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A pleasant surprise
June 23, 2009I’m in Lewisburg, PA for a few weeks visiting my folks. Today, I went to the local bank to cash a check. On the way out, something caught my eye: there was a little ruler taped to the side of the doorframe, allowing exiting patrons to check their heights. My height has absolutely nothing to do with banking; the bank isn’t charging to measure me; my stopping on the way out to check my height could, if anything, actually bottle up the flow of patrons in and out of the bank. But how pleasant! A little bit of fun, made that much better by the fact that it has no pragmatic benefit and is completely unexpected.
Paul Annett’s talk at SXSW brought a lot of focus to the subject of easter eggs in web design and elsewhere, but this reminded me just how much better it is when it’s random, unexpected, and/or wacky. If looking to incorporate easter eggs or other elements of fun to your website, don’t discount an idea because it doesn’t directly generate hits or business or doesn’t have anything to do with what you do or what you sell. I don’t personally give a hoot about horoscopes, but if I did, I’d love coming across mine unexpectedly while reading a boring, technical site about website performance optimization. Just an example.
QUOTED: David Sherwin on “The Art of the Luminous Detail”
June 17, 2009“But there's a further, critical consideration here. For a design to be successful—and by that, I hope to imply great—there must be at least one detail within that design that is luminous. Much like the starling song being attractive and unusual to the human ear, when we hear the luminous detail of the baby crying amidst the clicks and whistles, we feel wonder.”
via David Sherwin’s ChangeOrder, June 17, 2009
Beware Smashing Magazine
June 1, 2009I remember Andy Rutledge linking to an article from Digital Web from the “ephemera” section of his website. After linking, he said something to the effect of too bad it appears in such an “irresponsibly-run rag”. This pretty much sums up my attitude about Smashing Magazine. Sometimes there are very worthwhile articles and some of the best in the industry have written for or appeared in it, but, at the end of the day, Smashing Magazine is an irresonsibly-run rag. But this time they’ve really pissed me off…
In defense of things black and white
May 27, 2009I just saw LogoLounge’s 2009 Logo Design Trends curation. This yearly feature is the only content that gets me to LogoLounge, but I really think it’s always well done. I like that they make up their own, non-technical names for these trends, like “varidot” and “encrust.” Anyway, I’m not writing a love letter to LogoLounge. I’m slowly making my way to a point: While there are a few lovely one-color-plus-white logos in the collection, a great many rely on a polychromatic palette. I don’t mean benefit from, I mean rely.
Strong branding vs. good branding
May 26, 2009I think a lot of times strong branding is confused with good branding. In my personal definitions: Strong branding creates an undeniable public (define public how you’d like) consciousness of a person, organization, etc. Good branding creates a public consciousnhttp://www.twelve8.net/wordpress/wp-admin/post-new.phpess that is a) desired by the creator and b) appreciated by the public. TO (that’s Terrell Owens [Wikipedia here] for those of you unreached by his branding) practices the former; Zappos practices the latter.