decade, the traditional news media is still far more trusted than any blog or recent online publication.

The Daily Telegraph has also taken lessons in the way in which it has released the news of the expenses scandal. Anyone who has read online advice about how to write good blog posts and develop an audience will have identified some of the Telegraph's methods. They didn't release all the information at once, they drip fed it in a series that could continually develop an audience. They kept their focus tight - e.g. specifically examining the expenses of a particular party, or the Cabinet. They heavily promoted future topics to encourage repeat readers.

Print Media Is Developing, Not Dying

The most successful print media in the future is likely to be the same titles that we know today. This will be particularly true in countries like the UK where single titles can effectively cover a national agenda - as contrasted with the United States where even the "national" newspapers like the New York Times are effectively locally focused.

We'll see continued developments of those newspapers' online presence of course, but there will remain a demand for the printed page as well. It's the "front page splash" of major newspapers that continues to break the news for the majority of people, not the faster reacting blogs and social media services. Those blogs and social media services are important, but while they may break the news in the first instance, it's print media that will take it to the masses for the forseeable future.

Design Inspiration

Amazing One Element Logos - Abduzeedo

Simple is often the best, and this collection demonstrates that. Demonstrating that you can simplify even beyond the standard "graphical element plus logo", these logos find a great balance in just single element.

50 Excellent Circular Logos - Webdesigner Depot

As one of the primary shapes the circle is strong and simple. No surprise then that it's been a popular basis for logo design. This article highlights some great examples of circular logos, and displays them in a large enough size to really appreciate. I'm a particular fan of the Accelrys and Lucent logos from this collection.

Video Game Console Logo Gallery - The Retroist

It's interesting to see genre specific approaches to logo design. The Retroist has pulled together a collection of video game console logos over time. The console market is highly competitive and so logo and branding, standing out from the crowd, is vital. Some of these logos seem almost garish to me.

Branding

The Evolution Of An Auto Brand - Denis Designs

I love the Dodge Charger, I think it's a beautiful car. It's also a car with a history, successfully linking back to classic versions with some aspects of its modern design. With models going back nearly fifty years, this is a fascinating visual history that demonstrates both changes in design fashions in general and the Charger branding in particular.

Logo Design RoundUp Part 7 - ImJustCreative

The latest collection of logos submitted to this series has some great work. What's fascinating is that all the submissions have thoughts on the inspiration for the logo design, and the branding message that they were trying to convey. It's a great insight into the thought that goes into branding. I particularly like the designs for 903 Creative and DCB Design. I'd recommend that you check out the whole Logo Design RoundUp series, there's some excellent stuff there.

Design Opinion

2009 Trends - LogoLounge.com

This is LogoLounge's seventh annual report on trends in logo design. They've studied more than 35,000 submitted logos and come up with fifteen trends in design for 2009, with a particular focus on increased use of typography and increased color chroma and hues. Also interesting to see that they highlight the importance of the favicon.

Design Resources

400+ Beautiful Twitter Icons For Your Websites - Blog Godown

There's something about Twitter that seems to inspire logo designers. I can't think of any other trending online service that has provoked so many logos and icons. It's great, it means there are some really imaginative ways of encouraging people to follow you on Twitter. I'm curious though, with so many different icons is the main Twitter brand and logo losing impact?

Stuff To Buy

To Do Pad - Knock Knock

Not branding related as such. Saw this item highlighted on a Twitter post this week. For all the web and desktop apps for task management, I've never found anything more effective than written "To Do" lists in terms of day to day task management. This is a great pad that splits your To Do into tasks, errands, correspondence and notes, as well as prioritizing them. It's awesome.

In addition to all the web pages linked to here, I'm choosing one of my favourite Flickr images from the past week available under Creative Commons. This week's original image is by Flickr user Tiago Ribeiro.

Nobody Wants Computers

"It may be difficult to convince people they need a computer..." (Masao Morita, then head of home and personal computers for Sony, quoted in Akio Morita's 'Made In Japan', written in 1986)

We've all seen the older quotes about the need for computers - that the world would only need five (from the chairman of IBM in 1943), or that they would weigh tons (Popular Mechanics in 1949). Those are predictions from a different age. The quote from 'Made In Japan' comes from a time that we might already consider the digital age. They come from a time when it wasn't just conceivable, it was perfectly possible, for people to own a personal computer.

