Recently, a new program grabbed my attention. Its stunningly beautiful way of presenting common social networking sites all together definitely took me by surprise.

“Skimmer℠ is an Adobe® AIR™ desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content.”

Skimmer

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Adobe Air applications, its too out-of-the-way. But I’m definitely going to get Air for this program (even though I only use a few of the offered social networking sites). Even just the screenshots are stunning:

“Any update in the aggregated feed view can be expanded in one click to reveal the content of the post. A Flickr set, for example, can be viewed in its entirety without ever leaving the feed view.”

Skimmer

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Let me just get some updates out of the way here. Starting off, I got a new web design, in case you didn’t see.

From this:

This theme, in my opinion, while having a nice header, lacked any decent typography. A decent theme nonetheless (if I do say so myself). Had a nice minimalistic feeling to it, with some decent illustrations to spice up the design. But anyways, look at me talk on about my own design. Bottom-line: it got the job done, but it lacked in different ways.

That was so yesterday. It’s the 16th of April now! We went from that pitiful design…

TO THIS!

An amazing new minimalist design featuring great typography, comments, and my favorite feature: a working search bar I probably should have had awhile ago.

Anyways, moving on. It’s been awhile. I’ve been working on some illustrations and stuff, but that’s no reason to leave all of you here, with nothing to read. I know my writing has been more spastic than your grandmother’s colon but I will get back into the swing of it in a week or two.

Still don’t believe me? I’ve got an article lined up for Pro Blog Design already. In the meantime, go read some of my older articles, or click on that lovely feed button to the right; it’s your friend.

Design, Typography, Coding, whatever, these articles are the MUST READ articles for web designers. Read them and advance your knowledge of web design.

Design Process

• Using White Space Effectively In Web Design
  This article, while being very new has received much attention in its insight into the usage of white space in design. A great article. I expect to see much from this website in the near future.

• 6 Interface Design Principles and Tips Every Web Designer Should Know
  While it seems like any other article…

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This web app has been around for a couple of years now, but I still feel its a great site to take a look at. We Feel Fine is a web crawler that searches blogs for the phrase “I feel” and then records the data about the sentence. Design-wise, it has a nice and very usable UI, and it presents its collected data in 6 different ways. Personally, I find it to be an aesthetically pleasing antidepressant. Anytime you feel down, just look over on we feel fine, under murmurs and you can easily find many people who feel a lot worse than you (helps to select “sad” or “depressed” from the list).

I think I should try to get a category made for you so here it goes.
I feel aargh.
I feel zygomorphic.
There, that should be the first and last options alphabetically. Tell me if I get on the list.

Anyways, check it:
Website: We Feel Fine

Recently put together this 26 icon set of small icons that are illustrated using negative and positive space. The main advantage of these icons is their ability to adapt to any design with the simple shift of color. Just pop it into photoshop, hit the colorize button in the hue saturation menu, and there! you can switch it to any color by simply adjusting the lightness and hue.

Download: Here

Although at first, from a nondesigner’s perspective, typography seems like a small field, it is actually a very extensive part of design; one that can be applied to many others. In order to apply typography to web design, you must understand some fundamental concepts.

“Text will inevitably be read before it is looked at” – Reading Design, Dean Allen

In web design, particularly content-based web design, good typography mostly comes down to what maximizes readability (and doesn’t detract from quality). With cascading style sheets for fourth generation browsers, designers have many options in implementing typography, making it important to understand what to look for.

Fundamentals of Readability

Size and Hierarchy

Starting with your main body of text, understand that you must have a font size larger than 10pt. While it looks stylishly minimalistic for someone with perfect vision, it is hard to read with weaker eyes. Also, with long articles, having a larger font (and line height) makes it easier to keep track of your place, as well as read from a distance (if a reader wants to lean back in a chair).

Size also plays an important role in hierarchy. Unfortunately, with web design, it is difficult to have much control of in line spacing elements to emphasize hierarchy, as well as control emphasis. This means, hierarchy is mainly controlled by size (and font choice, if you are willing to give different font choices to different headers).

In this example, we see that, with only size being change, hierarchy can easily be distinguished.

Emphasis

Emphasis and de-emphasis are both relative in web design…

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Intrinsic Nature Art Group consists of 13 artists who created a highly inspirational exhibition. Full of vibrant color, stylized technique and various themes, this gallery is definitely one to check out. If this doesn’t inspire you, I dont know what will.

Check it out:
Website: Intrinsic Nature

Design, by definition, is function over form. This means that as long as function is maintained, a design can take any form. Enter creativity. Any form means that designers have the opportunity to express a function in many different ways. However, true originality is rare, as inspiration to create often comes from another source.

While there is nothing wrong with using other sources for inspiration (in fact, its always a good thing), harm comes when a reoccurring cliché appears within the design community. Designers need to be aware that any element can become overused, and stay original in order to keep designs fresh.

Trend Versus Cliché

Trend

In terms of elements used in design, a trend is an element that can be seen across multiple websites yet still has enough variation between designs to be considered a positive addition to the design.

Strictly adhering to trends is the quickest way to turn a trend into a cliché and turn your design into an unoriginal patchwork of others. However, using trends is alright, as long as you alter the element enough, or use it in an original way to make it your own.

Cliché

In design, a cliché is an element that has been overused to the point that adding said element to your design detracts from your design (regardless of its visual appeal, though clichés are rarely considered aesthetic), as it is so unoriginal.

Simply put, avoid clichés. Its too late to save…

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Kevin John Gomez, a web designer from Brooklyn (Fancy Labs web design studio), has both an inspiring website and portfolio (And in my opinion, a good taste in music too).

Check it out:
Website: Kevin John Gomez
Fancy Labs: Fancy Labs

Earlier this week I wrote a post describing what makes a great web design. I covered the header, usability, typography, C.R.A.P. and color. In this entry, I will continue with the list.

Remembrance

When designing a web site, you need its name all over it, but not in the obnoxious sense. When a you get a visitor, the first thing you want them to know is whose site this is because then, even if they leave, they still will remember your site. This applies to logos as well, you should place your logo in a place to be seen, so once again, every visitor will remember it.

However, remembrance is not just about putting a name on a design. Many principles of design, particularly contrast are not just meant to make a design easier to look out. Contrast is meant to make a design stand out, and with remembrance, you want the design to stand out in a person’s mind.

Style Your Pictures

People hate large blocks of text. What also annoys visitors is pictures that completely clash with…

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