The future is (almost) here

I’ve been to many conferences so far in my burgeoning life as a web designer. There are some that seem heavily used for PR efforts and some that are just an utter mess, so it’s nice when it feels like a really well-organized, sincere and thoughtful event. dConstruct is one of the good kind. I left Brighton on the speedy train back to London last night filled with loads of motivation, mind-bended by some of the incredible speakers. Yay, Jeremy Keith, best one yet, many people said afterwards.

My biggest overall takeaway from the conference is that we should think beyond the user interface, at least the concept of the UI as we know it. With the bajillion input types that Luke described, ubiquitous computing and ambient location, designers should be focusing ever more on user behavior than visual design. How and why is someone interacting with the web, at what time, and in what context? These will be the biggest questions in the near future. Web products will wrap themselves around our lives and customize themselves based on our behaviors, instead of us sitting at a desk visiting a static web page.

As (cyborg anthropologist) Amber Case was saying, the best technologies will get out of the way and let people live their lives, but when we need assistance to help us with a task, then that technology will become visible. 

There are two more things that have stuck with me since the conference, besides Adam Buxton just being insanely funny. One is the shared Google doc that Maciej Ceglowski distributed to Pinboard fans for user research, and the other is the CCTV footage that Dan Williams demanded from his UK bus company.

The Pinboard google doc became something like 55 pages of self-regulated feedback that required intensive study by each user before adding a comment. It’s unbelievable to think about opening that can of worms but it’s actually not a bad idea. The community was already close-knit and passionate – they cared so much about the product that they would spend hours to make it better. Fervent fans provide all the accountability you will ever need. In his book Undercover User Experience Design, Cennyd Boyles recommends using the same technique for consolidated user feedback and I might use it for beta testing the web app I’m creating now for a startup in Cambridge.

Another good point from Maciej: building a website and adding some social media options does not a community make. It can’t be engineered; a thriving community develops organically over time. 

Dan Williams was a great speaker, charismatic and passionate about the persistent surveillance infiltrating our lives. He brought detailed (and difficult to find) research to illustrate all of his points. I didn’t even know about the surveillance drones planned for NYC, although the Bloomberg quote “get used to it” sounds just like him. Bloomberg argues that we are already under surveillance from every building on practically every street corner – what’s the difference between that and unmanned aircraft snapping our candids?

Dan mentioned the hilarious CCTV filmmakers project, which uses footage from existing CCTV cameras to produce short films and performances. He thought he would try it out when he found out that his entire bus ride through the UK was filmed. However he could only get one photo (you can request footage through a freedom of information act – info on the UK government site here. CCTV is required to obscure everyone’s face except for the requesting party, so they would have had to manually black out (with what looked like a sharpie) everyone’s faces in every frame for the entire three hour ride. 

Also didn’t know and was shocked to find out that there are cameras in some bars in the US tracking customers gender, age, and physical characteristics to pass along to services like dating apps or for advertising.

Besides being creeped out at times, what a great experience and I’m so glad I went. I‘m going to try to stay in that mind-expanded space as I work on web applications for clients, and develop my own product that will push the limits of augmented reality and ask how technology can provide a deeper connection to the world around us. I especially want to dive deeper into geolocation.

So often with web design we talk about conventions and staying within what users already know. I think that’s valuable advice, but let’s not be restricted by it so that we end up creating the same website over and over again. We can move beyond traditional interaction patterns as these new technologies become more accepted, slowly but surely. 

However, none of the speakers were as titillating as the conversation I had with Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter of Clearleft afterwards. At what point does a french fry become a “chip”? A question that has perplexed me ever since I moved to London three months ago. Where is that dividing line – what is maximum french fry size and what on earth pray tell is minimum chip size? Someone help, before I lose any more sleep over this.

Oh wait, one more big takeaway (and good note to end my epic blog post) that Nicole Sullivan brought to the table – don’t engage with the haters. Focus on the positive things that people are saying and give the negative, non-constructive (usually anonymous) feedback none of your time. In fact, sometimes we can even be our own worst enemy and troll ourselves – true fact. Cheers to a troll-free life for all. You heard me, drink up!

