Badass Ideas

This month marks my one year blog-iversary.

When my blog first launched it did not look like this at all. I have actually had a lot of websites; none of which are at the domain SamanthaWarren.com. No, rather a super-classy 1992 styled “Under Construction” warning has taken up a permanent residence on that page. It has been there since 1999 which is why I decided to pick the corniest, longest, most ridiculous joke URL I could possibly think of for my first domain. SamanthaRocksYourWorld.freeservers.com in all of it’s blazing college glory didn’t last very long, but I can tell you that it could have put a lot of today’s myspace profiles to shame.

Once the need to use my website as a place to send a shout out to all of “my dawgs” wore off the quest to experiment with online media began. People have asked me how I learned to build websites, and besides the help I got from some fantastic coworkers, my personal website really is what taught me how things works. It is a continuous experimentation. Now I am going to show you what a lot of other designers probably wouldn’t… the evolution of my personal web site. Keep in mind “at first you don’t succeed, try try again”.

2002 SamanthaWarren.net
I muddled my way through dreamweaver using a book and dumb luck to come up with my first real portfolio site. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but looking back on the code, I am surprised to find it in pretty good shape. The entire motif was crude and simple; revolving around a concept piece I created for my final college portfolio. The idea was to hand a possible employer a file from a mental ward stating I was “crazy about design”. Probably not something I would go with again.

June 2005 SamanthaWarren.net v2 & v 2.5
After completing a few sites for the Army web team I felt confident to bust out some CSS of my own and experiment with flash. The flower on the left hand side grew when you first came to the page. While a happy dance was done over an achievement as that,it wasn’t long before I realized there weremajor issues that needed to be addressed. For instance…. It took forever and a day to load my portfolio. So I went back and rebuilt the entire site again from the ground up and launched a sleeker version 2.5 of my website. As soon as that was up I quickly saw the potential to improve and redesign.

January 2006 SWarrenDesign.com
So the flash bug then bit me. This site provided me the perfect challenge to learn the basics of flash but not without some headache. Early on I settled on a Victorian Phrenolgy concept hat looked 90% awesome but had this interactive bald-headed me on the front page. Killer concept but visualy rode the boarder between genius and really friggen’ weird looking. So loving the design otherwise I concocted an animated version of my cat to fill the void. Funny… but still a little friggen’ weird. This would be an example of when a concept running off on a tangent. I keep this site live for kicks… go check it out.

January 2007 BadAssIdeas.com
After my first trip to SXSW in 2006 I was not only inspired to crack open some Wordpress CSS but to start blogging. When I told people i was going to blog their first reaction was “What about?” and as you can see that probelm worked itself out fairly well. The inspiration for the name came partly from a joking remark made by a colleague referring to my “Bad Ass Ideas” and visually from my love for Janis Joplin. Janis had a relationship with the San Fransisco Hells Angels who she gives a shout out to on her “Cheap Thrills Album”. Inspired by the no-bullshit attitude of Miss Joplin, this version of Bad Ass Ideas was born. Between this redesign and this final version I did over 32 unique comps.

June 2007 BadAssIdeas.com v2
Rejuvenated by my second trip to SXSW and my growing obsession with social media I decided to redesign and realign many visual and structural elements of the site. I also surprised myself with my dedication to blogging and decided that should come to the forefront of the site. Visually I wanted the content to be the spotlight enhancing my audience’s usability. Hoping to reference the patterns found in the 1960s art-nouveau poster that advertised Janis’s tour I added a faded Victorian pattern into the background of the site. It is reminiscent of her many costumes that now seem to be available at any local Urban Outfitters.

Expect a redesign before June 2008.

I attended a fantastic presentation by Steven Heller hosted by the Art Directors Club of Metro Washington DC on Friday night and he explained that Brand is a fetish… it is when people don’t just identify with something but embrace it. This concept fascinates me especially when it falls in the realm of an a-typical product. People get totally juiced up and excited over so many things; there are mini-cooper meet-up groups and people who are obsessed with Harry Potter, but I am fascinated when a group of enthusiasts rally around something meant to be functional.. often dry, and usually transparent… like a web browser. Firefox has organically grown an enormous group of brand loyalists using guerrilla marketing and online tactics that go far beyond anything that their competitors are doing. From that they have defied odds and currently maintain a healthy stronghold on a substantial percentage (36.3% in December 2007 according to the W3C) of the browser market. How are they doing it?

