Everywhere
The agency formerly known as Studio AP has rebranded as Everywhere. A new site has been launched as part of the rebrand, with clients such as Burberry, Anthony Burrill and the previous post, David Gill.
Vist the Source: FormFiftyFive
Best User Interface Design Resources: The Round-up
If you strive to be a great designer (like most), then you’re more than likely to know that a web application or websites success many times rely solely on how well designed the User Interface may be. As you scale the web and even read books, there can be an influx of misleading information pertaining to the way you should design your UI.
When in reality you should do what works best for you and your users. Below you will find a variety of excellent User Interface resources that will allow you to access, redefine, and create a well designed User Interface. You should use these resources first as inspiration, and second as somewhat of a guide as to what your users may need when they come face to face with your UI.
Interface Design Libraries
1.) MephoBox
MephoBox houses various interface patterns and designs that showcase the different trends within them. Their goal is mainly to inspire designers and hopefully allow them to conceive a greater design then they had first planned out to make. You’re even able to vote on designs and leave insightful comments. You can also search and sort results in an organized fashion allowing you to easily and quickly find just what you need.
2.) UI Patterns
This beautiful and large collection of user interface patterns allows designers to absorb great inspiration. If you have a design to showcase, then you can publicly store these UI inspirations allowing others to become inspired by what you’ve submitted as well. It’s more of a user interface collaboration between the design community.
3.) Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, was formed and currently managed by the Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN). Individuals from around the world are all able to share design patterns to the web design and web development community. Through their newly launched forum, you can also conversate on several interesting UI subjects with fellow designers and also talk about designs in the pattern library.
4.) PatternTap
PatternTap is one of the most notorious UI pattern design libraries created and developed by Matthew Smith and Chris Pollock. Pattern Tap can mostly be described as a large gallery containing amazing web-baed User Interface designs. Pattern Tap also allows its users to upload their own patterns into their library, adding to the now over 7,000 UI patterns. This is a good resource and definitely a great place for inspiration.
5.) The UI Pattern Factory
Here we have the UI Pattern Factory which like the rest listed above is a UI design library/gallery. Not only are users able to upload patterns they’ve found, but their able to add and instantly share video entries that can help you gain a much better grasp of what the pattern is all about. This is a good source for inspiration, not only will you get a visual graphic as an example, but you can also get a video outlining the details of why this user interface pattern was chosen.
Interface Design Blogs
6.) UX Magazine
UX Magazine has set out to deliver valuable information and guidelines that will help the designer create a much better user experience. They also claim to cover the best new resources and articles on UI design. As an online magazine, they also give way to the interaction between fellow designers by letting everyone discuss quality tips, share experiences and new ideas.
7.) UX Booth
UX Booth is beautifully well maintained community connected through a blog solely positioned on the web to sharing valuable knowledge and resources with the User Experience Community. Its online presence delivers informative articles and resources on usability frequently. It also speaks heavily on other subjects that go hand-in-hand with UI such as Interaction Design.
8.) Designing Interfaces
Designing Interfaces is popular book that’s formatted as a site. It is written by Jennifer Tidwell and as soon as you begin to read, you’ll find massive amounts of design patterns for your inspiration and well written articles to feed your knowledge base. A variety of content on organizing site content, soliciting actions and commands from users, and presenting complex data will be available at your fingertips. Bottom line is, Jennifer’s book is definitely a great resource for any designer wanting to learn more on this subject.
9.) UXmatters
UXmatters is a very informative web magazine created to bring valuable information on user experience. You will also find several design patterns within the publications that will help you understand what’s required of a usable and accessible user interface. There are also various techniques that will give you insight and help you develop much better skills.
10.) InspireUX
InspireUX is definitely more than just a great source for User Interface Design, it also has numerous inspirational and worth-while quotations from countless leaders in the technological community. The User Experience quotes are from top-bosses in the industry, you can find quotes from Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and more. Every quote has something to do with User Interface design and has insight.
