For the second installment in my new feature I will be critiquing a website I am very fond of called the think design blog. If you like what you read please visit last weeks blog when I critiqued the web design ledger, for more of the same.

I chose think design as its a website which stinks of great design, I mean the whole site just wreaks of it. So as before I will be breaking the critique into the following topics.

Initial Impressions

The first impression of the site is the overwhelming inspiration that the site gives to the viewer. My eyes are immediately drawn to the strong inspiring header. I am lead down to the content. There is a clear welcome message which immediately helps me to identify what the site offers and who it is targeted at. I am then drawn lower to the content. the arrangement of colors and texture mean that by this point the design, which could be a hindrance if used as a background, has in fact faded to a highly readable off white. The use of advertisements offer a good revenue source, whilst not over whelming the design of the site. Below this a useful sidebar gives all relevant information about popularar posts and site links. A solid user friendly design.

Colors

The color scheme for think design really ties the website together seamlessly. Just looking at the design you can feel the flow of color leading your eyes from top to bottom. Its the careful attention to detail that keeps the use of textured images in harmony with the color scheme of the website. You are left asking yourself which came first, and to be honest its been done so well I couldn’t even hazard a guess.

Navigation

The navigation for the site although understated is still in keeping with the overall design. Current pages are highlighted in green and hover links the same. Part of the reason for the understated nature of the navigation is so as to not subtract from the beauty of the header. Yeah the website looks kick-ass and yeah the authors at thinkfour probably could have made the navigation much more imaginative, but I think one of the greatest measures of good design is not just the ability to know how to create, but also know when to stop. If the navigation was worked up as well, it might come off as over kill, the page would probably take longer to load and the overall essence of the design would be lost to the suffocation of style. This hasn’t happened because the author has demonstrated a clear knowledge of their craft, which is what has resulted in such a great site.

Identity

The colors and style  for the site all emanate from the logo. It has an authority over the design. Clearly the design has been centred around this brand identity. The logo itself is one of the best I have seen in a long time. I really like the use of opacity over the leather banner. Again this is a great example of the bold nature the website defines. The logo has a real sense of originality. I particularly like the way the ‘I’ does not have a dot even though its in lower case, its something that the eyes don’t even register until closer inspection. This attention to detail is what sets the Identity apart from other design. It also means that in future if new events and offshoots wish to be launched they can also share this technique to maintain the branding. I could spend all day going into the precise details of why I like this logo, needless to say its a very strong aspect of the overall design which has been executed with perfect precision.

Design

The overall design of the site is stunning, There simply is no other word for it. If you were to visit the site for the first time, it would simply mesmerize you, even if you weren’t a design orientated person. I know this has certainly been the reaction of many of my colleagues who I have shown this site to.

The site implements a very hip and up to date appeal. Its using the latest in design techniques, borrowing from ideas of print in design, which reminds me of a great seminar Elliot Jay Stocks gave on print in design trends. One of the things I really love about the site is its use of badges, It is something that’s popping up all over the web at the moment, but nowhere is it better applied than here.

The use of leather and threading combined with other textures is really what sells this design to me. Its like nothing else out their ar the moment, its bold, it flaunts itself, but most importantly its incredibly well put together. The footer also deserves a mention. a lot of designs falter because they don’t follow the design past the cut-line of the page, think design blog doesn’t do this, instead it keeps the flow by displaying a rich footer which compliments the rest of the design.

If I had to pick one weakness of the website, and this is really nit picking, I would question the use of a image for the initial introduction to the site. On other pages this is replaced by actual HTML text, so why not do away with this and use a more SEO and page load friendly solution? This is just my opinion of course, but It seems like the site is loosing out on its potential to be optimised. This is however a very very small issue.

Summary

Overall this site really does nothing but impress me. I has great content, which flows from the design and really has the ability to make its audience look in awe at the beauty and craftsmanship of the design, This is without a doubt one of my favourite websites at the moment and that is for all the reasons stated above. This is more than just a website sharing resources and inspiration, this is a source of inspiration. And for that I commend the designers.

A friend of mine recently gave me a link to an early cracked release of google chrome for mac. This was anything but a secure release of the latest browser to hit the marketplace, but it got me thinking, with only months until official release how will google chrome fair in the mac browser market?

Firstly google wont have to compete with the incompetence of Internet explorer. This should put them at an advantage, however mac with its built in offering of safari poses another problem for google chrome. Most mac customers who are not web savvy will stick to using safari. There isn’t anything wrong with safari, its a pretty decent browser, and does what you need it to. Although from a developers point of view its far from ideal. there are a range of known faults regarding its date objects, which apple also know about and have deliberately ignored in later releases of the browser.

If you look statistically chrome on a PC has had a huge uptake, unfortunately this is still microscopic in comparison to larger browsers such as IE (unfortunately). But chrome has a rather large ace up its sleve and it comes in the shape of a rather successful search engine This gives chrome a global marketing reach, this coupled with the promise of lightening fast browsing it could receive a warm welcome in the mac community. Personaly I am gonna hodl off any speculation on this one, to wait to see what the verdict is out.