Concept, play, and the space between

I went to see Sascha Lobe speak on Tuesday night at MAD, as part of AIGA design talk extravaganza. He runs L2M3 in Germany. And he’s really hot. Once I got over that and started paying attention (lets be honest, I still haven’t gotten over it), it reminded me of the work I did with Base Madrid. What a great opportunity that was, and the last time I was able to work on a client project with a strong graphic system.

In web design, each project begins with user experience and develops with a focus on the subtleties of interactions rather than making a bold, design-first, graphic system, especially if it would get in the way of proper navigation of the site. I must admit, I was envious of Lobe’s work. It’s aggressive, and risk-taking. I would like to take these graphic design lessons with me into the web world where I’m currently working. One of the questions after his presentation was, how do you get this work approved? He said he’s been asked that many times but that he hasn’t run into much resistance. Hm. When there is a strong reason for the design, he explained, then it is hard to argue against it. 

I think the genius of his work comes from the ability to think from a birds-eye view. Literally. Many of his design solutions for architectural space involve a graphic device imposed upon the floorplan of the site, which is then translated to the three-dimensional space.


1392-media.jpg

In response to the odd fact that the building entrance is section E and they weren’t able to change the coding, L2M3 created a graphic device of concentric rings to guide the application of the wayfinding system. It’s as if a pebble were being dropped down at E and rippling out to other parts. The occupant is mtz Münchner Technologie Zentrum, and that is the extent of my knowledge about this company. Their website is really boring. And in German.

The translation of this system into the interior space is visually intense and slightly disorienting (I’d have to see it in person to know for sure), but a powerful graphic concept successfully applied to the space. They maintained the curvature of the circles on walls, ceilings and floors, to guide the visitor through the space. No matter how small of the fragment of circle you see, you know where the exit is depending on which direction it’s curving.


1397-media.jpg


Images courtesy of L2M3

Images courtesy of L2M3

The lightboxes in the lobby give a directional cue for each building area as the letters float in their respective color. The direction that the letters move determines the direction to walk. They infused this boring space with so much imagination and visual interest, I wonder if its made those serious employees have more fun.

I was turned on to the Jacques Greene site by Hoverstat.es today, and found myself relating this experience with the feeling of navigating a transparent modern construction like this one. There are a group of windows at fixed sizes, all playing an individual snippet of the video for this song. But within those windows, there are other windows. So you feel like you’re navigating through a fuzzy glass-walled fantasy dream with lots of trees, and a young expressionless girl.

I’ve never seen a music video broken into individual windows. As I was playing, I was asking myself a whole number of nerdy design questions. How does one window experience differ when it’s separated from the rest? Do you need all of them together to understand the full story? You can’t close or resize them so there is strictness in the playfulness, and maybe a little too limited because the fun ends there. But I was able to get a full experience of the music without altering the visual experience in any damaging way.

 


jacquesgreene.jpg

In fact, it was cool to move the windows off screen, stretching the common idea of screen real estate.

This made me think of the A List Apart redesign, launched earlier this year. 

By using off-canvas real estate to park the blog header and footer, besides frustrating people (including myself), is there a conversation that they are trying to have about the current paradigms of the web? My immediate reaction was that I couldn’t scroll up to see more of the logo – the fact that it’s cropped activates an existing paradigm that there is more content to see. I thought of Facebook’s use of the half profile photo when you first land and you have to scroll up to see the whole thing. But maybe the designers are telling us, PLAY! Don’t be so contained within this navigable space. Go out of bounds. It’s the adult equivalent of coloring outside the lines with your crayons.


ALA.jpg

Also, people need to chill. Not everything can be explained. I braved a Matthew Barney presentation at the NYPL a couple weeks ago, and the interviewer seemed scattered and irrelevant at best, offensive at worst. In all honestly, it was just as awkward as one of his films, which was just perfect. I felt like he was trying to get inside Barney’s brain.