11.) UsabilityPost
The Usability Post is a blog focused on the uses and advantages of usability within interface design. They touch base on subjects that give light to how a design looks and operates. This blog is a well maintained and established entity that offers informative feedback and allows you to engage in discussions that can produce further resources or inspirations for you.
12.) Boxes and Arrows
Boxes and Arrows, an active online publication geared towards the how designs interact. Here you will find a good amount of information that speaks on effective user interface designs how to design one as well. Boxes and arrows is maintained by a professional and academe-centric community that pumps out articles that are informative and well researched. So it’s facts with proof, not just theories here.
13.) Signal vs. Noise
Signal vs. Noise is 37signal’s blog. Their rapid and valued experience in developing applications with amazing user interfaces (such as BaseCamp and BackPack) leaves them as one of the most sought out resource for building applications from scratch (mainly their interfaces). Read their blog for some of the most interesting experiences with user interface design and more.
14.) Konigi
Konigi provides the design community with treasured tips, tools and useful techniques that will help you become a much better User Experience designer. They frequently monitor leading designers, sites, and applications that are subject to produce quality user experiences and then they publicize these findings for the entire design community to read.
15.) Usable Web
Usable Web is a vast collection of useful links pertaining to User Interface design topics, tools, and research. The site is mostly outdated, however, the links and resources you find still hold value. Some of these links will lead you to priceless pieces of work that will impact the way you design user interfaces forever.
Interface Design Inspiration
16.) ate bits
The ate bits site is simple, yet sophisticated in its design. The large icons make it easy to choose which product you’re intersted in, and when you click on the icon it unfolds into a single page where you’re able to view the features, screenshots, and reviews. Meanwhile at the top of the page, the other icons for all 2 remaining apps are visible, just in case you want to smoothly switch back and forth between the 3.
17.) Giant Creative
Not only is the typography here amazing, but the way the top navigation menu uses the hover effect to grab your attention, and the use of a scrollbar with a beautiful link on the bottom right is amazing as well! The entire interface is easy to interact with and scaling around through the site, you can’t get lost.
18.) IconDock
IconDock is a very flexible website in terms of functionality and usability. It’s user interface is vibrant and features a drag and drop function that makes purchasing icons much easier and quicker.
19.) Versions
The Versions website utilizes dark colors, however, using the website you’re able to see that the dark color has no effect on usability. This site is based on a single-page layout and defines all of its elements in an clean and organized fashion for better navigation.
20.) Pure Volume
Pure Volume has a beautiful web site design with an even better user interface. Here we see 2 seperate menus that are very easy to navigate, every section is organized and cleanly seperated, and it has a nice blue outline effect when you hover over an image in anyone of the 3 middle sections.
21.) Typetees
Typetees is a one-page incredible usability force. What makes this site so appealing is the hover effect on every teeshirt, it pops out and becomes full, and the pink “Join” button at the top right-hand corner also “rolls out” once you hover over it.
22.) Silicon Prairie News
The Silicon Prairie News weblog features nicely organized and nested elements spaced “just right” from one another. When you visit the site you don’t feel overwhelemed, there is a sense of clarity, and the navigation at the top of the page is in caps and highlights in different colors so you can’t get lost. This is all compliments of a well thought-out interface design.
23.) CSS Edit
This is one of the easiest to navigate through application websites I’ve come across. Descriptions, features, details, and images are all nested well within the websites design. This is a good example of a simple, informative, and functional website that hosts applications.
24.) Pallian Creative
Adarsh Pallian has a well designed website that’s not only eye-catching, but allows the user to interact freely. The top nav bar consists of three links for ease of use. Elements are well spaced and beautifully aligned.
