For my final post, I wanted to leave you, my ART307 classmates, with a great resource for both flash and html web design. The link I posted leads to The Design Inspiration, a website that features “the freshest and best quality design inspirations daily.” In addition to websites, the site features inspiring logos, illustrations, photos, patterns, fonts, and articles on design from around the world.
I’ve used this site for inspiration countless times—it’s allowed me to think about design in new ways and has opened me up to greater possibilities on the web. Some of the featured sites are wonderful resources in what they offer too.
While browsing the New York Times’ Technology section, I came across an article about a fairly new web company called Blank Label. Based in Shanghai, the company is run by 22-year-old Fan Bi and his three partners. Through an interactive “shirt configurator” on the site, Blank Label invites customers from all over the world to participate in the design process and create their very own customized dress shirts.
This isn’t exactly a new idea since companies like Nike and Converse have offered online customized shoe-making for years. But unlike these companies, Blank Label offers customers the opportunity to make up their own brand (hence, the “blank label” name). So even though someone could potentially order the exact same fabric, colors, and sizing you pick, you can still stand out with a monogrammed name or message and claim the shirt as “one of a kind.”
Bi’s company is a great example of ingenuity, smart business strategy, and technology. Customers are always looking for that individualized experience and Blank Label provides that in dress shirt form.
My Custom Experience
I decided to check out how easy Blank Label’s design process really is by making my own shirt. The initial step-by-step process seems straightforward enough.
I’m not sure the layout is as clear as it could be. It took me a little while to figure out the order of steps and where I needed to be looking for the actual next step. And some of the styling features don’t always appear in the preview image.
But regardless, I was able to create my customized shirt. A really cool and helpful feature was a live chat option. Whenever there was too much idle time, a chat box popped up apologizing if my experience was slow and offering help. Interactive sites like Blank Label can really benefit from the live chat feature because they can get feedback and avoid losing frustrated users.
Hopefully, over time, Blank Label can learn more from their customers and refine the interface and layout.
When I first visited the Webby Awards website, I immediately looked for the 2010 nominees for cultural blogs. Blogs are quickly becoming one of the most consumed forms of media. More and more people are creating them, following them… Heck, this semester alone I had to create two blogs for my classes.
So I was curous—which blogs stood out to the “Academy.” First, you should know what the Webby Awards are all about. To borrow from their About page:
“The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which includes an Executive 750-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities, and Associate Members who are former Webby Award Winners and Nominees and other Internet professionals.”
Pasricha started the blog in 2008 to combat boredom, but soon used it to get through some hard times (he and his wife divorced and one of his best friends took his life). His readers are inspired by his ability to see the “awesomeness” even in the darkest times. So inspiring that Pasricha was able to make a book called “The Book of Awesome,” which contains all the little awesome things in life.
If 1000 Awesome Things wins a Webby, I might just have to buy it! Anybody want to share an awesome thing?
No, I don’t know Khoi Vinh like that. I saw him speak at Philadelphia University last week with my boss and co-worker. Vinh is a graphic designer and blogger (Subtraction.com), but he’s most known for being the current Design Director of NYTimes.com. His expertise is in design for the web and interactive media, with a special focus on the user experience.
Vinh first discussed how humans love to find order in disorder, which is why the best web designs have an underlying grid system. You can easily see this on the NYTimes site, as it closely resembles the layout of an actual newspaper. He even used his own website/blog as an example of how he came to realize this fundamental design principle. Over the span of 13 years, his site has transformed from a disjointed, collage-like design to a really long (annoying), horizontal layout to its final black and white minimalist state.
He also talked about some behind-the-scenes action with Apple—how they approached Vinh’s team and said they “may or may not” be working on a tablet (what would be the iPad). Apple’s goal was to collaborate with NYTimes.com to create the most user-friendly interface for its product.
Despite the iPad’s low popularity, Vinh does not regret making the deal with Apple. He believes this will be the future of media consumption. Which brings me to Vinh’s next point… How print (newspapers and magazines) is dying, how art direction is lost, and how the web is and will be king. Did I mention a lot of the people in the audience were print design majors and professors? Yeah, they didn’t exactly embrace these ideas.
But it’s all true. Vinh wasn’t attacking these people and their professions—he was once in the professional print industry himself. He was simply telling the truth. Nobody wants to read a magazine on the web. They’re two completely different mediums with two completely different deliveries and goals. Magazines offer you one experience. The web allows people to customize their consumption—what it is they see and how much they see of it.
Vinh had a really great analogy for the whole thing. Musicals used to be the great form of entertainment—everyone attended them. Today they still exist, but for a very specific kind of people in the world. He believes magazines and newspapers will fall to a similar fate.
He kinda dropped a bomb on us about the future of NYTimes.com as well. After reading a certain number of articles, users will need a subscription in order to keep reading. This will undoubtedly set off a trend with online news outlets.
Anyway, that was my night with Khoi Vinh. He gave a fantastic talk and I learned a lot about web design and my future in the industry.
About a year ago, some of my friends were really into the video game Spore, and after seeing Will Wright demo it here, I now understand why. Wright is a well-known creator of virtual world games like SimCity and The Sims. At the time of this conference, Spore had not yet debuted, but you can already tell that Wright knew it was going to be unlike any other video game out there.
Spore allows you to experience every phase of evolution, from a single-celled organism to a more intelligent, communal creature. With each evolution, you can design what your character will look like—a really great feature that keeps the game interesting. Like The Sims, you can speed up or slow down time and make choices that can negatively or positively impact the world around you. This aspect is really important in Wright’s video games; it seems the only objective is to simply “experience” the life one creates. Each time playing can be completely different from the last.
