Creative Survey 2008 results

It was about a year ago that a collaboration between VCDC and Joblet commenced in order to create the first online survey related to graphics and web industry. There were 1050 people in total that took part in the survey raging from graphic art students to experienced professionals giving the opportunity to everyone related to form his own image of what is actually going on with the "creative" professions in Greece. The results can be found here in pdf format or you can always buy the hardcopy version by visiting the website.

Telescopic Text

Some people might say that splash screens in websites are dead (and personally I agree) but this guy here really made something good out of it.

Wireframing in Web Design

After a discussion that happened here about an inquiry for a wireframing tool I thought that it might be a good idea to post an article about Wireframing in Web Design.

You might have heard the term Wireframing and/or Prototyping in web or application design/development or you might not. For those of you who haven't heard this term so far here is the explanation for you:

Wireframing: Wireframes are a basic visual guide used in web design to suggest the layout of fundamental elements in the interface. Because of this they are often completed before any artwork is developed. When completed correctly they will provide a visual reference upon which to structure each page. Wireframes also allow for the development of variations of a layout to maintain design consistency throughout the site. This is an important part of the initial development stage because it creates user expectations and helps to develop an awareness of and familiarity with the site. Wikipedia

In some cases you'll come to a situation of creating a skeleton for a website/web application in which your developer and your designer must coordinate their work in order to reach a very premature stage of the project. That premature stage is going to be your wireframe.

Wireframes' purpose is to present the hierarchy of how things are going to work when the project is done or how the content is going to be distributed in real life. In some cases wireframes are useful to simulate common tasks of user interaction or even perform tests for certain actions such as user login or password recovery etc. Also they might be used for planning and comparing different approaches of the website's navigation. The list can go on for a lot of things but I think you got the point.

When you start an new project from scratch the risk of falling into pitfalls is really ahead of you. This might not be bothering when working as an individual but imagine that the whole team of yours falls into pitfalls over and over again not because their not doing their work well but because things don't work out well every time or because of some misconception between you and your client.

So you might start getting the idea of using wireframes. A good question might be "How do you create a wireframe?". You can create a wireframe with either a tool (check the list at the bottom of this post) or with you bare hands and your web design tools you use daily. Remember that a wireframe doesn't have to be eye candy or of great design concept but has to present the overall user interaction with the user.

Interesting stuff:

Articles:
Usability.gov
Designing interactive products with Fireworks
Quick and Easy Flash Prototypes

Web Design Wireframing Tools:
Axure
Pencil
Photoshare

Videos
Comp and Wireframing - Web Usability
Usability Testing

Ma.gnolia goes Open Source (M2 Project)!

About 6 days ago (yeap I know news sometimes take a while before they get here) the Ma.gnolia.com team announced that they decided to release their social booking platform as an open source project probably entitled "M2". I think these are good news and I'm really looking forward seeing the first release!

As stated from the team themselves the benefits from this move are going to be beneficial for everyone inveolved: Users, Developers and Magnolia Systems. Just to stay tuned about the way the project evolves, visit Ma.gnolia.org (it sounds like a wordpress.com / wordpress.org to me). If you want to take a deeper look of what is going to happen take a look to the .pdf file:

http://ma.gnolia.org/docs/M2_Charter.pdf

Firebug 1.2 Released

The well known web development tool reached the 1.2 release. Click  here for firefox add-on to update your current version.

Del.icio.us changes to become Delicious.com

Well I'm pretty sure that all of you have already heard or using the del.icio.us service as it has become one of the largest (if not the largest) online social bookmarking service with thousands users and millions of bookmarked URLs. That Web 2.0 monster undergone a extreme makeover (not the TV Show) with many things having changes for the sake of usability and effectiveness with the primary change to be the new domain name! I think that everybody enjoyed typing the neat del.icio.us stuff, but it seams like the guys in Delicious thought to make things more formal so they got themselves a new domain name so that you can now access Delicious from here.

The next thing that really made my day was the layout change something that should have been done a long time ago IMO. The new features really boost the usability to new levels. Just take a look here to see the complete list of all the new features and happy bookmarking!

Adaptd Web Design & Development

It's been a while since the last time I showcased a website so I think that this is a good time to go for it again. This time I found a really neat (I.M.O) website of a Romanian web design & web development firm called "Adaptd". From what I saw at their website I think that the level of their design skill is kept high. Just visit the case studies page, click over to this project and enjoy the view!

Justinfreiler.com

What do you say about a little dose of cool flash design? Well here it is! Justinfreiler.com is the website of Justin Freiler (I know it's obvious) that despite the fact that he decided to persue the career of a designer just a couple years ago, his portfolio full of quality! I liked both his illustrations and web design, while his idea to use vintage illustrations really catches your eyes! Check him out!