Web Applications and Their Interfaces
25.) SUBERNOVA
Here we have SuberNova, it’s a project management tool that has an easy to use web interface. Once you begin to add projects and users the information begins to flow freely. A small box pops-up when you decide to create or edit an invoice. You can easily save the edited invoice, cancel, or delete it with the click of a button (located at the very bottom). You can also quickly add, manage, and contact clients with simplicity. SuberNova’s interface is dark, however the designers made it easy for your to view the contrast between the information and elements of design.
26.) Copper
Copper posses one of the most easiest to utilize interfaces for a detailed online application. It contains a variety of features that are easily accessible. The navigation is well organized and displays sub-menus within a roll-over box that contains a description. When you click on a project it takes you to a more detailed page where further information can be found. Everything within the applications interface is well spaced, organized, and never out of reach.
27.) TypeTester
TypeTester has a pretty straightforward interface. The main purpose of this app is to allow the user to enter a sample text then choose 3 different types that can easily be modified by size, alignment, color and more. Then the text is instantly outputted in 3 different formats: regular, bold, and italic.You can then click on a small box at the top right-hand corner that will pop-up and give you the CSS for the corresponding box you chose. The process is simple, and using elements such as text areas, scroll down boxes, and pop-up boxes is fairly easy as well.
28.) PXtoEM
This web application has a variety of functions that are possible thanks to JavaScript. We begin by selecting our body font size within the first column, once you do this you’ll see that the application will automatically have chosen a conversion of your font within the second column. Then you can either move to the third column and customize your conversions or grab the necessary CSS code by clicking on the middle tab within the top navigation bar. PXtoEM uses smooth shades of grey to create a contrast between the rows. This helps you not to get lost. When you choose the font size you’re looking for, then that specific row is highlighted in dark red. All of these features make it much easier for you to use the application while minimizing the chance of errors.
29.) Lets Freckle
LetsFreckle is one of those beautiful web applications that come great features and eye-popping usability. As soon as you login the first thing you see is the navigation bar at the right-hand side. This makes it a thousand times easier to remember where you’re at while you’re navigating through the pages. Viewing report are is a sift, and changing between dates/times is even easier. Overall, LetsFreckle has an amazing interface that follows through with amazing usability.
30.) Twitter
Twitter’s an application that will continue to be complimented on the super well job they’ve managed to do when it comes to usability. This is one of the easiest to use web based applications that exist. It all starts from the time you reach the homepage, you hover over the sign-in button at the top, the sign-in box rolls out, and you login, till the time you scroll through your timeline and retweet appealing notifications. Everything is easy to work with, and you don’t even have to refresh your page (thanks to AJAX) to know that you’ve received new tweets.
31.) Kuler
Adobe’s Kuler is a rich color combination tool. It’s easy to experience new combinations due to the way the combinations on the left side-column load up instantly at the top. If you click on the featured combination it will “unfold” and let you see the colors at greater lengths. Although the applications website is a bit crowded at first, the most important elements (color combinations) are very well organized.
32.) CrayEgg
CrazyEgg is an amazing web application that makes it easier for everyone to track usability on a website. Being a usability app, I’m sure they needed to make their application extremely efficient and easy to use. Wouldn’t make sense to talk the talk about usability but not practice it at all. The most enticing thing about CrazyEgg’s usability would be how easy the interface allows you to interact with various aspects of your account. For example, when you’re reviewing how many clicks were made by a visitors mouse to your website, all you have to do is click on the plus or negative button and a small box will appear with the proper details. I was also amazed at how easy it was to navigate through your entire account.
33.) Google Analytics
Landing a spot on this list, non-the-less is the powerful web application known as Google Analytics. The interface flows freely and it is extremely straightforward. Every element of design is nicely organized and technologies such as Flash behave well. With just a glance you can get a quick and informative look on the analytics of your website, if you wish for a more detailed overview, that’s readily available as well. Hard to get lost within the control panel of this application, pages aren’t overcrowded, easy to navigate through, simple ways to control the look and feel of elements, and beautifully contrasting colors that help guide you through every section. This is what great usability looks like.
