HT DESIGNS_ BE INSPIRED

Book.Ish

Although I haven't jumped into the world of ebooks 100%, I couldn't pass up this clever and well-rounded branding by A Friend of Mine. The Melbourne-based design studio created the branding for Book.Ish, a web-based application for selling and reading ebooks. They designed the business cards, website and phone application for reading. The overall feel of the design is absolutely "bookish." I really appreciate the subtlety of the letter "B" as the eyeglasses and the bright and inviting colors. The goal is to make reading ebooks "fun and approachable." By straying away from a technical look and giving homage to classic literary production techniques, I believe that they have accomplished their goal. I might just read more ebooks because of this branding!

"Inventive Labs designed the online environment with illustrations by Lachlan Conn and Ben Sanders."

I find these bookmarks as their promotional piece to be brilliant and appropriate.

Fun & Fresh Website

I'm loving this site for Restaurant/Caterer Marie Catrib's! Its fun and playful, and still a functional e-commerce site (another Smashing Magazine find)! I like how the nav at the top is relatively simple but has a playful touch with the arrows pointing to what you've rolled over. Another feature I like is the "hide" that allows repeat visitors to hide the the rotating messages. I like the use of handwritten typography, the mixture of different fonts is playful and fun. I think sometimes there's such a thing as using too many fonts (whether hand type or not). But I also think that if you are going to cross that line you may as well run with it and that's what this site does. Despite the assortment of fun and funky fonts, the site still looks clean and fresh. I think the clean and simple and photography helps keep it clean.

Check out Marie Catrib's! (If you live in the USA you can even order baked goods from their online store!) 

Postcard Form Design

I was browsing through Smashing Magazine's articles and found this one on Form Design for Web. My two favourite from their collection of forms were the two below designed as postcards:

 

Designed by Jarad Johnson

Designed by Jonah Goldstein for Sophie Hardach's website

I like the idea of making the form look like a postcard, its quirky and fun! It adds character to the websites. I particularly like how on the second one the postage stamp needs to be "affixed" to send the message adding some user interaction beyond clicking send.

Websites with vertical navigation

I saw a post on Smashing Magazine for websites with vertical navigation. I looked through them, and there were a few that I really liked (not just for the nav!)

 
I really liked this one. From the Featured section I got that the website had to do with Artists, Musicians and other creative types of people but I didn't really get what the website was about till I clicked on the WHO WE ARE section. That's the only think I didn't like, but otherwise I love the design of this site.  There's a lot of little things going on the website, which is fun but their main content is pretty easy to navigate and I love the watercolour/illustrative feel of the web design.

Utah Travel website, nicely designed, fun but very clean and easy to get around.

I like the design of this website for a Hotel & Restaurant in Australia, but at the same time I'm not entirely sure if it works. Easy to navigate, and the watercolour illustration is beautiful, and their theme is laid-back luxury. I like the theme, and I get where they were going with the website but I almost think it doesn't show the luxury enough and comes across as a little too artsy.

Feel The Power

Give these guys credit, they definitely found a cool way to showcase product in a very uniformed logical sense. A wheel. A color coded wheel. Each color represents a product category and is simple to use! Very nicely done!

Want to be inspired?

I haven't seen such creative web work like this before. Truly amazing when someone can design the back end of a website (background) to tell a story. This is a portfolio site of Bryan Katzel, a designer/illustrator.

WEBLEEDDESIGN.com

Check it out and watch the staircase bleed as you scroll down...

Creative Navigation

 

As I am always looking for inspirations, I ran into a portfolio of an interactive media designer and was kind of impressed with the creative navigation that runs the site. It's not really my style, but I think it is very neat!

Check the website out!

Google Earth Hidden Program

I think by now we have all logged into Google Earth and typed in our own addresses to see what will come up. Most of us have typed in ours, our grandparents, first girlfriends and the "hot girl" from college address' as well.

With the recent launch of version 4.2 Google has hidden a Flight Simulator in the program!

Open the application, click on the globe and then press Ctrl+Alt+A. You should see this dialog that lets you choose one of the two aircrafts (F16 "Viper" and SR22) and an airport.

Most likely this will be incorporated into the next version of Google Earth, but check out the hidden version for now.

Not the typical navigation

I have recently been on a web design kick, and have been doing a ton of research of other creatives from different countries. This one I believe is an architecture firm (once again in another language).  I spent a lot of time hitting refresh just on the homepage. I never did get the same scenario twice. Check them out: http://triart2000.ru

The trend of a lot of (overly) designed sites seems to be 'atypical' navigation layouts. Where you can click on corresponding imagery  rather than from a list of words, to navigate to the next page.

Can't read a word...but looks cool

I just came across this bizarre little design website this morning, and I thought I would share it.

I can't read a word, but I loved the whole concept behind it.  Media-Mix.com