College and university websites have a lot of roles to fill. They need to provide information for prospective students (both new and transfer), parents of students and prospective students, current students, and alumni. In many cases, they’re also the gateway to the school’s intranet and the public face for both academics and athletics. They often need to include reams of information in a way that makes everything easy to find. It’s a huge challenge.
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The most important factor for minimal to work well, as it should be with all design styles (but, not always the case), is the content. Without good writing or a strong portfolio, the style has no impact and the web design looks cheap. And that is the key to minimal, in the hands of a skilled web designer, they know that the site design has to accentuate the content, and the content, in return, accentuates the web design.
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Smashing Magazine has been on Twitter for about a year now (@smashingmag), and it turned out to be a great medium to communicate with our audience, build connections, discuss design-related topics and give away some nice prizes. However, even a year later, we still don’t have a Twitter background page and now is a good time to change that.
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When I’m looking at excellent websites for design inspiration, one of my favorite aspects of design to notice is the navigation menu. While I enjoy seeing excellent designs of all types (minimal to artistic to colorful to dark) and various aspects of the site (including headers and footers), a well-designed and well-executed navigation menu can have more impact on my appreciation of a site than any other single piece of the design.
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In 2008 Japanese designer Kouichi Kimura created a specific property in the outskirts of Shiga, Japan. Located on foot hill area with fields surrounding the entire property, at a first glance the building looks odd, a bit minimalistic, and clean. But a deeper look and you can get a feel for the exceptionally emotional design intended to blend with nature.
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One of my (many) side projects when I’m not designing interfaces for a large mortgage company, is Twitart, a small company I created to design Twitter backgrounds and avatars. I recently had the opportunity to create a background for Lisa Lillien, a.k.a. Hungry Girl. Lisa has a great book (with a new one on the way) and website, and sends very helpful daily emails about eating right. It was a lot of fun working with Lisa, here are a couple of ‘tweets’ she posted about her new background:
OOMG!! Look at this ADORABLE new Twitter page design. SO CUTE! Thanks to my pal Chris at http://www.twitart.com. YAY, CHRIS!!!1:23 AM Mar 3rd from web
FOUR MINUTES HAVE PASSED AND I STILL LOVE MY NEW TWITTER BACKGROUND!! http://www.twitart.com and Chris ROCK so very much.1:32 AM Mar 3rd from web
You can follow me on Twitter @kauf and @twitartdotcom, you can follow Lisa (Hungry Girl) Lillien @HungryGirl
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Have a look at my latest creation, TwitArt. I recently created TwitArt (a very small business at this point) to offer Twitter users (tweeters) a means to order completely customized, professionally designed Twitter background images and avatars for their accounts. As Twitter has grown, so has the desire of Twitter users to create their own unique graphics, making their page stand out from the crowd. For users who may lack the design skills to create their own professional background design, TwitArt provides an affordable solution. Prices range from $18 for just an avatar design, up to $78 for an avatar and background combo. Check out some of the work I’ve done so far in the TwitArt gallery.
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Here’s a logo I just finished for the Solar Car Team at the University of Toledo. My idea was to incorporate the aerodynamic shape of a solar powered car, with a rocket (Toledo’s mascot), orbiting around the sun. The blue and gold color scheme is taken from the school’s colors. Here’s a look at the final logo:
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Here’s my latest project to launch, Choose Thinking, a blog for Dan Gilbert, the chairman and founder of Quicken Loans, and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Dan plans to blog about business, basketball and everything in between. We built the blog on the WordPress platform, thanks to Joe for his help with the coding. Check out Choose Thinking.
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