After a 25 minute preview of his upcoming film, they began to discuss Barney’s current show at the Morgan Library. We saw an image of the drawing above, then viewed a video of the creation of the drawing. The interviewer asked, now what do we know about this drawing now that we’ve seen the process? He asked Matthew Barney this question! Barney took a beat, and said “the sun in the upper right.” And waited for utter confusion to set in. Then he said, “I think it’s the most transformative.” It was incredible. Not everything needs to be explained, at least in the way people want it to be sometimes.

Barney is inspiring to me because of the way he abstracts concepts from the things that interest him. All of his work is based on the narratives from literature by Norman Mailer and other masculine literary figures and athletes. He has a major focus on the concept of the masculine.

A strong underlying concept provides a bounded space, which allows room for experimentation within, and the work doesn’t stray too far outside of those lines.

I was trained by students of Yale modernists, who practiced design by stripping down meaning to its most basic form. I love that process of finding simplicity, but I also love how school taught me to always think of something as something else, everything is contained within its larger category and classified in a way. Like Barthes explains the Japanese theater as the antithesis of theater, as creating distance and of performing the void, where there is a lack of meaning. This is opposite of western theater where it is packed with layers of meaning.

In my work I’ve found myself more interested in the space between. Nothingness. Emptiness. Spatial relations among architecture for example, are fascinating to me. Windows and the viewpoints they create, portals and perspective in physical space and on the screen. I just finished my freelance work at Code and Theory in preparation for my move to London, and now that I have some free time I’m going to start on a self-initiated project that I think will be a lot of fun. I need a better camera.

 

Concept, play, and the space between

I went to see Sascha Lobe speak on Tuesday night at MAD, as part of AIGA design talk extravaganza. He runs L2M3 in Germany. And he’s really hot. Once I got over that and started paying attention (lets be honest, I still haven’t gotten over it), it reminded me of the work I did with Base Madrid. What a great opportunity that was, and the last time I was able to work on a client project with a strong graphic system.

In web design, each project begins with user experience and develops with a focus on the subtleties of interactions rather than making a bold, design-first, graphic system, especially if it would get in the way of proper navigation of the site. I must admit, I was envious of Lobe’s work. It’s aggressive, and risk-taking. I would like to take these graphic design lessons with me into the web world where I’m currently working. One of the questions after his presentation was, how do you get this work approved? He said he’s been asked that many times but that he hasn’t run into much resistance. Hm. When there is a strong reason for the design, he explained, then it is hard to argue against it. 

I think the genius of his work comes from the ability to think from a birds-eye view. Literally. Many of his design solutions for architectural space involve a graphic device imposed upon the floorplan of the site, which is then translated to the three-dimensional space.


In response to the odd fact that the building entrance is section E and they weren’t able to change the coding, L2M3 created a graphic device of concentric rings to guide the application of the wayfinding system. It’s as if a pebble were being dropped down at E and rippling out to other parts. The occupant is mtz Münchner Technologie Zentrum, and that is the extent of my knowledge about this company. Their website is really boring. And in German.

The translation of this system into the interior space is visually intense and slightly disorienting (I’d have to see it in person to know for sure), but a powerful graphic concept successfully applied to the space. They maintained the curvature of the circles on walls, ceilings and floors, to guide the visitor through the space. No matter how small of the fragment of circle you see, you know where the exit is depending on which direction it’s curving.

Images snagged from L2M3

The lightboxes in the lobby give a directional cue for each building area as the letters float in their respective color. The direction that the letters move determines the direction to walk. They infused this boring space with so much imagination and visual interest, I wonder if its made those serious employees have more fun.

I was turned on to the Jacques Greene site by Hoverstat.es today, and found myself relating this experience with the feeling of navigating a transparent modern construction like this one. There are a group of windows at fixed sizes, all playing an individual snippet of the video for this song. But within those windows, there are other windows. So you feel like you’re navigating through a fuzzy glass-walled fantasy dream with lots of trees, and a young expressionless girl.

