[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]
Guests
Dan Cederholm
Jason Santa Maria
Ryan Sims
Greg Storey
Topic: Design
This was a long one so we’re splitting it up into three parts. In part one, the guests chat about what they’re working on, Korean design, Web 2.0 hype, and whether RSS is killing creativity.
| Matt Linderman | For starters, what’s everyone working on or excited about these days? |
| Ryan Sims | I have been feverishly working on a new site called Virb.com |
| Jason S. Maria | We just launched the Philly office of Happy Cog, and I am working on a few sites right now, like AIGA and a secret site for typefaces. |
| Greg Storey | Airbag is working with the guys who made World of Warcraft. We do not have a new office. |
| Ryan Sims | By the way – great work on Amigo, Jason. |
| Jason S. Maria | Thanks! |
| Greg Storey | So Ryan… I know you’ve been working on Virb for a while. What are the challenges in designing a site that will compete with Myspace? |
| Ryan Sims | Well, besides the fact that we’re constantly designing for the lowest common denominator and still trying to make it look nice, it’s been a breeze. ;) |
| Matt Linderman | Dan, how is Cork’d going? |
| Dan Cederholm | Cork’d is going well, thanks. It’s been an interesting ride so far. |
The main obstacle right now is giving it time and attention |
|
| Jason S. Maria | How about those other entities? I smell coffee… and beer… |
| Greg Storey | Yeah, where is Brussel Sprout’d |
| Dan Cederholm | :D. That’s just it—just handling wine has been a lot of work. But for the t-shirts alone, they should be launched. |
| Jason S. Maria | I’m so thankful someone came up with a new naming convention |
| Dan Cederholm | Brussel Sprout’d was canned after the spinach scare |
| Greg Storey | Jason, how is Flickr’d coming along? |
;) |
|
| Jason S. Maria | ridiculo.us |
| Dan Cederholm | lol |
| Matt Linderman | What site(s) that you visit are impressing you these days? |
| Greg Storey | Matt, mostly anything from Korea is impressing me these days |
| Matt Linderman | anything from korea!? |
| Greg Storey | I love the hybrid of technologies, styles, and compositions |
Compare the American version of World of Warcraft to it’s Korean counterpart and you’ll see what I mean |
|
| Ryan Sims | I love that the novelty of all this is wearing off (XHTML, CSS, Social Networking) and we’re starting to put more focus on practicality. |
| Greg Storey | Korean online design has a lot of visual depth/hierarchy that’s not found in other regions |
| Ryan Sims | Interesting. |
| Greg Storey | Now if we could get the web to put down the web 2.0 pipe… |
| Jason S. Maria | So many businesses are just finding out about all that hype |
Most of the job emails I get now begin "I just founded a new startup…" |
|
| Dan Cederholm | Jason, too true. "I’m launching a beta of __ and it needs AJAX" |
| Greg Storey | Bad enough some clients think they can art direct… |
When I get calls for new work I throw the need for real research back at the client |
|
Too many people think that throwing a Flickr badge, blog, and Myspace page on the web is going to equal dollars |
|
This morning I told a client that he needed to stand in amongst his customers and ask them what they want, how they want to use it |
|
| Jason S. Maria | I haven’t really been blown away by anything online in a while. I think I’m finding more inspiration offline |
Or, the things I find most interesting online are people doing wonderful things with existing technologies and techniques. |
|
Just when you think you’ve seen everything a font has to offer, someone does something new while everyone’s attention is occupied on some new technology or something |
|
| Dan Cederholm | Greg, inspired by your "Boxes" post, I started a draft called "RSS Killed the Blog". The fact that I never finished it is fitting. But I wonder what you guys think… |
| Greg Storey | RSS certainly helped kill the creativity of what blogs once were |
now we’re all writing on the same blue-ruled piece of paper so to speak |
|
| Dan Cederholm | I feel like RSS made blogs into article vehicles |
| Jason S. Maria | I think density killed blogs |
| Greg Storey | ditto |
| Dan Cederholm | interesting |
| Greg Storey | and |
Web standards, to an extent |
|
ducks for cover |
|
| Ryan Sims | Blasphemy! |
;) |
|
| Jason S. Maria | haha |
Why do you say that? |
|
| Greg Storey | Why do you think the title is called Boxes |
Whereas we used to design first, code second… |
|
| Dan Cederholm | a table is a series of boxes too |
| Greg Storey | standards brought boxes |
| Jason S. Maria | Boxes in design and organization have been around longer than electricity :D |
| Dan Cederholm | I think the title, description format has created a forced template for writing |
| Greg Storey | Web standards brought boxes and columns… it’s not limited to such but I think a lot of designers today learned how to construct websites with columns and boxes |
a lot of today’s online design reflects that |
|
I said it was one part, not totally responsible |
|
I agree with Dan |
|
| Dan Cederholm | I don’t know if I agree that web standards is responsible for that. Certain popularized CSS techniques, perhaps. |
| Jason S. Maria | editorial and content heavy design |
| Greg Storey | Blog design |
we were talking about blogs right? |
|
| Jason S. Maria | Newspaper design hasn’t changed so drastically to ditch columns |
They found something that works for that kind of communication |
|
So they stuck with it |
|
| Greg Storey | Geocities vs. Wordpress |
| Jason S. Maria | There is a reason why boxes and columns work for that kind of content |
| Greg Storey | that’s what my article was about |
| Ryan Sims | But I like boxes. |
And grids. |
|
| Matt Linderman | Tumblelogs like http://project.ioni.st/ present an interesting alternative. |
| Dan Cederholm | Matt, I think tumblelogs are much like the blogs of the old days |
based on date, IIRC |
|
rather than title/description |
|
| Greg Storey | yep |
| Dan Cederholm | I went from reading blogs solely on their sites, to just about exclusively in a newsreader. Now I’m just unbolding things. |
| Greg Storey | we should all try to create something akin to Jason Kotte’s old Osil8 |
It was independent of a recorruring format |
|
now that’s just me |
|
but I realize that publishing through a title/post format has stiffled my own creativity |
This is part one of a three part chat. Part two of this chat. Part three of this chat.