They are not evil.
Firefox is a project of the non-profit Mozilla foundation:

devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet. We do this by supporting the community of Mozilla contributors and by assisting others who are building technologies that benefit users around the world.

They go so far as to spell out exactly what they are all about in their own Manifesto which states their goals and principles. Dude, what is cooler than a manifesto? I mean Pirates and people who start revolutions have manifestos.

The first time I read this document my heart skipped a beat… an organization that believes in all the idealistic wonderful web things I do? OMG How can I not embrace that? An excerpt of three of their principles are as follows:

1. The Internet is an integral part of modern life–a key component in education, communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.
2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
3. The Internet should enrich the lives of individual human beings.

Openly stating and documenting all of their non-evil beliefs online in a manifesto makes them hard to dislike… and modern day pirates. Arrrr!

They make a great product & experience (which organically creates word of mouth)

There are lots of great advantages to Firefox, the customization really sets them apart from the other products to the average user. While being open and secure are big pluses, the average joe is going to notice all the fantastic plug-ins they can use to make their browsing experience unique.
As a Web Designer I constantly rely on (and recommend) the Web Developer Extension. My friend, the Catch-up Lady (an avid Firefox user) constantly recommends the All in One Gesture Add-on.

They have fun.

Fun designs, fun T-shirts and fun promotions abound. They don’t take themselves too seriously and that makes using their product that more attractive. They recently held a competition called Operation Firefox where they encouraged their users to use guerrilla tactics to place a 3.5 foot Firefox sticker in a public space. Insane challenges and a manifesto… pirates. Arrr!

They leverage successful online and offline marketing tactics
Spreadfirefox.com houses a complete toolkit that helps people spread the word online through photos, banners, and talking points as well as offline events where Firefox enthusiasts take to the streets. Rather than utilizing traditional marketing tactics Firefox has decided to go this low budget route leveraging and amplifying the word of mouth their product has already created and giving their users to do the same. They take all the work out of it, making it simple and effective.

They look good
Firefox’s logos, buttons, banners, and even T-shirts are all well designed. Its a pleasure to have the Firefox logo sitting in my dock, and their T-shirts are witty and fashionable. Their microsites like Operation Firefox and the Mozilla store all have organic tangible feels to them. Taking something like a browser that exists only in the online space and giving it a very offline feel.

Whether it is Michael Bierut’s witty posts on Design Observer, or comments on Brand New I never cease to get a kick out of what he has to say. If you are down for a little Typography geeking-out this evening… sit back and relax to a few minutes of Mr. Bierut’s ramblings on typography.

I found this video done by theAltantic.com via Typograhica and highly recommend you check out their post on it.

From Twitter:

mringlein: my new years resolution is stop designing web 2.0 … i am all about the 2.5 this year. vintage wallpaper backgrounds and real life objects

mringlein: gradients and reflections are out …. the masking tape and handwriting fonts are in baby!

SamanthaToy: @mringlein http://www.24-7media.de/ was doing that stuff since forums were the “in” thing. I feel like trends are recycling themselves

dndrnkrd: @samanthatoy, @mringlein I agree, it’s not time for 2004 to come back yet. Good design can exist irrespective of trends.

I’m a little confused. I have heard so many people refer to the “Web 2.0 Look” and have been dealing with this confusion for a while. After all, the definition of “web 2.0″ says nothing about a specific aesthetic style. After my twitter conversation yesterday I followed up with my friend Dan to chat more on this subject. Dan explained that Martin’s comment may be a direct result of a backlash happening in the design community since Elliot Jay Stocks’ Presentation “Destroying the Web 2.0 Look” at the Future of Web Design Conference. I hadn’t seen the video of this presentation and decided to check it out.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://cdn-ll-static.viddler.com/flash/publisher.swf?key=9b7e9501" width="437" height="320" wmode="transparent" /]

I agree with Elliot Jay Stocks for the most part. I just think there is a little more to it than that.