I have decided to introduce a new feature to my blog. After seeing what the guys at uxbooth are doing (very well I might add), I wanted to try my hand at critiquing websites that inspire me. Whilst studying Digital Media at university I learned that the ability to create great websites stems for the ability to pick apart the great design of others. Only by understanding the tapestry that holds a design together can you see how to mimic it in your own projects.

For my first crack I have decided to critique the webdesignledger a successful web blog which offers very useful tips and tools for web designers. To make things clearer I have decided to break the analysis down into sections as listed below. to give a better understanding of what it takes to make a website work.

Initial Impressions

When I first hit the website it is immediately obvious this site represents a strong design. I can feel the flow of the colors and organization of information. Someone has put a lot of thought into where elements sit in the page. My eyes are drawn to the latest blog title, before quickly noticing the comments to the right. This initially strikes me with surprise as its an unorthodox way of displaying the comments of a blog post, however this actually works really well as I find myself reading comments which influence my decision read the rest of the blog or not, a nice touch.

Colors

The colors used in the site represent earthy browns, but the pallet is spot on. The design has resisted being suffocated with color and these 4 pastels are used through out the website, keeping a clean composition and warm look.

Navigation

The navigation stands out as a really great unique selling point of this website, its chunky and easy to use. I like the bold look it gives to the website, its a usability experts wet dream. The hover and visited colors also match and keep the flow of the website consistent.

Identity

The logo for the site is a simple on a textured background. If you took this away from the website I wonder how successful it would be. Out of the entire site I would say this was the weakest point, but this works well in the environment it’s placed within. The ‘badge’ design has been a popular trend for a while now and the web design ledger utilises this well.

Design

This website not only has great colors but also a strong designed theme. there is no real imagery. Instead the designer Henry Jones has used graphic design through out the site. This is has really paid dividends. There are so many little touches that have been applied that just make it stand head and shoulders above the rest. What I really admire though is the his spacial awareness. The margins and padding are perfect to a T and its this attention to the smallest detail that give the completeness of the entire design. Even  the little touches such as the dotted border that frames the content is so well done, so complete. It reminds me of a great article I read over at A list Apart, titled ‘design is in the details‘

Summary

This website really offers a window into what  a website should be. It proves that you don’t have to have style without content. There is a lot of information, but its presentation never overwhelms the user. Overall this website deserves credit where it is due. It contains substance with style and offers inspiration to all who come across it.

Next week I hope to bring more of the same when I critique another website that has been an inspiration to my web projects. I hope this has been an insightful read.

RSS has changed the way we interact and find information on the web. If you are a developer, designer, or web entrepreneur its worth having access to good feeds. They help to understand whats hot, whats not and where the industry is heading. Below I have put together anything but a concise list of my favorite RSS feeds. These are just a few that I have subscribed to and found to be extremely useful, if your looking for tech talk or just some really great web inspiration why not check them out;

I hope that they will be as useful to you are they are to me!

I have been playing around with a firefox add-on called ubiquity just lately. Its been a lot of fun, and there has been a lot of noise over it in the web community.

What Is Ubiquity

The basic premise of ubiquity is to make simple tasks less laborious. The approach stems from something that google has been doing for some time already. if you have ever tried typing map: and then a postcode or address in google bar you will have found that google instantly knows that you are wanting to view a map of a location. Well ubiquity allows you to do this without even needing to open a new tab. by bringing up the ubiquity HUD you have a wealth of possibilities at your fingertips.

Commands

There are a wealth of commands available to you when you install ubiquity, for example:

• translate almost any language
• look up currency conversion
• check IMDB for your an actor/actress
• display maps of location
• minimize URL’s with tiny URL
• get email contact information from your address book

and trust me the list does go on. The real beatuy of ubiquity however lies in the developers abaility to write and be credited for plugins, If you cant interact with a current API, just write a plugin to do it, all the codiung can be done in javascript so you dont even need to learn any complicated coding langauges.

The Down Side

The only real downside to Ubiquitous in my mind is that it feels a bit too geared towards online applications run by google Now I have nothing against google, I think they have done some truly amazing things. But I cant help but feel you wont be able to take full advantage of the ubiquitous features unless you are using services such as googlemail and have access to google accounts.

Ubiquitous does also have bugs, quite a few infact, but thats what you would expect from an alpha release, but with all the support surrounding it I think these will be ironed out in no time and I can see a rapid uptake in the number of people using the service in the near future. Why not try it out and see for yourself.

I recently came across another ‘new startup’ whilst on my stumble. twitblogs a new media mash up, taking the of blogging and twittering and mashing them together. To produce, well…. a short blog, or a long twitter.

I have to be honest from my ‘mock – up’ above you can see that I am not a massive fan of this idea. My approach to this kind of thing is don’t reinvent the wheel, and definitely don’t try and  fix something that’s not broken. What worried me most about this site is that it had access to all my account info via the API, and I could log into this service even tho I had not signed up with twitblogs.

Unfortunately like so many new start ups out there twitblogs has its heart in the right place, but its just not offering something thats worth using. Twitter is great for micro blogging, and wordpress is great for blogging, anything in between is just over kill!