Jesper Bentzen is an interaction designer and art director who has been working with digital design and visual communication for over 10 years. He specializes in concept, design, and direction for interactive media and moving image, including websites, apps, commercials, music videos, and corporate identities. He has a reputable client base including Madonna, Sony Playstation, Vodafone, and MTV. Bentzen also runs MAGNET, a studio specializing in design for moving images. He handles concepts, design, production, direction, etc. for all kinds of digital media. Bentzen has won many awards in the web design and motion design industry, and has had his works featured in magazines, books, and exhibitions. His work is very interesting and funny, especially his animated short The Salesman. Check out his website for more info: http://work.jesperbentzen.com/
Ever wonder who is the creative genius behind all of google’s holiday and specialty logos? Well that would be Mr. Dennis Hwang. Hwang was born in Tennessee but moved to Korea when he was five, where he grew up and went to school. When he was young it was frowned upon for him to doodle as he did, but professionally they turned out to be very beneficial for him. Hwang graduated from Stanford with a degree in arts and computer science. He was working for Google as their international webmaster, where he was responsible for all of their international content, when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked him to become their chief google doodler after the popularity of their burning man logo. Hwang creates about 50 google logos each year for holidays ranging from Christmas and Easter to more obscure events such as the anniversary of Pinocchio’s publication. To check out all of the google doodles designed by Dennis Hwang as well as other guest designers, go to www.google.com/doodles. 
Mark Zuckerberg, who if you have a facebook or are even alive in this day and age I’m sure you have heard of, is a computer programmer and internet entrepreneur with a net worth of $15.5 billion. In his days as a student at Harvard, he and his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004. When Zuckerberg was in middle school his father taught him Atari BASIC Programming, and he tutored with software developer David Newman. Zuckerberg caught on quickly, and when other kids were playing video games, he was creating them. Zuckerberg loves programming, especially communication tools and games. In 2010, Zuckerberg was named the number one out of 100 on Vanity Fair’s “most influential people of the Information Age” list. He is definitely an influence to society today, and I doubt that he will begin to lose popularity anytime soon.
Dearest Rose Haywood.
Rose’s futurist manifesto project is absolutely baller. The lightbulb is perfect and works so well with her composition. I’m glad it moves as you scroll; I think it adds an interactive element to the piece that actually works with it and makes sense. You can tell she put thought into it and didn’t just add a scroll-y thing for the sake of adding a scroll-y thing. I like how she designed it to be organized, yet still chaotic. The repetition works well to represent the key ideas of the futurist manifesto. I also like how she chose to include binary language in addition to the manifesto text. I think it really pushes the meaning of the text to a whole other level.
Britt Silver
I also like Britt’s composition for the futurist manifesto. Undeniably a different approach from Rose’s, I think she effectively gets the point across to the viewer. Her use of color makes key words stand out from others, and helps to bring your eye across the page. I also like her arrangement of the text. I think it works very well that it doesn’t just go up and down, but it also moves side to side. It makes it stand out from most webpages. Her use of typography is also very effective. Changing the point size and using different versions of the font (italics, bold) as well as adjusting letter spacing and leading helps to highlight key words and phrases. I wish she had the entire list finished for the page, because I think it would be really neat to see how it all lays out on the page.
A large issue of typography on the web is that all fonts are not compatible with all browsers. Until recently, the only fonts that were available to use on the web were those that were installed on computer operating systems as defaults, and those fonts didn’t exactly give designers much to work with aesthetically. Now, thankfully, there are sites to link to (like google fonts) to find better-looking fonts that you can embed in your code, so that they will appear the same on all computers. Even with these linked fonts however, there is still the issue of size. Different browsers read code differently, so the point size you put in to look good on your computer’s browser might not look the same on someone else’s browser of choice.
Tantek Çelik is the Web standards lead for Mozilla Corp., parent company of the Firefox web browser. His main objective at this job is to raise the bar in what web developers expect web applications to support. He wants to help browser-based applications built with HTML5 and CSS3 rival the interfaces and social networking of iProducts. Çelik has worked for both Apple and Macintosh, helping to develop the Mac OS version of Internet Explorer. Over the next few years, Çelik will be working on making the user interfaces of HTML5 and CSS3 web apps ahead of the times. I am curious to see how the web will be changing under his direction over time. He predicts that the web will continue to rapidly evolve over the next few years, especially due to advancements in mobile technology/internet, so it will be interesting to see what it becomes!