Though I don’t advocate people spending all their time in virtual worlds like Spore, I believe these games offer a unique opportunity for humans to examine their place in the real world. Spore, specifically, allows the player to change the environment of several planets and experience the effects rather quickly (think “Global Warming”). Who knows—people might think differently about the world and their ability to impact the world from playing a game like Spore. At the very least, it’s a fun and creative way to relax, and it doesn’t surround human-on-human violence.
Have you ever played a game or experienced a virtual world that affected your perspective on the real world? Doesn’t Will Wright seem a little kooky?
Do you have a huge paper or midterm coming up? Are you looking for constant distractions so you can avoid writing said paper or studying for said midterm? Well, I’ve got the perfect social networking distraction for you! It’s called StumbleUpon and once you sign up, you’ll never be the same again.
Ok, I’m exaggerating. But in all seriousness, StumbleUpon is a really great tool that helps you find and share websites that interest you. Before installing the StumbleUpon toolbar, my web surfing was pretty limited. I didn’t know what to search for, what was out there, and how to “bookmark” things I liked without cluttering up my browser folders (though you can use bookmarking sites like Delicious).
When you sign up for StumbleUpon, you create a personalized user name and install the toolbar on either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. The next step is choosing your interests from a long list of topics (over 500 I believe). Topics could include rugby, web design, cats, humor, religion, card tricks, cooking, Postmodernism, American Literature… You get the idea.
Once you have those set, just hit the “Stumble!” button and give a thumbs up to things you “like.” Or a thumbs down if you weren’t so happy. Every time you hit the “I like it!” button, the tool saves the site to a Favorites section on your StumbleUpon dashboard. That way, you can always return to it later.
Now here’s the magical part—the part that really makes this a social networking tool. You can share any website you find with any one of your friends who have StumbleUpon too.
A red number will appear inside the toolbar, notifying users that they have “stumbles” to check out. Clicking the number opens the website in the browser, along with a message at the top, if one was sent with it. It’s a lot easier to do than explain!
I can’t begin to tell you how much awesomeness I’ve stumbled upon since using this tool. It’s known by many as the ultimate time-waster, but it’s much more than that. Because of StumbleUpon, I’ve encountered countless news articles, science reports, biographies, historical stories, new musical interests, how-to videos, art… The list goes on.
So go Stumble! Leave a comment and post what you find through StumbleUpon.
Remember my earlier post about the bleak future of the newspaper industry? This video explores the possible relationship between digital eReaders and the news.
While reading up on new media trends for 2010, I came across Daisy Whitney’s website and show New Media Minute. Whitney is a journalist and podcaster who posts weekly webcasts on business issues in the new media world (and the only one, according to her site). This particular post discusses the business side of digital eReaders like Kindle and the iPad. Soon Google will be joining Amazon and Apple in the market with their own version of an eReader. Surprise, surprise. What isn’t Google doing these days?
If Google’s hopping on to the trend, you can almost guarantee that the market will continue to grow. Digital eReaders will become as common as MP3 players and books won’t be the only material used on them. News outlets will need to adapt to the changing industry and shift to a completely digital format (and probably one that works specifically for eReaders).
In her video, Whitney predicts that paid newspaper subscriptions won’t fly with most people, except those who want special interest papers like the Financial Times. This supports my belief that people will eventually abandon the newspaper for free news outlets. Since we’re already so connected through other channels like social networking and blogs, it’s so easy to get the details on the latest breaking stories.
Personally, I can’t see myself owning an eReader any time soon. I’ve just become familiar with my iPod Touch, which allows me to browse the Web as long as WiFi is available. I really enjoy the thing because of its small size, but I do realize it would be damn near painful to read a whole book or newspaper on it. Still, it will be a sad day when the majority of people prefer digital eReaders over printed books. I can understand an eReader’s convenience for the book-loving traveler, but I’ll take a worn hardback any day.
What do you think? Will digital eReaders knock out the print industry as a whole?
This is the second post focusing on the use of social networking in the creation of new media, inspired by Rhizome.org.
“Tweeting Colors” by Brian Piana
Let me make this clear. I do not and will not ever have a Twitter account. I just don’t like it. But I like pretty colors. And art. So… I can’t hate on Brian Piana’s interactive web page “Tweeting Colors,” which is comprised entirely of vertical stripes generated by Twitter users.
People can “tweet” a special code that dictates the color that will appear in a long line of colors, called the “color feed.” Users can choose from 140 different colors and constantly change the look of the visual, including the size of the stripes (if you want the stripe to be larger, you simply continue the color of the previous stripe). It’s like a collaborative digital piece of art! I guess I like the idea because it actually gives a purpose to Twitter that isn’t so self-serving.
Interestingly, Brian Piana created another piece called “Ellsworth Kelly Hacked My Twitter,” which is a color grid similar to “Tweeting Colors.” Here’s a quote about the process: “I have manually reduced the individual avatars of those I follow to a single, representative color, and each block shown represents an individual tweet that has come through my Twitter feed. The resulting grid is being generated in real-time, with the top-left square representing the most recent post.”
Does that sound familiar? It’s so similar to Jason Salavon’s process. He too would reduce photographs and film scenes to one single, dominant color and create a whole new piece.
Very cool things. Still don’t ever want a Twitter account though.
