adevlin's posterous

The Orange Cube is wonderful

The Orange Cube in Lyon, France is certainly a controversial piece of modern architectural design.

My first instinct was that I absolutely loved it, but equally I can imagine other people's opinions would be quite the opposite.

The front of the building is just so damn interesting - the massive cavity providing a unique experience for the people within, as well as for passers-by.

I would love to have known what the architectural brief was, and how the design process led to such an independent and outspoken idea.

What do you think? Do you love it or hate it?

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Bryan Rieger - It's About People, Not Devices. Blur the lines between platforms...

Whilst reading Bryan's article, this quote stood out:

"When designing products for these devices, observe user behavior, follow emerging best practices, but don’t be afraid to question current assumptions around use cases, context, and behavior. Create opportunities for your product to live beyond the device, context, technology or form-factor it may have been intended for."

We shouldn't be afraid to question trends, if it's going to help push products and services in a better direction.

Visualisation of flowcharts - make them pretty!

Yesterday I had to design a brochure for BeHive, a product we have developed at Clock.

Our commercial team gave me a Word document full of content that they wanted included, within which was a chart showing the benefits BeHive can have on your business.

In all honesty this chart looked horrible. I wanted the brochure to look as great as possible but I had trouble thinking about how to transfer the data into a concise but visually stimulating diagram at the same time.

This lead to a quick visit to my old friend Google in order to some some inspiration from somewhere, and I came across the UI Patterns website. What I found there were some really interesting ways to present data - some clearer than others, but very nice on the eye.

Below are some examples of the charts found. The design of some are still relatively basic, but the nice use of typography, combined with interesting use of colour and shapes really helps bring what could be fairly dull information, to life.

Once I have got my chart and brochure finished I'll post them on here too, but I felt compelled to write something on the subject because all too often charts and diagrams seem to suffer from a lack of imagination, which is a shame.

In this day in age we have the resources available to inspire us to produce more interesting work, so I think it's worth spending a little extra time on the extra details. Plus with the Canvas element in HTML5, there's huge potential to transfer something from a print design into a more impressive, interactive piece of work online.

The future should be beautiful so let's all try and help it out!

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HTML5 has a logo!

Now I don't actually mind the thinking here, and I reckon giving a 'face' to such an exciting technology is a nice idea.

I quite like the style they have used (although it wouldn't look out of place on an Autobot or Decepticon) and the fact other logos have been made for the capabilities within HTML5 too. Some of the logos don't work so well (especially as SVG and CSS3 are completely different technologies), but the idea of branding HTML5 to me, is a good one.

Now the conundrum arises when they ask the development community to start using these logos on their sites, as a promotion push. I agree that perhaps seeing the odd HTML5 promo within the community isn't a bad thing. It spreads the word, and hopefully encourages people to find out more about it. But do we want to see all sites developed in HTML5 bearing these logos?

I was reading an article on Six Revisions the other day, arguing that current trends in the industry are pushing us back a decade when it comes to presenting our content online. Remember those W3C validation logos? If we start seeing logos to say 'This site was developed using HTML5' everywhere on the Web, then it's going to be nasty.

By all means add a big-up to HTML5 where appropriate but don't add it to all of your work! And I do draw the line at wearing stickers....

It's a good idea from the W3C - now it's our turn to make sure the execution and promotion for HTML5 is done without harming the eyes of our users.

Html5

The beauty of 50s atomic energy

We might not associate the makers of atomic submarines to care too much about design, but in 1955 Erik Nitsche obviously had different ideas.

He was given the chance to completely redefine the brand for General Dynamics, and his mastery can be seen below.

The use of shapes on the annual reports is so simple, and yet they are executed beautifully.

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