I’ve never seen a music video broken into individual windows. As I was playing, I was asking myself a whole number of nerdy design questions. How does one window experience differ when it’s separated from the rest? Do you need all of them together to understand the full story? You can’t close or resize them so there is strictness in the playfulness, and maybe a little too limited because the fun ends there. But I was able to get a full experience of the music without altering the visual experience in any damaging way.





















In fact, it was cool to move the windows off screen, stretching the common idea of screen real estate.

























This made me think of the A List Apart redesign, launched earlier this year. By using off-canvas real estate to park the blog header and footer, besides frustrating people (including myself), is there a conversation that they are trying to have about the current paradigms of the web? My immediate reaction was that I couldn’t scroll up to see more of the logo – the fact that it’s cropped activates an existing paradigm that there is more content to see. I thought of Facebook’s use of the half profile photo when you first land and you have to scroll up to see the whole thing. But maybe the designers are telling us, PLAY! Don’t be so contained within this navigable space. Go out of bounds. It’s the adult equivalent of coloring outside the lines with your crayons.


Also, people need to chill. Not everything can be explained. I braved a Matthew Barney presentation at the NYPL a couple weeks ago, and the interviewer seemed scattered and irrelevant at best, offensive at worst. In all honestly, it was just as awkward as one of his films, which was just perfect. I felt like he was trying to get inside Barney’s brain.

Subliming Vessel, Matthew Barney at The Morgan Library and Museum














After a 25 minute preview of his upcoming film, they began to discuss Barney’s current show at the Morgan Library. We saw an image of the drawing above, then viewed a video of the creation of the drawing. The interviewer asked, now what do we know about this drawing now that we’ve seen the process? He asked Matthew Barney this question! Barney took a beat, and said “the sun in the upper right.” And waited for utter confusion to set in. Then he said, “I think it’s the most transformative.” It was incredible. Not everything needs to be explained, at least in the way people want it to be sometimes.

Barney is inspiring to me because of the way he abstracts concepts from the things that interest him. All of his work is based on the narratives from literature by Norman Mailer and other masculine literary figures and athletes. He has a major focus on the concept of the masculine.

A strong underlying concept provides a bounded space, which allows room for experimentation within, and the work doesn’t stray too far outside of those lines.

I was trained by students of Yale modernists, who practiced design by stripping down meaning to its most basic form. I love that process of finding simplicity, but I also love how school taught me to always think of something as something else, everything is contained within its larger category and classified in a way. Like Barthes explains the Japanese theater as the antithesis of theater, as creating distance and of performing the void, where there is a lack of meaning. This is opposite of western theater where it is packed with layers of meaning.

In my work I’ve found myself more interested in the space between. Nothingness. Emptiness. Spatial relations among architecture for example, are fascinating to me. Windows and the viewpoints they create, portals and perspective in physical space and on the screen. I just finished my freelance work at Code and Theory in preparation for my move to London, and now that I have some free time I’m going to start on a self-initiated project that I think will be a lot of fun. I need a better camera.

The freelance life/ Moving on

Over the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about working as a designer. I have a lot of passion for what I do, and doing good work is very important to me.

As a freelancer, I’ve felt a bit like a nomad. I’ve worked on great projects for large and small clients, and appreciate the experience of working at agencies of varying size, in-house, etc. While the freelance life has given me flexibility and wisdom about many different environments, there have been situations where I haven’t been able to make the level of contribution that I would like to.

There was one time in particular when I was working on a very large team and I felt that it would be impossible to actually do good work (which is unfortunate by itself), but what was really disappointing to me is that I felt that regardless of how hard I fought for it, I wouldn’t be able to make much difference. I realize now that no one is going to give you that entitlement, regardless of your employment status as freelance or full-time. Since then I’ve decided that I will always take a strong stance and do my best to prevent a situation that could compromise the quality of my work, even if it causes me discomfort.

I am truly ready to land somewhere full-time, making the highest level of contribution possible. I honestly can’t wait.