34.) LaterThis
LaterThis has a simple structure which it operates under. Links are quickly added, saved, and bookmarked. Once your links have been saved you can login in to your account and navigate to the latest links area. The navigation on the top left-hand side is extremely accessible and always within the peripheral vision’s parameters. Adding a new link within your account is pretty simple, all you have to do is enter information in 4 fields and save the link. This area of the application is very similar to Delicious in the way it processes saved links and the colors as well.
Interface Designers to Follow on Twitter
35.) Dmitry Fadeyev
Dmitry Fadeyev is the founder of the Usability Post blog, where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability.
Follow Dmitry on Twitter
36.) Janko Jovanovic
He’s a software engineer, blogger and speaker focused on UI engineering. In his free time, he writes about UI engineering on his blog JankoAtWarpSpeed.
Follow Janko Jovanovic on Twitter
37.) Nathan Smith
Nathan is the UX developer at Fellowship Tech. A Christian web studio that specializes in creating sites for churches and ministries.
Follow Nathan on Twitter
38.) Jared M. Spool
Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering, the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. He’s also author of the book, Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide.
Follow Jared on Twitter
39.) Whitney Hess
She’s a User Experience Design Consultant and helps make stuff easy and pleasurable to use. Whitney is a strategic partner with Happy Cog and UX consultant for boxee, among other startups, agencies, and major corporations.
Follow Whitney on Twitter
40.) Michael Angeles
Michael is a user experience designer living in Brooklyn, NY, where he publishes his personal projects http://konigi.com and urlgreyhot.
Follow Michael on Twitter
Vist the Source: Dzine Blog
Paris Captured in 26 Gigapixels Worth of High-Rez Photos
Paris 26 Gigapixels [paris-26-gigapixels.com] is a stitching of 2,346 single photos showing a world-record breaking, very high-resolution panoramic view of the French capital (354,159x75,570 px). One can zoom in on famous monuments of the French capital, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Beaubourg and the Notre Dame de Paris.
See also Gigapixel Photography, Colossal Images, PhotoSynth, Obama's Inauguration Photo and Chris Jordan Infographic Art.
Vist the Source: information aesthetics
Live Labs Pivot: A Massive Interactive Zoom on Data (TED Talk)
"Viewing information and data in this way, is a lot like swimming in a living information infographic." During his very impressive TED talk, Gary Flake, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, demos the novel and still experimental Pivot [getpivot.com] technology. Pivot is a completely new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on the Seadragon zooming technology, it enables spectacular zooming in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.
"Right now, in this world, we think about data as being this curse, we talk about the curse of information overload, drowning in data. What if we can turn that upside down, so that instead of navigating from one thing to the next, we get used to the habit of being able to go from many things to many things and then being able to see the patterns that were otherwise hidden."
Watch the video of the talk below.
What will it enable in the world of data visualization that was not possible before?
Vist the Source: information aesthetics
What Do You Suggest? Exploring the Collective Lives of Google Users
What Do You Suggest? [whatdoyousuggest.net] is a fun, interactive visual guide on a journey through the 'suggested' collective lives of millions of Google users.
The suggested words appear in the order in which Google suggests them. Each word is connected by a line of varying thickness representing the relative number of search results for a given Google search on the phrases which that word.
The suggestions provided by Google Suggest represent real searches which in all likelihood have been performed millions of times each by people from all around the world.
More detailed information is available on the author's blog.
See also the Joy of Revelation, which is based on the same data.
Thnkx Michael!
Vist the Source: information aesthetics
Thinking for a Living—Redesign
Thinking for a Living, the brain child of Duane King and has been through a redesign. We must say it’s looking pretty slick. Now focusing more on feature and long form content the redesign reflects this, shifting from presenting a traditional long scrolling page to a landscape mode—after all most of the screens it’ll be read on are probably larger widescreen models. Where the design really comes into it’s own is the keyboard shortcuts which makes navigating the columns of content a pleasurable experience. Quite similar to the shortcuts AisleOne recently incorporated into their redesign, it’s no surprise to see that both AisleOne and Thinking for a Living are part of the same publishing network (TFAL Network). This seems like an interesting move to bring similar content providers together and reminds me of what Gawker Network has done for the tech/videogames/geek community with Gizmodo/Lifehacker/ValleyWag.
