A Source Of Inspiration

Last week i was amused with a drinking challenge, with one shot for each time that “2.0″ was spoken. While the other challengers were all geeks, i suddenly realized that we have to let go of this naming. And web designers are also starting to get fed up, as pointed out by Elliot Jay.

Presentation at FOWD

Sure we have a problem, but is anyone trying to figure out a solution ? My 2 cents would be to to look at the edges to find new paths to creativity. Art, interactive installations, local events or underground culture seem to be the most promising exit strategy to this 2.0 thing.

With everyone doing and looking the same, the web is starting to look kind of dull. And before you start rumbling, i know this site’s design is all about the 2.0 trend, but i’ve been working on a new template, avoiding rounded corners or gradients.

Scarcity is always a straight way to get your campaign a boost. Or so they think at Amazon.de, where they plan to release the german version of “Harry Potter and the deathly hallows” the next 27th.

Instead of lining up at the stores perhaps there’s a better way: open up a huge bookshelf on the Internet, where the user can reserve their “own” Harry Potter book, even weeks before the official release.

You can choose and customize your own book on the virtual shelf, with the exact position of he book being saved, so you can remember were you left your books (i wish i could say the same with real books).

Credits:

• Site: www.hp-buecherregal.de
• Client: Amazon.de
• Web agency: Web Guerillas

The rock festival posts are not over yet! But this time, it’s from Richard Turley and the process he went through covering the Glastonbury Festival for the Guardian.

Photo: Martin Godwin/Guardian

The article speaks about the troubles, fun and hard work his team had to deal while setting up the design in the middle of one of the biggest music festivals in the world. And i found myself totally agreeing with Richard when he says

How do you capture the feeling of your senses being numbed by the heavenly punishment of dirt, music, art, people, performance, rain, insomnia, cider and exhaustion whilst being simultaneously kicked out of the sleepy trudge of day to day life?

This same process and feelings need to be applied to the current state of web design, getting rid of the gradients and round corners, and injecting some fresh energy to stand from the web crowd. Having read Transcending CSS lately, it became clear that webdesigners must force themselves to design beyond the grid and push new boundaries in their projects.

Or as Ferrell McCollough visually puts it:

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen might just have a stroke listening to Richard saying “…if you embrace a very loose approach to the design process, then some things are always going to be beyond your control. And when you abandon most of the rules, how do you define a mistake?”, but i’m sure others such as Jason or Andy Clarke would agree.

With a prophetic self-criticism, he ends:

Newspapers are going through a paradigm shift in the way they are read and disseminated. Over the next 10, 20 years or so, at a speed dictated by technology, readers will drift more and more to receiving news via digital means. News design will adapt to that. Flash or its equivalent will become the tool of choice as packages of graphics, images, text, audio and video will be put together, which will be an incredible opportunity to really affect how people receive design. These are the last gasps of print based news design. But that’s not something to be sad about. Whilst we’re still doing it, let’s have some fun.

Source: http://www.designobserver.com/archives/026488.html

Jonathan Moore has just relaunched his personal portfolio.

In web 1.0 days, Eric Jordan was one of my most respected interactive professionals at the same level as Yugo Nakamura or Hillman Curtis. Eric created the new media agency 2advanced, with several website reincarnations (v3, v4) that caused quite a stir in webdesign world whenever they were launched.

I’ve just got in touch with one of the 2advanced team members, art director Jonathan Moore, that launched his portfolio at newezra.com, with several well known works, the main one being the 2advanced v5 and Moto Pebl.

Jonathan is in the interactive industry for 6 years, working with clients such as Disney, Ford, Chevrolet, Adobe, Motorola, Capcom, EA or Adidas. Has many in our industry he also defines himself as a “jack-of-all-trades approach that he has towards projects with a skill set ranging including art direction, flash motion, flash development, motion design, 3d production, web-standards build, and a working knowledge of development languages.”

He also reminded me of one studio lab i forgot to mention on my previous Interactive Playgrounds post, the plat4m blog, also developed and designed by him, and where Eric Jordan posts.

It’s always difficult to have the time to update a personal portfolio if you’re deeply involved in (great) client work, so my congratulations to Jonathan for the New Ezra relaunch.

I’ve been doing some YouTube digging after my late discovery of the fullscreen option, and the recent related videos dashboard. Now, it’s time for a new video page interface:
Update: the embed code can now be customized, and finally is XHTML valid !

It was about time they dropped the amateurish look of the original version to a more streamlined and less cluttered (dropping the quicklist banner) approach. The “Report” link has more visibility, in compliance with their recent initiative of providing a video fingerprint tool to publishers such as Time Warner Inc. and The Walt Disney Co.

If you want to find out more future YouTube features, visit youtube.com/testtube, their version of Labs from parent company Google.

The commercial.

The website.

So here’s one more argument for web standards purists: MTV has just dropped their previous Flash website !
Tip from UxMag

As someone who came from a Flash background, it’s interesting to see how companies are choosing XHTML when it comes to creating communities or managing too much content. It’s not that it can’t be done in Flash (RoadRunner comes to mind) , it’s just that it becomes quite hard to find the resources (time and people, mostly) and deliver a flexible website. For shorter websites with less content, and more focused on experience, i still think that nothing beats Flash.

As the latest USA Today social revamp showed (increasing in 380% the number of registrations), when you connect to your audience the way they talk to each other, the reward is swift. Teenagers, now used to blogs and MySpace, are no longer into Flashy websites with large pre-loading times and lack of social features. Welcome to Web 2.0, MTV.

Oh, forget the post title - it’s not validating. But it’s a start.

Busy times at the portuguese webdesign scene, with two projects being recently given a Favorite Website Award (FWA).

First there was Triworks, the company from Aveiro and offices in the USA, that launched their BlackVersion 9.

The dark and minimalistic website, with prominent highlight to their latest projects, is a pleasure to the eyes. They still deliver smooth transitions as in the previous versions and had extra care in interface design.

Next came Tinoni Aventura, by Tungsten, a public awareness site teaching children about security problems such as earthquakes, internet or road safety. With nice illustrations and 3D animation, it’s a beautiful example how public institutions can use the web to promote citizenship.

I just hope the rest of 2007 keeps this promising.