Gilbert Lee
on 12 Oct 06Megway!
I love the Korea example.
Give us more!
CM Harrington
on 12 Oct 06Oh, no! you guys have all gone retro!
Ok, I fully admit, there is a “cool” factor to the retro web, where every page was different, and exploring was “fun”. Really, the web is just another communication medium. If your content isn’t worth reading, your design isn’t going to hold up over time. That isn’t to say design only exists as a means of finding content. I think the Jakob Neilsons of the world take it to a bit of an extreme.
Design is about augmentation. If the content is good, design can make it better. If the content is crap, good design will only be looked at as the pretty candy coloured shell, and not remembered. A lot of us are designing websites that mimic print more than ever now because we can. We finally have that much control that we can lay out areas of content in a usable fashion.
Bobby
on 12 Oct 06Freddie Mercury: What do you guys think about every group using electric guitars, base, and drums nowadays?
Mick Jagger: It’s an utter bore. And I just can’t stand guitar solos.
John Lennon: Yes, quite. Have you heard what they’re doing with keyboards these days?
Pete Townshend: Hey guys. Sorry I’m late. I brought dope. What are we talking about?
Dave Rau
on 12 Oct 06I’ve been wanting to make a site where the content is solely images; no html text. I think this fireside chat is my inspiration.
Can’t wait for parts 2 and 3. Super good stuff this fireside chat is.
Tomas Jogin
on 12 Oct 06I’m not sure what killed blogging, but CSS, standards and RSS might be some of the culprits. I blame Digg and their ilk for a lot of it though; the single biggest problem with blogging today is that the conversation of yesteryears has been replaced with the stream of articles of today.
Dialogue has become monologue.
Jamie
on 12 Oct 06The use of CSS now reminds me of the use of Flash in the late 90’s / early 00’s. There is a visual vocabulary that is established, and people use that as a foundation. Everything ends up looking similar. The thing that will always set you apart is your brand. Unfortunately GUIs can’t always completely reflect the brand. Does anyone remember Kai’s Power Tools?
The real question is now that the “next gen” of web is application centric how do you brand these GUIs? Unique design was easier when they were for stores, auto websites, brochures, etc.
Dean
on 12 Oct 06For me part of the “web 2.0 pipe…” as Greg says is the “social-networking, online community, design-by-committee, content-by-committee” aspect to so many sites. Some of this means sites start to look the same because expectations are now being made that you “interact” and “contribute” content to the site.
In the old days we built sites and presented or pushed the design/information out there…now there is so much noise from the masses that sometimes the message gets diluted.
Eric
on 12 Oct 06I’d like to suggest Google Reader’s new “Next” bookmarklet as a good RSS reading tool. Clicking the bookmarklet takes you to the next article in your news river—but on the blog for which it was written. So you’re actually visiting the articles’ native habitats.
While it doesn’t solve the problem of people writing for syndication, it makes reading more interesting because you get the original context (colors, design, type, sidebar elements, et cetera).
Dustin Boston
on 12 Oct 06I wonder if things are just getting a little too polished. Everything has its place. Everything has a format. Everything is properly titled and dated and tagged and so forth. Sites like MySpace are ugly but they’re definitely not sterile.
Michael Vu
on 12 Oct 06What killed blogging? I actually think we’ve barely touched the surface of blogging. Things just might have evolved a bit.
More and more people are beginning to understand the value of a blog. However, no longer are people starting blogs just for personal interests or niches, they’re using them in a variety of other contexts. Ex: coaching, parties, events, teaching, etc.
The practicality and usefulness of blogs have been overlooked by the blogosphere’s association with the concept of conversation. Blogs are definitely not dead, they’re just evolving into something entirely different.
drew
on 12 Oct 06“Most of the job emails I get now”... must be nice.
