What makes a great logo - well, I don't know, but at the site goodlogo!com they make users upload and rate logos. Currently the logo for Stüssy is the leading logo, but there is also more known brands and the stories behind these logos are mentioned, like sony, Coca-cola and BMW.
There has been a lot of complaining how bad HTML was to divide content and design, but using CSS as it was meant, you do have all the possibilities in the world.
The css Zen Garden is a great sample of how different css's applied to the same HTML will have very different designs.
official designs
all submissions
If you are doing (like me) the first interaction design sketches on a whiteboard, you can use the magnets from Magnetic Elements. It will set you back around $40, but I guess it's a bargin. If you don't like them you can always use them on your fridge!
In an interview with Steve Krug, he gives a great definition of what the work of an interaction designer is:
"I sometimes think the best analog for my job is a "show doctor"--the person who comes in while a Broadway show is still in out-of-town tryouts, watches the whole thing, and says, "I think it would work much better if you moved the cowgirl dance number to the start of the second act, and killed the love ballad altogether." I'm a fresh pair of eyes (which is vital, because if you've worked on a web project for any length of time, you know it too well to see it clearly) and an outsider who can advocate for the interests of the end user because I'm not involved in the internal political struggles."
Steve Krug is the writer of the book "Don't make me think!"
Today I just tested ClickTracks and what a great tool for analysing your website. When doing interaction design, it is very valuable to know how users are navigating through the site and ClickTracks can tell you that - right on top of your pages. A client application is installed in a few minutes, and if you have your web server logs available on your computer or by FTP, ClickTracks will scan the log and visualize it! Of cource it would have been great if you didn't have to install a client application to view stats, but I can live with that!
This sure beats Webtrends, hitbox and livestats!
David Travis has just written a new book about e-commerce usability and in regards to this he has uploaded a few chapters and a fine usability survival kit, with a good test for verifying if your ecommerce solution is customer centred. He's also got a great example of real life usability from a car park machine in Stuttgart airport: Which button would you press to lift the barrier? Well - as you probably guessed it is the red button?!? Read the full story about how the german usability experts improved the process in 4 steps.... He also has examples of how to lock a toilet door in a train and how to do oven control.
Strangebanana has developed a webpage with a design, which is generated by random. If you don't like the design, you can just reload. They actually encurage you to save the design you like and use it when you develop your own home page. If you need some random content, you can get fake latin paragraphs using a tool developed by 4guysfromrolla.
I think I've said it one million times to customers and collegues, but I must state it again: Don't use frames - here is 10 more reasons:
10. iFrames is still frames and is not supported by all browsers
9. There are ribbon campaigns to get rid of it - they are ugly and why should good sites be infected with ugly ribbon gif's
8. Bookmarking requires instructions for most users
7. Also with printing
6. Some search engines won't play nicely
5. Big legal nasties could ensue if you're deeply stupid or just don't care
4. It continues to encourage bad webdesigners to do bad interaction design
3. The messy ucky frustrating I want to chew glass reality of working with them
2. Jakob says no way
1. You could owe $50,000,000.00 in retroactive fees to people like SBC. The patent is here.
For quite some time I have been wondering, whether users are browsing full screen or if they are only using a window which only takes up part of the screen.
Often I am discussing with customers of we are going to optimize towards a 1024x768 or a 800x600 resolution, but if it is common to surf in a small window, this is important to consider when designing a new website.
None of the tools I currently have access to (hitbox) are only tracking screen size, so now I have build my own tool to track it.
The idea for my tool is also to be my stat tool, but that depends on how much space all this statistics will take up. I have now started tracking throughout this site and dubidu.
I about a month I will try to evaluate on my statistics and make it public.
Matt Jones has just released a 86 (!) pages document, which describes the design process when redesigning the BBC homepage.
You can download The Glass Wall from his weblog, at least untill his boss discover it :-)
This is a great document showing how to do the design process when you have great time and ressources. I wish we could do this amount of work when doing redesigns.