This is where the Vostok crew blogs
Articles clasified as "Visual Design"
Go back to the homepageToday we replaced our ageing white theme with a minimal theme named Helvetiplanet.
It’s no secret we’re huge Swiss nostalgics, and this is a little homage to one of our favorite typefaces, Helvetica. We hope you don’t mind us being retro-stylish once in a while!
To check it out in action just set ‘Helvetiplanet’ color in your preferences. Don’t have a Planetaki account? Sign up here, it will take you less than a minute, really.
Mark Coleran just commented on our recent post about designing interfaces for sci-fi movies giving very interesting insight:
In the movie business, screens and interactive elements have a very low priority in the grand scheme of things (with a few notable exceptions).To really sum it up, there are just three considerations.
The first is to do somethign that sits with the look and feel of the environment and set. The nature of the film always dictates. If it is in the future, then the desire is generally to have a different way of interacting or displaying things, than is currently the norm. It is a small way of differentiating the interfaces. The reality is that these systems might already exists, but are not widely used or known about outside of labs or specialist groups.
The second is the worst part. Prior art. Some of the people involved, directors, production designers, producers, bring with them their own biases, pre-conceptions and pragmatism that can result in less than satisfactory interfaces in the films and content on those interfaces. It is not uncommon to hear people day “I want it like it was in that movie” whether a good example or not. People try to play safe at times and it is not always easy to overcome.
The third and most important part is that the interfaces are there for only two things. Set dressing and story. Irrespective of design and plausability, if they tell the story they are deemed a success by those commisioning. CSI might seem implausable in action and stylistically but they do one thing and one thing well. Tell you what happened or what they have found. This can lead overall to interfaces and systems seemingly doing some very unrealistic things, but in the end the story is all that matters.
Mark Coleran
I am not sure wether this is art, architecture or both (artchitecture?). I just found it amazing and provoking at many levels.
“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”
The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.
It was designed by Daniel Rossa – rossarossa.de and produced by urbanscreen.com.
(thanks, Sergio)
Have you ever wondered who designs those cool (and sometimes impossible) user interfaces that appear in sci-fi movies. Well, it’s companies like OOOii.
They designed the exhausting multi-touch interface for Minority Report and more recently the intensive data panels at the last Star Trek movie. There is a very interesting interview to the guys in charge at the Flash Blog (Adobe). Yes, they do almost everything in Flash :)
I wonder how the specs are decided:
How many movies do you recall where interesting user interfaces appear? Would you help me make a list (and then make a collaborative post out of it)? Ok, here I go with the first that come to my mind:
More?
Approach A
A lot of designers want to increase the line height or padding in order to make the interface “breathe.” We deliberately don’t do that. We want to squeeze in as much information as possible above the fold. We recognize that information density is part of what makes the experience great and efficient. Our goal is to get users in and out really quickly. All our design decisions are based on that strategy.
Approach B
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.
Which one would you take?
(thanks, Missha)
This collection of all the Apple.com hompages is an amazing lesson on how to use color, space, type, photography and -what’s even more important- how to focus on what matters when designing a website. Worth spending an hour on it:
Via Clarisita’s I ended up on this great compilation of original business cards. This one made me laugh hard:
Check out the great work by Joan Pons Moll, a graphic designer from Menorca. Some of his logos are just brilliant:
I’ve spent most of my time to study the basic shapes, this in order to focus on those meaningful details which give meaning to those qualities we live our daily lives with and —somehow— help define ourselves too.
The Context of Form is a short (therefore very good) essay by De Gregorio on how form can be function. Please, read it.
I found Juan Leal’s post about Verplank’s definition on Interaction Desing very interesting, although I am no fan of definitions and compartimentations. I’ll jump to the train, however.
My favorite definition/description/whatever goes like this:
Information Architecture: how it’s structured
Interaction Design: how it behaves
Information Design/Visual Design: how it looks
These definitions are not mine and I cannot recall who wrote them first. I’d appreciate any feedback on it. I am also aware that the boudaries between concepts are not clear at all, especially between the last two. They tend to overlap a lot.
Jorge Correa (one of my favorite designers) just released a small set of super-cute weather icons free to use. This is what they look like:
They come just in time for something we have in mind at Planetaki. Thanks, Jorge!!
Remember that photoshopped image of the iranian missiles? The one where one of the four was faked (as if it made any difference). Yeah, this one:
Well, Cowicide decided he had a fever and the only prescription was… More Cowbell!!