Zelnox
on 12 Oct 06Personally, I got into all this starting with the Zen Garden and then Mezzoblue’s blogroll. Most of the weblogs I read featured folks vocal about web standards. It felt a lot more technical in those days and was quite cool to see it unfold. Akin to riding a giant wave. ;; I miss SimpleQuiz. It is a lot more subtle now as those people have grander projects (or got married) which leave less time for other things. ;; Dunstan ;_; Bowman
I find myself still reading many of the weblogs in their web form. They look quite pleasant and makes me feel happy. Like passing by a nice painting in the hallway everyday.
For a long time, I’ve held off using an RSS reader, but found it useful for sites have a high volume in posts like Engadget (corroboring Jason’s point) or sites I’d rather not see, because of the graphical ads. I was using Newshutch (and still do for web comics), but the Google Reader has a nice feature to mark things read as one scrolls past them. Handy for skimming through a backlog of things. _
Some of the commercial Korean web sites I’ve seen use vibrant colour palettes, which was refreshing. When many of the sites we saw in English gravitated towards blue, they experimented with teal. I lost the site, but this is so marking to me that my mind associates teal with Korean sites. I was also playing a game called a major TV network in Hong Kong.
Zelnox
on 12 Oct 06T_T lost a chunk of my comment. The game I was referring to was http://guildwars.com, which was developed inthe US, but the Korean website was so much cooler http://guildwars.co.kr/ . PR explained that broadband was more available there. The main site has since re-vamped.
I find Chinese sites I’ve seen to not be as nice, because of crammed text and blinking things. An example is http://tvb.com
._. and is the AJAXy comment new?
Dave
on 12 Oct 06It seems to me that you guys stopped this discussion just short of making a conclusion. Maybe I’m off but it seemed like the conclusion you were heading towards was moving from a blog formatted like a newspaper, all boxes and colums, to a blog formatted like a magazine. I mean a designerly (it’s a word!) magazine format where articles break out of their columns and work synergistically with images. Where each article can have its identity and be designed thoughtfully with the content in mind more than a predesigned structure would allow. Perhaps you wish that each blog article or articles in a series had their own unique design. That would certainly make blogs more unique and individual.
But I think that in the life of the WWW content and design have always been out of sync and when either one gets too important or has too much focus the pendulum swings back the other way. I remember over designed websites with virtually no content in the mid 90s. Now there is so much content that we have to ignore the design and strip out and aggregate the content of blogs just to beable to take in a fraction of what is out there. So it seems that so much content forces design out of the picture.
I also see the web becoming more application centric lately, some say Ajaxy, but it’s server side scripting with or without asynchronicity (PHP, Ruby, Cold Fusion, etc.), and Flash too. It seems everyone wants a web site with apps without thinking about how they would use them or even why they need them. So it’s like design without content all over again. Maybe you could call it applications without application? But the great thing about the pace of the internet is that whenever someone sees a tired trend there is usually someone else breaking out of it.
Ben Lowery
on 13 Oct 06If blogging is dead, what the hell is this?
Aaron Blohowiak
on 13 Oct 06You dont have to do what kotke did, you can just take it.
http://www.0sil8.com/episodes/98/08/28/index.html
Also, didn’t web standards give bloggers something to yap about for a while (LJ/xanga users aside) ?
Geoff DiMasi
on 13 Oct 06Glad to see some friction in this discussion. (Thanks Jason.)
For instance, I think it is great that people are spending more time on the “little” design things like kerning, leading and white space… and in general, making type more readable on the web.
Making it more readable makes the information/content come to the forefront, and lets the reader forget about the medium.
Do we really need to be reminded over and over again that we are reading on the web?
I, personally, feel like some of these formats (like blogs) are a natural maturation of the medium.
Look at beautiful book design… the differences are subtle, but not necessarily in the “look at me” vein.
Michel Christensen
on 13 Oct 06Err, the latest three comments.. is that because the blog post contains the work “korean”? :o
Daniel
on 13 Oct 06Blogging is “killed” only if that means “mainstream”. Sorry, cool folks. The uncool people found your playground. Better move on.
Tomas Jogin
on 13 Oct 06Daniel: No, it’s not just about it being mainstream, it’s about it becoming impersonal.
Shane Guymon
on 13 Oct 06It would of been better if they could of actually of named some actual sites that they have seen lately that they were impressed with.
I mean to say nothing is impressing me is almost absurd, because they themselves are producing stuff on the web, and are they trying to say even waht they are doing isn’t impressive?
Also I am a huge fan of grids, and boxes, and columns, it brings order from chaos, is cleaner. Also you still have PLENTY of freedom.
In the early days of the web, the sites designed where TERRIBLE!
Jina Bolton
on 16 Oct 06hehe. I’m half-Korean – so I wonder if that means my designs are half-good? jk. :P
This discussion is closed.