At Skiilight, we hold that iconography is the building block to your brand. Logos, letterforms, and icons combine to provide a user experience that creates meaning. Take a few moments (6 in fact) to learn the icons that billions of people already know.
In this TED Talk, ShaoLan walks through a simple lesson in recognizing the ideas behind the characters and their meaning — building from a few simple forms to more complex concepts.
Mashable blogger Jason Abbruzzese takes a look at the similarities between the most popular media websites. Why do they all seem to look the same?
“It’s sort of the same way that all cars look more or less the same. There’s only so many ways you can design a doorknob to where it’s going to be effective,” said Brad Frost, a web designer that has worked on the websites for TechCrunch and Entertainment Weekly.
Cars and doorknobs serve a purpose under certain constraints, just like websites. But unlike those everyday items, the demands on websites have changed drastically as audiences have taken to different devices.
“To a certain degree, websites always look the same. Design is fashion and it follows trends. We’re in the middle of a trend of big and clunky, not just because of responsive design but also because of touch,” Clark added. “As touch has spread from small screens to laptops and desktops, all desktop designs have to be touch-friendly, and that has influenced the aesthetic, too.”
Numerous major media sites have shifted to responsive design with similar results — multi-column, boxy and flat designs that look almost strangely similar.
At first, it was tenable to create multiple sites: one for mobile, another for desktop. Now, more sites are moving to the responsive design as a one-size-fits-all solution. There are simply too many different screens and experiences to plan for.
“Your head is going to explode trying to support that stuff, let alone afford it,” Clark said.
“Media sites have a specific limitation called an ad unit that really limits the flexibility of design, because unlike every other unit, this ad can’t change size,” Clark said.
Online advertising guidelines are set by the Internet Advertising Bureau so marketers and websites can have a common market. Rigid ad sizes may help sales, but end up being a pain for designers.
“You have these dinosaurs grasping at straws, that haven’t been able to move as fast as the rest of the industry, and it creates a real restraint,” Frost said.
“As a digital designer, our world is now going from watch space to 80-inch screens, so what do you do with that? Do you seriously try to design one interface for all of those screen sizes and all of those experiences?” Storey said.
And it’s not just screens. The rise of contextual advertising, in which a variety of data is used to tailor advertisements, could end up pushing design forward as well.
“The content and experience that brands are going to want to offer is going to demand more design and more design thinking, more consideration for not only those unique devices, but also where you are and what time you are there,” Storey said.
Via Mashable
World Cup fever sweeps the globe every four years (with the exception of 1942 and 1946, thanks to WWII) so we thought we would take a look at how far (or not) the designs have come.
The Los Angeles Times is introducing a redesign tonight that moves the 132-year-old newspaper closer to the vanguard of mobile-first web design, with a look more closely resembling digital-only publications like The Verge than the ink-on-paper model it replaces.
Articles in the site’s various sections are displayed as tiles and feature “sharelines,” which are three very brief summaries that can be easily shared across social media. To try to better keep those readers who arrive from social media, pages can scroll forever with additional content.
L.A. Times mobile and desktop unique visitors reached 27.5 million in March, a 30% increase from the same time last year, according to ComSore.
Major publications and websites have started the digital shift. The LA Times has gone all in for mobile readership and their analytics show it to be the right move. It may seem bold, but the trend will continue. Are you doing all you can to understand your analytics and plan for the future?
Let us know if you need some help.
