I recently ran across a wonderful video on YouTube in which Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Wold Wide Web,speaks about the idea of the Semantic Web. It’s a simple, yet elegant concept that has yet to come to fruition asBerners-Lee had originally dreamed.
Recently Jason Beaird, author of SitePoint’s all time best selling book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, recently visited my User-Centered Interface Design class at The Art Institute of Atlanta to share some design wisdom. Jason’s design talent and amiable personality are present in his book, making it as fun as it is interesting to read.
Communication Arts has released their Interactive Annual featuring some of this years best design on the web. The two winners that stand out the most in my eyes are Veer in the business category and Churchill And The Great Republic in the info design category. Veer is quite deserving of the honor for their elegant advertising, intuitive shopping process, and overall excellence in delivering an enjoyable, inspiring user experience. Their sales pitch is never gimmicky, its just useful information, and useful products. They are one of the few online businesses (besides Threadless) whose marketing is transparently suspended in a dedicated community of people who love design. Oh, and their design ain’t bad either.
Master story tellers Terra Incognita are the designers of Churchill And The Great Republic, yet another thoughtfully conceived project in their impressive portfolio. Their work is the gold standard for the successful integration of media to deliver complex stories that somehow seem so simple. They create passive paths through their content where a viewer can sit back and be entertained, or hop off the trolley at any point to investigate things more closely. Bart Marable, the humble genius who founded the company in 1995 and steers the ship as the creative director, was previously a guest lecturer at The Art Institute of Atlanta where I teach, and left quite an impression with the students and faculty in the Interactive Media Design department as a master of his craft yet modest and ready to share. It’s refreshing to encounter such a successful designer that hasn’t become drunk on his own ego. His articles about interactive story telling are great.
There are many more quality selections in the Communication Arts Interactive Annual from which to gain inspiration. The common theme in all projects is that concept drives great design.
Picking up from my previous post about Hillman Curtis’s video interviews with great designers, here are some great podcast and streaming interviews with some talented designers who share insights about their creative process. All of these designers are talented at developing visual representations of concepts. Pop these interviews on your iPod for a nice little design lesson on the go.
Hillman Curtis created a wonderful series of short videos sponsorded by AIGA and Adobe in which he interviews some of the best designers of our generation including Paula Scher, Milton Glaser, and David Carson. The videos give insight into the creative process of each designer delivering sage advice for vetran and novice designers alike.
Curtis also has some great video interviews with Josh Davis talking about how he merges analog and digital drawing methodologies in his work, and discussing a project for BMW. You can watch all of Hillman Curtis’ videos on his site.