What do you guys think of the new design and the more editorial content and magazine like presentation of TFAL?
Vist the Source: FormFiftyFive
Orbitone
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
Orbitone is an ambient interface for musical interaction by means of tangibles and user motion. It was developed with vvvv, reacTIVision, OpenCV and Ableton Live by a few
Media System Design students at the University of Applied Science Darmstadt, Germany.
Found at Vimeo.
Advertise with Design You Trust! - DYT on Twitter - Facebook
Vist the Source: Design You Trust
One Loud Table
From the creator of Pepper Knuckles and Music Blocks comes this wild and crazy table for your music collection. It’s called “Amusity” and it’s rather full of music and amusement, if I do say so myself. The designer Idan Arbel says that this is a tangible user interface coffee table for your entire music library. Toss it all on there and let the circus begin.
You can play music videos, access information on the artist, song, album, etcetera, and using such information control the flow of the songs. Meta data like popularity and genres control the way the music is displayed, with popular songs in the center, rarer songs emanating outward.
Activating one song or video will reveal a list of possible paths you might take toward other recommended songs, and then there’s the objects.
The objects are what control the music and video. The circle pieces are the speakers (really nice speakers it seems from the video) – wherever you place them on the board, that’s what song plays.
The Rectangle with antenna are the ones that activate the music videos. You can place them both, or just one at a time. There’s a plus object that shows textual information, and a dome that controls the view of the whole situation, allowing you to zoom in or out.
Fun!
Designer: Idan Arbel
Vist the Source: Yanko Design
5 Ways to Make User Interface Design Work for Everyone
It’s a user interface tug o’ war…
When it comes to UI, there is inherently a balance that needs to be struck between the needs of the user and the needs of the client. Sometimes these needs are the same and you have an ideal situation on your hands – congratulations! More often than not, the creation of the user interface becomes a careful balance of what the user wants to see on the page and what needs to be displayed on the page in order to drive business objectives. Here are a few tips and guidelines to help keep things in perspective and allow you to blend the two seamlessly rather than end up with a patchwork quilt for a UI. Each of the examples have their strengths and weaknesses, but each has at least one aspect of user interface design that is done exceptionally well. Here we go:
1. Be Intentional
When we design pages we deal with the users’ intentions. It doesn’t matter who they are in terms of demographics, rest assured they have a goal in mind, and therefore an intention. To ignore this intention in exchange for your goals is “website suicide.” Users must feel that their needs are being addressed even if your intent is to introduce them to new (more lucrative) goals. As a designer, you must balance clear messaging that identifies the user’s intentions with direct access to work flows that take a user to their goals. Naturally, the presentation of the site’s key business goals also needs to be present. Sites like Mint.com make sure to address the user’s needs and provide him/her with the services they are looking for; if you look more closely, it’s clear that Mint’s business objectives are being presented to the user in a “helpful” way as well.
2. Let Them Simplify
When inventory display is the goal and you are allowing users to search through your data, the last thing that you want to do is oversimplify the process. Searches that yield too few results (or even worse, none) will make users think that you have a lack of inventory or inability to meet their needs. DO help them focus in on a manageable result set, DON’T try to wow them with instant access to the right results. Sites like Kayak and REI allow users to narrow down their results in a way that is easy to understand and flexible. The user is in control. If they “tweak” the search to a point that they are presented with no results, they can understand why that has happened, and simply broaden their search until an acceptable result is returned.