Making connections

In the past few years since I started this blog, it’s biggest purpose has been to make connections between the thoughts in my head and the work I’m doing. I have a major connection to make, that gets to the heart of why I do what I do.

For the past four months I’ve been working at digital advertising agency LBi (now MRY). It’s a hidden behemoth of a space behind Flatiron’s grey walls. You could literally work there for four years and not meet everyone, but I’m working in the creative department among a bustling extravaganza of interesting folks.

LBi calls themselves a marketing agency for the digital world, so my job is to design beautiful online advertisements in the form of websites. I suppose it could be argued that every website is that, however the websites I’m designing are promoting consumer products like this one for Neutrogena.

This is a new one for me but it’s reminded me a lot of what both of my parents devoted their lives to – marketing consumer products. My mom started her own direct marketing business in the 80’s and People’s Bank and Harrah’s were among her clients. My dad worked at General Foods for a thousand years and was VP of Sales and Marketing.

Every trip to the supermarket was analyzed for product placement, and every commercial on TV was picked apart. He spent so much time managing the Maxwell House brand I remember I had a mixtape with all of the different options for “jingles”…

I feel more of a connection to them with this work because the feedback we get from the client might be feedback that they would have given to a creative team. It doesn’t make it any better (ha!) but at least I understand the client perspective. As a designer I have this practical side that was probably instilled by my corporate parents. Design is a perfect balance for me (even though I will always secretly wish I was a conceptual artist). I love helping people to develop their brand, and providing the valuable service of design, and working within the energy of a creative team.

Endings, and new beginnings

New and improved! Identity for The Writers Room:

Sometimes I work at their space on Astor and Broadway and I’m secretly hoping that I learn how to be a writer by osmosis. Side note about the logo: the tagline is just a friend to the logo, they’re not married. The logo can easily survive on its own 🙂

In other news, The New School site just launched. newschool.edu
I am really happy with how it turned out. I worked on the home page, academics page, and other top level pages. It was my first big client foray into responsive design, and I’m still collecting my thoughts on the topic. I really enjoyed Rob Giampietro’s presentation at this year’s Build conference, entitled, “Unbuilding”.

In the presentation he uses the metaphor of UN-building, of removal, or reversal, to describe the current era of web design. The truth is, we have not had the opportunity to see this era very objectively yet. It is so new. But he makes a great point, that there is no web design canon. What museum do you know that has websites in their collections? Museums, do you hear me?? I dare you to start! Here is one suggestion: http://www.grafill.no/

The thing that attracts me to web design is the same thing that probably keeps museums away. There are too many competing factors that go into the design, and it’s quite a commercial process in most cases. I have an app called The Silent History, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in stunning visual design combined with storytelling. It’s quite disorienting at first, then you become captivated by the novel itself and fall in love with the sexy interface. It’s inspiring for my personal project because the freedom to create without restriction is palpable.

I went to the AIGA “Future of Design” talk last night, and one of the points that I took from it was to constantly be developing self-initiated projects. If you are interested in ground-breaking, in innovation, you need to look past the needs of today.

My two freelance projects are almost wrapped so perfect timing to make a fresh start for the new year! Here we go!!!!!

We’re not in Madrid anymore, Toto

SO much has happened, y’all.

Ok so yeah, I’m not living in Spain anymore. What an incredible experience to have lived in Madrid for nine months, working with the good people at Base.

 Whilst in Madrid, I created a signage system for this building. A recently renovated building in historical bustling downtown Madrid. We got as far as laying out the production specs until the project fell victim to the Spanish economy and I had to return home…

During this same time I started work on a couple web projects and thinking a lot about designing for digital space. I’ve been fascinated by interactive design for years but recently I’ve turned full-throttle to interactive design and can be overheard calling myself a “web designer”. My opinion, however, is that design is design. If you have a strong process and can design something beautiful for a billboard or giant glass building, you can design for various screen sizes.

