nice moving header

The website for London Digital Week has a pretty cool header made of moving colors. Very nice way to add a sense of interest while keeping a very straight up, traditional design with everything else.

pa-taa on the interweb

Websites are festive in their own way. The Bonnaroo site takes on a home made, almost felt-like quality in its type and other elements, and scraps together a pretty festive feeling site. I love it! The type is pretty well done, too.

full bg video - works for this site

These guys used a 3-side bleed movie for the bg of their website. It is super distracting, except that's what they're selling. So it works for this site. Note the screen that's placed over the video - gives the whole thing a little texture, and pushes it into the background just a little more.

how much illustration can you take???

these guys put together this totally mental site that makes you work hard to figure out what it does. They tucked in some very nice surprises - my favorite is a "panic" button that launches an article on stress reduction in a new window. Very funny, and actually useful at the same time.

I can't pronounce it but it really kicks ass

This little site, with it's simplistic background & nice white-set-pretty-opaque bg for a column website has been making me wish I owned a club (that also carries it's own record label) all freaking day long. I want one, okay? Sometimes all you need is a full page beautiful illustration, some cool, interesting music, and some pretty impressive talent to thumb through. Less is more right here - me gusta mucho.

watt turns is up!

Watt is a club in Rotterdam. They set up this site with a header that rotates. This little trick is done throughout many sites - a changing image w/ some text, but NOT the whole flippin' header of a site! Very innovative. The grand lesson: take something that works in terms of basic function (like rotation) and apply it somewhere else to see what happens. Note how the rest of the design is built to accommodate this massive rotating graphic.

chaos never looked so good

So okay, these guys mixed up the header with images, illustrations, and straight up objects, and then layered in the content beneath that. It can be so flippin' hard to make such a cluttered mess look appealing! But I love it. They did some nice things with color, and there kind of is a decent hierarchy happening due to the larger header, and smaller body copy. The nav elements get a little lost (cause they're too small & aren't very interesting), but otherwise I like the way this guy feels.

sasssy BG image

So okay, any of us who have designed a site with massive background images can understand cracking this nut. The guys who designed the SASS site created a pretty massive column to dump text info. It lacks pictures. I think that this minimalist approach is a pretty decent way to go. There's few other images to compete with the nice background one, and while the columns might be a little on the long side, it still seems to work okay.

design can carry a cool site

So this site for Blondie (bar in Spain) has very little by way of cool programming or functionality, but it still totally rocks. The secret? Super cool design. It's fun & playful, & gives you a nice feel for the personality of this place.

matter throws down some sweet color work!

This site for matter (in London) is simple but cool. There's an interesting pattern with light in the bg, and as you roll over the nav, the colors change, all of which work fairly well with the pattern color. The columns change content every several seconds, which keeps the whole thing looking fresh.

typing it up!!

this english cat created some pretty rad type to display his name on his homepage. note the custom icons @ the top of the page. very clean, simple icons add to the clean, modern-yet-home-grown feel to the design. good stuff...

artsy artist site (shock | surprise | awe | beauty)

okay, so this website is just as screwed up as i am. that deserves some serious recognition from this blog. you fucking win, zalibarek. well done my friend.

so often there's this massive gap between an artist & their online presence, and zalibarek not only avoids the gap, but in my opinion furthers the reputation of the artist by demonstrating prowess in the online realm in addition to the installations, video, and other fine works.

kickin animation! Very fun & playful

This sa-weet site brings out the secret agent in all
of us. Cool animation loads super fast (even on those of us cheap skates running dsl). love the playful & interactive nature of this thing.

The design is cartoony in the best way: it's polished & modern, but just enough retro @ the same time. Kind of campy in that way. Clean layout & very usable as well. The typography could be a little more playful as well, but it's straight treatment lends to very high readability. me gusta mucho!

intelligent house site

In this website, users can control an Intelligent House, opening blinds, turning lights on, preparing the bath and a lot more, all using remote controls.Pretty sweet usability.

illustraion + animation composition

Charming wall (also built by Also) takes illustration and animation and pieces it together into a beautiful composition that knits everything together.