3. Let Them Customize
No user interface that we create is ever going to be perfect for everyone (try as we might). The more complex a site is or rather, the more potential intentions that we deal with in our user types, the more important it might be to offer some form of customization. The extreme examples of this, like iGoogle and Netvibes are very customizable and let a user basically create their own UI, but in many cases, this level of customization can lead to confusion and a poor user experience. Sites like USAA offer excellent and sometime unexpected amounts of control that allow the user to make more sense of the information being presented to them. They also make commonly used functionalities more prominent and group information in a way that is more meaningful to the user, all without compromising the goals of the website.
4. Make it Visual
As designers, we have our own internal struggle to deal with. Design is everything, but should everything be designed? The answer is no…and yes! Everything within a user interface should be laid out with purpose, meaning and detail, but not everything needs to be done graphically. Too much visual stimulation or too much design can leave the user feeling that the graphical “layer” of a site is getting in their way and making them work harder to access information. If this is the case, then we as designers have lost the balance and have probably lost the user. On the other hand, graphics and visual layout can be used very effectively to make mundane tasks easier to understand or to simplify a page that may otherwise feel overwhelming. Wufoo is a perfect example of a site that has used design and visual balance to make the creation and use of forms into a pleasing (and almost fun) experience. Alternatively, Burton uses graphical feedback to convert a traditional form-based experience into a visual one.
Which brings us to the last point…
5. Make it Fun
How dare we lose sight of this one. It is one of the core elements of user interface design. Of course, fun may be a lofty goal. Some sites demand a level of professionalism or seriousness, but we can always make sure that using the interface of a site is enjoyable, pleasing and at the very least, easy to use. This balance that is very important, as it allows us to keep a user’s interest long enough to connect them to the information that they need, as well present the information that we want them to see. Sites like Burton and Spectra/MSNBC use design and graphical user interfaces to make accessing information intriguing and engaging (and yes, even fun) without losing usefulness.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, it’s is up to the user interface designer to balance the goals that he/she has in mind for creating a great user experience and the goals that the client company has in creating a great customer experience. So ask yourself ”Am I sacrificing one or the other in the design I am creating?” If the answer is “yes,” then you need to push your creativity even further, because for every instance where you feel that you are sacrificing, you have identified an opportunity to innovate and use interface design to create a solution that addresses both goals at once.
Vist the Source: Inspiredology
30 Cool Photoshop & Illustrator Poster Design Tutorials
Posters are an integral part of Media. An eye-catching, attractive poster conveys a professional, compelling message about a product, service or event.,Creating posters can be a lot of fun with a large canvas area , there is plenty of room for creativity .
In this article, i have collected a mixture of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials related to posters and advertisements. which will help you in learning new skills and methods as well, while they teach you to design some cool & Attractive posters
1. ) Retro Boxing Poster
2. ) Old Collage Effect Poster
3. ) Century Vaudeville Poster
4. ) Furious Pink Panther Poster
5. ) Event Poster
6. ) Awesome Colorful Posters
7. ) Sin City Style Poster
8. ) Constructivist Inspired Poster
9. ) Awesome Music Poster
10. ) 60s Psychedelic Style Concert Poster
11. ) Grid While Making a Typographic Poster
12. ) Indiana Jones
13. ) Neo Constructivist Poster
14. ) Nopattern Jumper Effect
15. ) Gigposter Design
16. ) Digitalartsonline
17. ) An Explosive Cover
18. ) A Mock Retro Poster
19. ) Quick Grungy Poster
20. ) High Impact Gig Poster
21. ) An Ice Cold Poster
22. ) Digitalartsonline
23. ) Constructivist Propaganda Poster
24. ) Comic Book Photo Effect
25. ) Retro Grunge Poster
26. ) Inspirational Vector Political Poster
27. ) Super Cool Retro Poster
28. ) Composing An Event Poster
29. ) An Intense Movie Poster
30. ) Awesome Snowboard Poster
Vist the Source: Dzine Blog
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