Archive for May, 2006
The Slashdot Redux Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 by Alex
In early May I learned about the redesign contest at Slashdot, the tech website we’ve all come to love over the years. Still running on confidence gained in the winning of another redesign contest, I decided to give it a shot.
As a long-time Slashdot reader myself, I had a good feeling about the characteristics of the winning design. First, Slashdot’s brand and identity are closely married to its huge, loyal and long-time community. A redesign of Slashdot must be evolutionary, not revolutionary. Secondly, Slashdot presents a huge amount of information. A redesign should address the accessibility and usability of this information architecture. Finally, Slashdot operates on a budget. To allow for a fast and cost effective transition, a successful redesign should leverage its existing markup to the greatest extent possible.
With those design targets, I sat down for nearly 48 hours straight, and came up with the winning entry, presented below:
Over two hundred people submitted designs, from which Rob Malda picked three finalists. Be sure to check out the great designs by Peter Lada and Michael Johnson.
A more thorough article, discussing the decisions and compromises made during the design process, is in the working. Grab our feed and you will be the first to hear about it!
UPDATE:
Here’s a sneak peek of some more screens to tide you guys over until the new design is published:
If you’re an adventurous Firefox 1.5 user, you can also install the Greasemonkey script (developed by my brother, Arto) that allows you to try out the live Slashdot site using my design. Get it here.
MakaluMedia Corporate Identity Portfolio Monday, May 15th, 2006 by Mike
Since the end of 2004, I’ve been actively pursuing corporate identity design through the company I work for, MakaluMedia.
The first in a long line of logos was created for Ian Landsman, his firm UserScape and his first product, HelpSpot. In fact, Ian wrote the post Creating a Business Logo back in January 2005, describing the logo design experience from his perspective.
Since the that first web 2.0 logo project, and having been featured in Bob Walsh’s Micro-ISV book, I’ve been receiving many requests to help companies and individuals design their corporate identities. It’s been wonderful helping create clean, clear and effective logos for each one of our clients.
Last week I realized we had no central page on the MakaluMedia site, where logo or related information could be viewed. This week I’ve created a new page where you can view a select collection of logos case studies:
MakaluMedia Group Design Portfolio: Corporate Identity
The portfolio explains why Makalu’s logo design process is different, along with 4 case studies and images of completed logos. My goal is to continually expand this portfolio page, making it a handy reference for anyone seeking to learn more about our logo design services before they hire us.
I still intend on going in in depth on the design process for logos I create on the Rohdesign Weblog, as I’ve done for the Outer Level and LiquidFitness logos. I enjoy sharing my thought process and more detailed sketches on the weblog. From the comments I’ve received, readers enjoy it as well.
I’m hoping the two pages will compliment each other nicely, with the MakaluMedia Corporate Identity page providing the overview of each logo design, while the weblog can offer richer details, sketches and the thinking behind each design.