My fascination with designing for the web centers around my tendency to think in systems. I NEED to think in systems in fact, it’s the only way I can think. Therefore the logical start to any of my projects is to think deeply about the user experience, flow of the site, and build out the information architecture before any visual design decisions are made. The transition from designing for physical architecture to digital has been very natural and intuitive for me.

So WTF have I been doing since I got back to New York City? The New School brought me on board as a freelancer to redesign their website. I designed a new responsive home page and top level pages, plus lent a hand with a division website. Hoping that will launch smoothly in the next few weeks, it’s in user testing now.

I designed and coded this site: gaystraightlove.com (with the help of Miranda Li, PHP goddess).

Now I’m working on a website for The Writers Room, which I’m happy to say will be built on the same responsive WordPress framework. I love using themes that just get out of the way. The simpler the better because then the typography and other elements of the site are what’s communicating.

Here is the identity system that I created for the organization, a community working space for writers in New York City that’s been around since the 70’s. The graphic device alluding to the overhead view of the room would change in orientation based on the usage. The website redesign is in progress.

Also, I was in San Francisco earlier this week for An Event Apart, an awesome web conference helmed by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer. The conference seriously dropped some knowledge on us all, and I met some really great people working in every facet of the digital world that you could imagine. I didn’t even know that some of these jobs existed, like designing the software for the card that you install to optimize your computer for gaming. Ok.

My biggest takeaway from the conference was probably its biggest theme:
The device doesn’t matter.

There are so many people much smarter than me talking about these things, but I’m just going to say that there is a revolution in the air, and I’m excited to be catching the wave of innovation at this early stage. Luke Wroblewski talked about the sizes and resolutions of all the devices that were introduced to the market in the last 8 weeks – it was a mindblowing array that covered the entire range of small to large. Mobile can no longer be defined because it’s edging into tablet sizes, and touch needs to be considered on all devices including the largest desktops. So what’s the bottom line here? The device does not matter! Content and design need to start at the simplest level and that makes me, a reluctant to be labeled minimalist, very happy. I hate superfluity (I don’t even think that’s a word).

Anyways, here are some links to articles that these really smart people have written on the subject of designing for mobile/content first. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the subject.

Brian and Stephanie Reiger:
http://yiibu.com/articles/rethinking-the-mobile-web/page-3.html
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/its-about-people-not-devices/
Luke Wroblewski:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/organizing-mobile/
Jeremy Keith:
http://adactio.com/journal/4443/ 
Cameron Koczon:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/orbital-content/
Karen McGrane:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/your-content-now-mobile/
Brad Frost:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/for-a-future-friendly-web/

I have lots more to say about the design implications of this process, but that’s for another day. cheers to a better web for us all.

A sense of place and frameworks for the web

Previously, I’ve written about the differences between looking at digital vs architectural space, but I’m also interested in the similarities. There are two concepts in web design/user experience that come from the physical world. Number one, a sense of place. Two, frameworks.

How do you create a sense of place when designing for the web? It could be as simple as having some repetitive elements that create an element of familiarity. I think Steve Krug can help us with this answer. I’m almost finished reading his web usability bible, “Don’t Make me Think”, and there are many gems worth remembering.

In the web space, there are some idiosyncrasies that you will not find in the physical world. He describes the experience as being dropped from the sky into the middle of a maze, or being lost in space. There is no sense of scale, no sense of direction and no sense of location. Probably why the back button accounts for 30-40 percent of all web clicks. Tools like clearly visited links, breadcrumbs, persistent navigation and site identification (as home button) make the experience much more enjoyable and less confusing for the user.

Another metaphor with the physical world: web navigation as streetsigns. Navigation is so much more than just a feature of the website – it IS the website. It shows you the content, where to begin, and it gives a sense of place, of feeling grounded. If a site is done well, it will clearly tell you where you’ve been, where you are in this moment, and where you need to go.