GrantMX Designs

Looking out for interesting Wordpress Themes I reached Marshall Grant's design studio entitled GrantMX Designs. Here are a few words about Marshall and his creative studio:

grantmx | designs is a small design studio located in Roswell, Ga (about 15 minutes north of Atlanta, GA) founded by web designer Marshall Grant. Grantmx.com is designed as a portal to showcase the photography and design projects of grantmx | designs. This site is also acts as a resource for small businesses and Non-Profit Organizations and Churches to gain knowledge of available web technology to assist in in their pursuit of success.

Low Morale: a series of flash animations portraying one man's struggle to cope with working life

I was fooling around the internet (again) and I discovered a very interesting flash animation called Low Morale! Despite the fact that this was pretty old I have never ran across it before. To get an idea about it read the extract below:

Low morale is a series of animations portraying one man's struggle to cope with the soul-sapping, will-to-live draining, life mugging, morale crushing experiences of work. Any correlation between events shown and real-life have been researched

The highlight is the animation based on Radiohead's "Creed"!



Also check out JCBSong.co.uk, created by the same guy! I really like his scetch style!



And finally check out the guy (Monkeehub) himself!

LAB 25

Well it's been a while since my last post but finally my exams are over! So to get back in action here is another flash goody for you! LAB25 is a design firm that deals with very interesting clients (MEXX, CCS, Evisu). The neat part of their showcase for me, was the skateboard decks they' ve design for CCS. Overall I liked their grungy style and the simple, yet well built flash website. Enjoy!

International Street & Open-Air Theatres Festival FETA 2007

Here is a flash goody for you! It's about FETA (nope... not the famous Greek Feta Cheese), one of Poland's annual art festivals. The element that intrigued in this website me was the navigation using only your keyboard! Enjoy!

YAML Builder

A couple of weeks ago I posted something about YAML. For all of you interested in YAML and the use it may have in web design and coding. In this cool demo you can take a much clearer idea of what you may achieve with YAML and its components! Finally it proved to be a very useful tool!

Welie: Patterns in interaction design

About a year ago I had to make an essay for my studies here, about web interfaces and the way they act with human. I had to make an analysis of some web interfaces based on some criteria and an important weight was given at Welie's interaction design patterns. Here is a few word from the author:

This site contains a lot of best practices in Interaction Design. Over the years I have collected examples and insight on their applicability that I share with you here on this. So there is really no 'original' design to be found here, sorry. It has all been done before... See it as a reference or basic 'toolkit' you can use when design user experiences. It is no substitute for creative design, it simply seeks to describe what we know and have learned about solutions you will find abundantly on the web and even beyond. Every 'solution' described in these patterns may succeed in one context but may also fail in another. The challenge is to understand why and how it depends on elements of the context of use. I give you my opinion here, but may opinion is also subject to new insight...so this site will be updated!

Yet Another Multicolumn Layout (YAML): CSS Framework

Do you remember Blueprint post about a month ago? Well here is another cool CSS tool for all web designers out there. YAML is an (X)HTML/CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts. The structure is extremely versatile in its programming and absolutely accessible for end users.

• Based on web standards
• Accessible
• Flexible
• Easy to use
• Fully documented

I haven't test it yet but I'm sure that it may prove a very useful tool judging from the examples available here.

I was searching for some free wordpress themes that (still) haven't been abused and I ran across Tweak!. Tweak! is a free simplified theme version of tweakcast.com and if you want to learn more about it click here.

PlaygroundBlues.com: Nathan Borror's Webspace

PlaygroundBlues.com is the personal website of Nathan Borror a web designer / developer based in Kansas City. What I particularly like about PlaygroundBlues.com is the simplicity of the layout. You would say that the layout disappears really making the content to stand out! Another cool feature is the navigation tabs on the left and the way they slide in and out (probably made with a modern javascript library). To find out more about Nathan Borror's work check this link as well. Enjoy!

IKEA: Back to College

What we have here is the minisite for the new IKEA advertising campaign. The target group is obviously the new students that are going to make the big step and live on their own during their studies this year. As you can see the idea is pretty good and well materialized! Again in flash with a touch of more advanced actionscript the final result is pretty warm and cozy something I believe they wanted to succeed. There are some good furniture solutions apart from good web design!

Design Float

For the lovers of Digg here comes Design Float! Design Float is a social bookmarking service (just for the record Design Float is built upon Pligg) that aims to gather bookmarks related to Web Design and Graphic Arts... in other words it's a Digg-like application for designers! Sign up and feed the thing!

Vikiworks™ Studio

Vikiworks™ Studio is the personal blog (Wordpress 2.2.2) of Yichi a graphic designer and specializing in User Interface Design. The current look of his blog is quite an astonishing work as you may see! The little flash part embed in the header of the page and the color combination really lifts off the layout making it to distinguish from the majority of Wordpress themes. Enjoy!