Sources: tantek.com, Mozilla, Tantek Çelik
Going back to my earlier post on how restricted HTML is, CSS is undeniably easier for layouts. HTML tables are one way to lay out elements, however there is very little you can do with a table to make it look interesting due to the simple gridlocked structure. CSS grids allow for much easier placement of objects because they allow for more complex grid systems. Each object can be sized individually and doesn’t have to conform to the same standards as another element. It is much easier to code CSS grids than it is for HTML, and it is easier to go back and rework grids in CSS. What it comes down to is, CSS is way more usable than HTML (from a coder’s perspective!)
Theresa Neil is a User Experience design consultant for web, desktop, and mobile applications. Since 2001, she has designed for various markets including finance, digital marketing, systems management, etc. Her favorite projects are those with data visualization challenges.
One project of Theresa’s that I am fascinated with is an iPhone app for the University of Texas at Austin. The app is very clearly organized and extremely easy to navigate. The app includes all of the information students, faculty, alumni, or friends of the university might need to know, and the information is organized in a way that is very easy to find. There is even a section for puzzles and games! The layout is similar to the setup of the various portable iDevices, with simple icons arranged in a 3×3 grid. The icons lead to such things including university news, maps, a directory, an events calendar, sports, menus for on-campus restaurants, safety & alerts, and personalized things requiring a login id for your class schedule, dining bucks, blackboard, and finals schedules. Theresa did a fantastic job combining functionality, business, fun, and unity into one very handy app. The app is free to download, so of course I did to try it out. It is absolutely fantastic! I wish West Chester had an app like this! (that’ll happen when pigs fly. And if it does, it probably won’t be as easy to navigate….. just saying.)
Source: http://www.theresaneil.com/
HTML and CSS could be considered cousins- both are the language used to create a website, however one is more restricted than the other. HTML formats text and images on a page, but leaves little room for precise placement of objects and a visually pleasing design arrangement. Example: http://tronche.com/. On the other side of the fence, CSS performs the exact same function as HTML, but with more ease and more design capabilities. CSS allows you to put in precise locations for elements to be displayed on a page so you have more control over where things go. It also allows you to format your page to be displayed correctly on various devices, including PCs, Macs, or nowadays, mobile devices such as iPods, iPads, or smartphones. CSS also provides more options for color, decorative elements, and font styles. Example: Adobe Kuler.
1. Organization. A good website has information organized in a logical manner so that it is easy to find what you need.
2. Appearance. The phrase “sex sells” applies to web design; you want your website to look good. The better your website looks, the more attention it will attract.
3. Clarity. A website should be able to be easily interpreted and understood by the user.
4. Functionality. The user should be able to maneuver a website easily. If they cannot figure out how to use your website, they will leave, and most likely not return.
5. Content. The information your website presents should be relevant to the topic it relates to. Whether the same topic applies to the entire website, or there are separate sections with different topics (ie, a blog), the information in each section should be relevant to the topic.
6. Ethics. It is easy to pirate media without realizing it these days. Any images, music, words, etc. that you post on a site that is not yours (does not come from your own brain) SHOULD BE CITED.
7. Working Links. One of the most annoying things about websites is when you click on a link, and all you get is that little box with the ‘x’ in it. Working links are key to bringing users back to your site.
8. Home. Don’t make users go through the Land of Oz to get back to the main page of your website. Give them a “Home” link, as well as links to the other pages on your site. Its the small things that count.
9. Originality. Every website is not created equal. Make yours stand out from the rest, and let it represent who you (or the company you’re working for) are really like. Professional doesn’t have to mean boring.
10. Evolution. A website is a perfect example of artwork that is never finished. Technology changes, people change, views change, you change. Give your website a makeover every so often. It doesn’t have to be Michael Jackson-extreme, just little things here and there to enhance the user’s experience.
effy13 