Design

The Heads of State

jibbajabba — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:55:51 -0400

The Heads of State are a 2 person design studio in Brooklyn and Seattle. Their recently redesigned site showcases the strong portfolio of print work on projects including book covers, magazine illustrations, and corporate identity. I love the simple, powerful covers on the Rosenfeld Media books, and after diving into their site, I think I'd love even more to hire them in the future.

https://www.theheadsofstate.com/

KIOSK

jibbajabba — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:39:04 -0400

You probably know that I like minimalist design. I like it not only for its aesthetic appeal, but because of its utility in helping to bring clarity or focus to an idea. The site for the KIOSK shop utilizes a minimalist aesthetic. I can't say I love it, but I love the story, which can describe this better than I can.

"We offer a curated range of products from all over the world. Everything is sourced during our travels; we build the collection while we are traveling and then feature it in the shop for 4 - 6 months. ... We opened the store to offer an antidote to over-design. We consider the objects we stock to be humble, straightforward and beautiful for their simplicity and directness. Often they are traditional goods that have developed over generations or anonymous design found in general stores, DIYs and kiosks, products created by not one personality but things that are the result of local aesthetics and needs. Their beauty is sometimes hard to see in today’s market; our motivation to start Kiosk was to shed some light on these anonymous objects."

http://kioskkiosk.com/

Hello

jibbajabba — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:04:01 -0400

Hello is an interactive design agency in Los Angeles, California that have worked on projects ranging from immersive online experiences to kiosks. Their Flash portfolio is a clean, minimalist layout that puts the work on center stage. Rolling over a thumbnial dislays a slides and rotates through a few thumbnails for that project. Clicking on the project turns out the lights (background color) and displays either a slideshow of project screens or a video reel.

The remainder of the site provides a simple layout with SEO links and understandable navigation. The customized Flash scroll bar that they've implemented is even usable and plays nicely with a mouse scroll wheel. Couldnt' be done better.

http://www.hellodesign.com/

256TM

jibbajabba — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:47:07 -0400

What could be more appropriate for a font foundry than to use its own large, capitalized type as the focus, form, and interface for the design. 25TM is modern, minimalist, and makes its statement firmly—type is the message, period.

http://www.256tm.com/

NATIONAL TELEVISION

jibbajabba — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:49:31 -0400

National Television is a video and film production studio in California. It's portfolio site is among the best examples of the use of bold typography as the primary element that defines both the form and interface. The look is clean and undeniably confident.

http://www.natl.tv/

The Show

jibbajabba — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:33:56 -0400

Big bold typography that functions as navigation, full screen photography that functions as backdrop, a simple message, and a lasting product that does justice to live music performances and the people who love them.

http://www.theshowlive.com/

Visualbox

jibbajabba — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:44:30 -0400

Visualbox is an agency in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Their portfolio is a single page scrolling site with project images laid out on a slate gray tile background. Love the huge heading and the gorgeous, crisp images.

http://www.visualboxsite.com/

Doseido

jibbajabba — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:39:06 -0400

Doseido makes a simple RSS reader for the Mac. The product site sports rounded corners, a dark, glossy, beveled look, and pretty icons. Feels very much like a Mac product site.

http://www.doseido.com/

Erwin Bauer KEG

jibbajabba — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:10:01 -0400

The portfolio site of Erwin Bauer takes a different approach to using a pannable user interface, but implementing in JavaScript rather than in Flash. The site allows users to click and drag to pan the canvas, or to use links positioned around the content to move around. The design is clean, and mimics a design document with regisration and crop marks, and visual cues about the directions the canvas will pan to when you navigate.

http://www.erwinbauer.com/

TNOP DESIGN

jibbajabba — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:51:28 -0400

TNOP's site is as minimalist as they come. A form select lets users navigate sections, and viewing content requires horizontal scrolling. I'm not a fan of horizontal scrolling, especially if I have to use the scroll bar versus an in-page control, but it's bare bones and well executed so I like it.

http://www.tnop.com/

Schematic

jibbajabba — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:35:46 -0400

Schematic is a large agency with 6 offices in locations including Los Angeles, New York, and London. They provide a host of services including strategy, creative, marketing, user experience and technology. It's portfolio shows how a company site can be at once slick and easy to use. It's easily on my list of favorites and is one of the nicest portfolios to look at.

What I like about this site, besides the very clean visual design, is that it provides a very usable example of a zoomable user interface. You don't see it immediately upon entering, but each page of the flash site is laid out in a very large canvas, with each section organized into rows. Each page is essentially a rectangular miniature-canvas. They look like index cards when you zoom out to visualize the entire canvas at distance.

A persistent global navigation bar is shown in the upper right corner of the screen as a black box. As you click links in the pages or in the navigation bar, the canvas pans to that page and the global navigation box switches to show the local navigation for the section you're in. Clicking empty square in the navigation box returns to the main global navigation menu. Clicking the minus magnifying glass zooms you out to see multiple pages in the canvas. Each click provides a Flash permalink URL for linking and SEO purposes.

http://www.schematic.com/#/Home/

Museum of Arts and Design

jibbajabba — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:04:06 -0400

My first impression when landing on the MAD Museum site is that there is a sense dynamic tension between the huge decorative shapes that make up the bold MAD logo and the clean layout, whose grid and the solid blocks of type and photos feel very modern. There is an appropriate feeling in that tension that works well to characterize a museum like this, that houses objects of such a wide range of styles and periods.

I like how the MAD style and color scheme carries over, more or less, from section to section. When leaving the site proper to the blog and store, for instance, the visual signature of the logo keeps you connected to the MAD Museum family, as do the subtle variations of the color scheme which still reflect back on the muted tones of the main site.

What I don't like are maybe minor details, but local navigation links on the main site occasionally jump the user out of the section they're browsing. The task-based navigation labels are nice though: visit, see, do, get involved, etc. I also dislike the shift from fixed left position to centered position when you go from main site or store to the blog. It would be nice to have a bit more consistency in the grid and layout between these sections.

http://madmuseum.org/

Baritchi Holding

jibbajabba — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:51:29 -0400

I'm not a fan of splash pages, but I really like the illustrations on the splash screen menu and the minimal approach to navigation. I could see repeating the illustrations in the header as well, though, rather than using the pop up menu. I also think it would be nice if they would be shown in color on the splash page. Those great illustrations shouldn't be hidden. The layout is clean and the style is very soft and elegant. For usability sake, I could deal with a slight bit more contrast in the text color towards a darker gray as well. Overall, however, I find this site very easy on the eyes.

http://www.baritchi.eu/

Daisy Balloon

jibbajabba — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:17:36 -0400

Daisy is an artist that does incredible things with balloons. The site presently shows some amazing dresses fabricated with the long balloons you'd usually only see in the form of little animals, but Daisy elevates the art to design amazing clothing that could be called haute couture. I could easily imagine these things being made out of a less ephemeral material and being worn, albeit a bit uncomfortably.

The portfolio is bold and simple, with full-screen sized, closely-framed photography. Fabulous.

http://www.daisyballoon.com/

Intrinsic Nature

jibbajabba — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:01:43 -0400

I love viewing these slices of art work this way. I like galleries that provide a glimpse of a lot of work at this scale. I used to be a big fan of a web project in the '90's called Slice The Web, which grabbed images from the web and re-arranged them into random overlayed slices.

http://intrinsicnature.org/art/