I think in 1986 I had three computers, a Spectrum, an Atari ST, and a PC, but that was unusual. Yet here's the guy in charge of home computers for Sony still talking about how people didn't see the need to own a computer. Twenty years later it's a surprise when I meet people who don't own a computer, even if they don't need it for work or entertainment. A computer with internet access feels almost like a standard domestic appliance.

Email Is A 'Major Project'

"His first day on the job, Friedman got a window office. A week later he had his first major project - connecting Microsoft's foreign offices to corporate headquarters in Bellevue by E-Mail." (from 'Hard Drive - Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft empire, talking of the hiring of Neal Friedman in the mid 1980s)

Email is ubiquitous today. If it's surprising if someone doesn't have a computer, it's amazing if someone doesn't have an email address. A "long wait" for email might be if it takes a day for the IT department to set up your work account when you get a new job. I can't imagine the impracticality of working without access to email, but pre-Internet the installation of email was a major project even for a company like Microsoft.

Companies Will Succeed By Providing "Full Systems"

"...in the not too far future, a computer will have to be able to hook up to larger networks of information, into systems for home security, weather forecasting, financial affairs, shopping and so on." (Akio Morita, co-founder and chairman of Sony, writing in 'Made In Japan')

OK, a good start here. Morita has basically predicted the internet and its impact and necessity for the personal computer market. He goes on to say:

"Making the bits and pieces of such a system will not serve a company well; a successful company will have to come up with the full systems that are needed."

If anything he was totally wrong about this. Companies haven't been successful by trying to provide everything from weather forecasts, shopping, etc. The most successful companies are the ones that have focused on a particular service - Amazon, Monster, ebay, YouTube. Providing one service well seems to have been the route to success. The internet itself offers that full service, and Morita presumably never predicted how the likes of Google would provide a service that pulled all the elements together, but single companies don't try and provide that catch-all.

Predicting The Future

I read a fun fact recently, that if you take a scientist using complex computer models to predict future events - e.g. environment, economy, etc, and you compare that with the predictions of a random sample of 'average people', then the random sample will be more likely to be right. The reason being that on average people expect things to stay pretty much the same in future as they are now. I don't think that holds true for online though, and not only will things not stay the same I'm pretty confident that the biggest developments won't be predicted at all.

Design Inspiration

The Web Design That Changed The World - Fast Company

OK, so I don't think it changed the world. As a conservative I hope that by 2012 the GOP will have a more effective online approach. There's no denying that the Obama campaign utilised the web with great effective in the last presidential campaign. This is a really interesting article on how the design of his website managed to create emotional connections that had a real impact when it came to campaign season.

Social Media

6 Things World Of Warcraft Can Teach You - Mashable

I avoid World of Warcraft. My wife and I even considered (briefly) putting a promise not to play WoW in my wedding vow. The game is fascinating phenomenon, and this article examines how many of the characteristics of WoW success are the same in the social media world. Look at these lessons and you might be thankful that so many people are using their skills to reach level 80 rather than competing with you!

Design Technique

15 Best Photoshop Abstract Tutorials - Tutorial Magazine

Photoshop is one of the best served applications in terms of web tutorials. I've picked up so many great techniques just through Google searches. This collect is particularly awesome though. The abstract focus means that you've got great resources for designing the kind of elements that can really punch up a website, headers, backgrounds, etc.

Freelancing

Working Away From Home: Why You Should - Outlaw Design Blog

Working from home on a daily basis can get stale. When you're bored you don't do your best work. Even regardless of work, it's important to get out the house once in a while. Danny Outlaw examines the many benefits of working out of the office. Being able to work anywhere is an advantage freelancers have, here's why we should be taking more advantage.

My Work

The Anime Network

I've been working on The Anime Network's relaunched website for a good while now. The last couple of weeks have been really hectic, as we prepared for launching premium and subscription offerings. It's the biggest project I've done solo as a designer (and with great work from @akpoff on the coding/development side), and the first time I've wrestled so in-depth with Joomla. It's not perfect yet, but the major elements are present and the updates are mostly live. I feel pretty proud of it, though the job isn't done yet!

In addition to all the web pages linked to here, I'm choosing one of my favourite Flickr images from the past week available under Creative Commons. This week's original image is by Flickr user T.Oechsner.