Liz Danzico writes about frameworks on 52 weeks of UX, and she relates designing them to creating opportunities, possibilities for action for the user. Just as in architectural space, if the frameworks are too strict it limits the possibilities for movement – there is less freedom. However, if there is no structure or organization, then it leaves open the possibility for chaos. Designers have the responsibility to create a balance between these two extremes.

Erving Goffman, whom Danzico dubs the father of framework analysis, describes the delicate balance: “Frameworks allow people to locate, identify, and label an infinite number of concrete occurrences. People can move through the complex framework of a city or a website, but they’re unlikely to be aware of it or even be able to describe it if asked. People fit their actions into the ongoing world that support a set of activities—the “anchoring of activities.” It gives them context and interpretation from their point of view. Be clear, but leave room for stories to be told and to flourish.”

Storytelling as a metaphor for web interaction – the more engaging the site, the more people will be attracted and encouraged to be themselves, be social, and tell their unique story.

Truth, transparency and the web

My current preoccupation is with visual characteristics of websites I’ve encountered lately. I’m working on two web projects – one for a client and one for my own idea – and in my research I’ve been observing some interesting trends in digital space.

When creating an identity for a new business, one of the most important components is the web experience. Like a building facade, it has to communicate the brand, but a website also has to attract and interact with the user.

The most successful web designers have a style that is clean, luxurious and polished – Happy Cog for example, helmed by Jeffrey Zeldman (who I randomly just found out that I’m related to in an extended family kind of way).

However, I’m fascinated by the sites that seem raw and unfinished, that evoke an earlier era of web design. It was ugly back then, with layouts dominated by tables, low resolutions and bright flashing pixelly icons. Remember the kitschy counters? The ones at the bottom of web pages that tracked visits?

Ah, the days before Google analytics seem so barbarian now, but I love it and here’s why. People are attracted to truth and to transparency. Early web design had a distinct way of exposing all the seams and being so innocent, true to its medium, quirks and all.

And here’s why I have massive respect for web developers now. There are so many layers involved with website development – HTML/ CSS/ javascript/ Content management/ etc. That something so flat and linear as code can create beautiful dimensional designs seems farfetched, but design on the web can be clean, beautiful, minimal, textured, delicious. That developers can disguise the limitations of digital space is a massive feat.

I appreciate the juicy navigation, illustrations, and that letterpress look that web designers use to make the web more beautiful, but is web design about disguising the limitations of digital space? Or can we play with the limitations and expose the seams?

A website for the wine label Casa Mariol by Barcelona designers Bendita Gloria exposes the quirky characteristics of web design by using antiquated clip art and tables, which no self-respecting web designer would dream of implementing… until now. How unconventional and beautiful is this brand? This style reminds me of the Metahaven.com sites (at this moment it’s gyrus.net, selling domain names), which offers every product and service imaginable and do everything but refer to the design studio. The real Metahaven site still doesn’t show images of past work, only a list of clients and current projects.

These are clever plays on the quirkiness of the web. Also, I am really interested in sites that expose the architecture underneath… in a more organized Swiss modern kind of way. For example, I love this site, the grid system that shows the grid underlying the content of the page. And on this theme, this site is nicely done, revealing the grid that the page is organized with and using it as a bold navigation element. Another example of being really straightforward with no bells and whistles, Google (everything) is an example of functional utilitarian web design. The user interface on those sites makes me comfortable because I know it just is what it is, and it’s not trying to be something it’s not (print).

This portfolio site from Rebecca Stephany (is there a distinct style from Gerrit Reitveld?) has a carefree, intentionally haphazard collection of work and conveys a distinct personality. And Stephany’s artist statement is translated by the Dada poetry generator, which I think is a perfect complement to her work. This site, Forms of Inquiry, isn’t much to look with the bold, blue headlines and no styling whatsoever. But now I’m getting the feeling that:

unfinished/”undesigned”/whatever you want to call it

= transparency

= truth.

And that will always be what I’m after.

Maybe ugly is the new beautiful.

I’ll leave you with a way to visualize the changes happening in web space. Here are two sets of icons, pixel-based vs letterpress.