Some things I would like to add, expand upon, or just discuss further…

Concept is King
The more concerning point that was just brushed over here is that there is a common theme in the design community to go ahead and move forward with a design without a strong concept. Elliott Jay Stocks mentioned that it’s OK to use a reflection on your logo if the name of your company has the word “reflect” in it. Well… that would be illustrating and supporting an overarching concept.
Ellen Lupton says it best

“Think more, design less. Many desperate acts of design (drop shadows, gradients and the gratuitous use of transparency) are committed in the void left by a strong concept. “

Rock on, Ellen. Rock on.

But are all trends bad? No just overusing them is.
Design is about communication and sometimes established trends help to communicate an idea or feeling. Sure they have been done before, but perhaps you need to say “technology” ” or cutting edge” without looking dated and like a 1960s SCIFI movie poster. Well then referencing some of the elements used by Apple in your design would help communicate the language that Apple has previously established for visually saying “innovative”. Any and all of the elements of the “Web 2.0 Look” can be successfully integrated and used in a design if you have a reason for doing so.

Form follows function
If I am designing a website for the US army, gloss is not appropriate most of the time. I mean those guys get pretty freaking dirty. No need to create a new look for them, they have a pretty clear one already established. If I am designing a Website for an IT company splatter paint and handwritten fonts are most likely not going to clearly communicate what the company is trying to say.

Grungy and Glossy are textures not looks
The web involves interaction design. Texture can help define the visual hierarchy of information and guide a user through the site. It also helps to create dimension transforming the screen into layers of interaction. Using texture is good, just some types are more commonly used than others.

Who’s Guilty of Using the “Look”
I am. I bet you might be. A lot of designers are. I have said before and I will say it again, if you see my use of diagonal lines as a background its because I really am spent for ideas and something is keeping me from developing a strong concept. Sometimes that may be a client, other times it may be a deadline. But the reality is at the end of the day, I gots to get paid. In a perfect world clients will come to designers for their expertise and trust their decisions, but it just doesn’t always happen. Designing something that is aesthetically pleasing versus conceptually appropriate is still a win in the war on ugly. Ya gotta pick and choose your battles.

Creativity is Part of the Job Description
There are lots of designers out there just recycling other people’s ideas. Shopping around from site to site picking and choosing what they like and putting it all back together for their client. This is not a designer this is a Digital Collage artist. Your duty as a designer is to present the creative concept. I understand that the client may shoot it down or some jackass managerial type person may not feel ya… but part of being a designer is seeing how the website fits into the big picture in a smart way. If you find yourself recycling too much, maybe you need to sit down with a notebook and do some drawing… away from the internet. It will help.

Stop worrying about trends & think about making good design
In conclusion there is a lot of shit being overused on the web, and there is definitely an overarching lack of originality and concept. As Dan said “Good design can exist irrespective of trends”. What is “good design”? It is when the designer has a clear, researched, creative, and appropriate answer for the “why” about every part of the web-site. Those diagonal lines may not be “just a default” if there is a thought-out reason for using them. If that reason supports a kick-ass concept, then that is “awesome design”.

Rock Band Logos Blog
Brand New a little too corporate for you? This blog discusses logos with a little more of an edge. Rock on.

Pentagram
There are a lot of definitions out there. Design jargon can get a little confusing. I like Pentagram’s definition of Interactive Design.

The Bureau of Communication
Need a little help getting your point across? I love well-designed documents. Imagine if your IRS forms were this elegant?
found via Swiss Miss

The F- Pattern
There is the F- Word and then there is Nielsen’s F-Pattern. Both are good tools in clear communication.

OLPC from a child’s perspective
This initiative has really kicked into high gear the last few months. Not only is it a fantastic cause but it has a fantastic brand. Everything from the hardware to the user interface is clean, appropriate, and just down-right fun. Justin Thorp has been doing a great job at covering OLPC if you are looking for more information.

BDThreads
As I have stated before, I can not have enough Design-geek T-shirts. I will not use comic sans I pray to god you won’t either. If you really honestly don’t understand why using Comic Sans is such crime against typography, please see http://bancomicsans.com
Found via a recommendation from DisplayAwesome.com

Future of Web Apps.
You know you want to go to Miami. Yeah you do. With a speakers list that includes Dan Rubin and Biz Stone who can really resist a mid-winters trip to Southern Florida?