Baking some goodies

The Colson bakery had it's web presence designed by Also, a very talented 3-person shop based in Chicago & NYC. Very nice integration of background elements with info laid out on top.

anything but sktechy

So okay, this thing shows the massive potential that web apps have for becoming creative tools. It's pretty unbelievable, especially when you consider the diverse range of styles that these illustrators have created with this thing!

a one liner

have you hugged a type designer today? they do some good things...

who needs a fleur de isle when you have type?

i love how the background texture is Rosa Parks - just type; a variety of it. close to the bg color but not exactly - enough to tel us what this thing is all about and make a pretty nice texture at the same time.

boring no more!

who says numbers have to bore people into a stupor? this annual report makes pretty good use of an otherwise uninteresting subject. Note the numbers are all at 90 degree angles: not TOTAL chaos. scale, color, transparency, composition.

if you had to pick

a word that said "lift," where would you start? i don't know either. and i think they basically nailed it, at least for this composition. me gusta mucho.

this aint no FONT!

this is hand drawn type, perfectly tied to the hand drawn illustration. and the type pulls everything neatly together.

art of type making paper stick shape words

need i say more? need i?

do you have

GUTS??? my main man Stephan has loads. Just check out this interesting arrangement...

ARE WE ALIGNED YET, fallout boy???

so this isn't chaos (pretty damn close, though). first of all, scale has been adjusted,BUT it's all at a 90 degree angle. and there is the arrows which lead us directly into the Y. so there is some logic in the mix, and a good dose of organic composition - a pretty nice blend.

****DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHIC THROWDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ehem, check out the super kick ass hand-drawn type laid out on top of an image. this re-defines the "background image" website: not only is there depth to it, but the surface of it has a personality and adds value to the overall composition. if that were all left-justified ariel, it wouldn't kick nearly as much ass.

FLUFFY CLOUD TYPE!

ah, the old fluffy cloud type, doing good!

how much lightening can you HANDLE?

that's right - how about an illustration full? AND it's type, too. Yes, they make you work a bit to understand it. The type is pretty consistent - it looks like itself all the way through. They didn't bend the visual logic of the bolts so that it would be easier for them to lay out. so good job, chap, good job.

only type

so we have some typography, and... nothing else! it says it all, and you don't need anything else. no images, no BS - we know exactly what's being said. Sold, classic, worn, interesting.

LETTERS FIRST!!!!!!!

yeah, so first see the letter forms, then the animals - which is the opposite of a lot of typographic illustrations. I like how both seem to exist equally, in the same plane. very nice.

type in the fro!

I really, really dig the placement of the type in this piece. Yes it looks a little silly, but he sure had plenty of room in that awesome fro!

faces out of numbers

7 never looked so good... it's a unique number with interesting serifs & shapes that lend well to turn it into a face with such little manipulation. i dig it.

"i could do that..."

but you didn't!

i dig the sporadic line work in the letters - they're kind of mental, and they work well with the rest of the composition.

victorian type!

it's hard to not love this modern take on victorian type: it has the same feeling, but is also clearly a modern mix - the caps are outlined, and the curves have been straightened. this modern take on the type also reflects the modern composition, yet it's made of old-style images. the type pulls the whole thing together.

mark mallman

the type in this poster for mr. mallman reflects the graphic art. very nice!

chan's the man!

this looks like banco, by emigre. it's fun, and slightly hipster Asian - has that fortune-cookie-at-a-Hong-Kong-rave feeling to it.

sunset rubdown

some pretty serious illustrating went down to make this type fit perfectly into the mouth of this monster. the lips are less legible, but still it's a totally unique type solution.

stretched slab

this slab serif looks like it's been stretched! very tall, but there's also something a little humanistic about the rounded corners - it doesn't feel too tough, either.

frank black

check out this type combo: a script, with a sans (that has some attitude), followed by a skinny slab serif - and it all comes together pretty damn well.

fast moving type

illustrated animations of type!!!

pretty sweet type sequence

short but sweet into motion graphics

russian type video

paper art

paper art typographic solution - very, very nice & well executed.

hand made

handmade with (mostly) filled counters. i think this one feels a bit more down to earth than a lot of filled counter typefaces. the handmade feel seems to keep it more human (& maybe a little more legible, too).

filled counters with style

these guys have some great modulation throughout - and a unique, lively style. very nice.

toga land

holy flipping contrast, batman! super skinny meets morbidly obese when counters take on a mind of their own & fill themselves in! the anorexic stems of the fat friends almost lose themselves in the massive contrast.

soft & full

i like how the counters & negative spaces are filled in a way that isn't totally hard edged and geometric.

all together now

yes, they make you work a little... geometry & color holds them together.

varoom

pretty, pretty chunky.

crafty type

hatched / stitched / crafty pattern makes some type. i like the patter & the letter forms

simple & beautiful

don't mess with my baby!

D&G layout with flourishes. can avenir (or a very similar type) be made ornate? is this "contrast" or amateur night?

yo tambien