Atlason

Atlason's site is produced by the Atlason design firm from Manhattan. The design, however, has a heavy Scandanavian influence. Very minimalist and using abbrasive black typography set to grid. The black and white color scheme feels a tad outdated, but the styling is done in a constructed manner within the already limited range of possibility that stays in conformity but breaks redundancy with overwhelming white space. It feels more like a newspaper or poster than a website, and functions far better than I had expected.

I would eplain the interface in terms of its flow, which is sadly nonexistent. It moves from one thing to another with an awkward but smooth motion that requires a large and unwieldy amount of human interaction. Because of the way most of the parts of their site pops up, once opened they lead your mouse to the location furthest from where one wouuld be expected to next click. As for keyboard users, and those used to navigation by other means, you're out of luck. Designed for the iPad, however I can only express that the site is superbly engaging for the minimal content it contains.

The part that I'd really rave about, however, is the type boxes which are direct to php. I can't really remember this being seen on any other site, and actually have to consider implmenting it on my own sites, which will for now remain anonymous. The screen movement itself is nothing but visually appealing and I have to admit it is absolutely fantastic. Each individual page is like looking at simplistic design cocaine. And altogether a worthy 30 seconds of your day to visit.

Jean Helfenstein

Jean Halfenstein is a multimedia artist who has worked on a number of different projects for TVG; The Visionaire Group, which does promotions for several different companies. Just looking at the designs you could recognize Halfenstein to be a fantastic designer, a keen sense of style and excellent use of white space on the page. But the page itself is equally marvelous, with large background images and motion that feels like it belongs in a flash site, it's a site that you should really check out. You will be shocked by the size of the images on the site that seem to run functionally and with no flaw short of a load screen which, due to its nature, isn't such a bad touch.

Each page on the site has a separate design quality and background, and the clean web 2.0 look used by the navigation is incredibly deceptive. Each page brought up will redo the way the page interacts with the navigation, using the navigation as a single element for which the juxtaposition of all images hinges. The sleek lines and minimalist shading gives the pages a revamped look, and moving gifs set into a slider make for intriguing opening pages. The simple but not basic black white and blue color scheme leaves little to be desired in the face of images that dwarf everything on the page in size, and really gives the site a gallery feel which one rarely receives from looking at an internet archive of any kind.

If you do check out Helfenstein's site, and I recommend it, be sure to look at the body of work as well. It isn't just the interface alone that influenced the wow factor of these brilliantly designed pages.

Digital Gurus

This is something a little different that I'm displaying, mostly because I rarely consider flash sites to be well-designed other than being attractive and engaging. However, this site is one of those exceptions where the usage of flash is limited to what it needs to do, and doesn't exceed in presentation which would otherwise be awkward. Brilliant electric background and a simple fade in effect makes this site a designer's elegant dreamsite. The site is made by digital gurus, a sort of talent agency for anyone working in digital mediums.

For those of us not familiar with the problems arising from flash, let me go over a few. First, the size of the site is enormous, usually requiring a buffer to load the site. Digital Gurus has countered this with an intelligent system of loading the navigation before the content, so that each page can still be accessed even before the unnecessary animations start up. Second, flash sites are a single page, which means linking is always awkward, and selecting text is often impossible. Well, that's sadly something Digital Gurus was unable to fix. Not to say, however, that it's impossible, as I recall an old version of the Absolut Vodka site was designed with such capability. So they get 2 out of 3 for breaking the mould in flash, as their site DOES in fact have different pages. Well designed sirs and madams.

Next, looking at their actual layout, they have a topbar and secondary sidebar system, now universal to all Web 2.0, and a subtle deliverence of marketing throughout the page. Their in-flash scrollbar is a little unwieldy, something any decent designer struggles with, but their choice of sans-serif and serif fonts mingle in a near decorative manner, juxtaposed just right to accent the heading over all else. And as for their background, a photoshop lighting trick which is considered the draw of designers everywhere when it comes to photo editing. They're not original, but they are fantastic.

Redbubble

This is a relatively different type of site I'm looking at this week. An organized compilation of images, not unlike a board or facebook style community space for images. Bigggest difference is, they're a journal of sorts too. The folks that run this site actually lists the popular searches in a fashion not unlike looking at headlines. A group of designers and artists displaying their art. It has its own shop portion of the page, organizing user submitted designs to be bought online.

It may not be much at first. At first walking onto the page was a boring experience, I recognized too many reused ideas that half a million people already do for their sites. I mean proportionally they were so reserved I almost looked past this site altogether. Then I noticed the little 'community' tag in the top right corner, and decided to take a look. What I was hit by, and so will you if you visit the site, will be loads of content. In true social networking status you can comment, post and link among artists in the community, and the design for this page, while not much better shows a fluid nature most sites abandon with their front page. And the ability to buy prints directly off the site is really neat, and shows that they store images in relatively high format.

Right now my general critique of the page is to spite its unassuming layout and its lack of user content for what could be a fantastic site. Obviously it takes time for these things to get started, and the competition is fierce, but these guys have most of the functions a well designed site should have. The ecclectic nature of their viral posters is no limitation to each artist's prestige, and while the majority of the designers clearly use the site for financial purposes, It seems a worthwhile investment of time to look through its pages.

Pitch Design Union

The irony of writing in a blog about a blog worried me for a moment until I realized the paradoxical nature of that statement remains self promotional and adventageous at worst. In any case what I will be talking about today is Pitch Design Union's fantastic, original, clever, adjectative and humorous blogsite. I first came across Pitch Design when it was hyped in Print Magazine's August 14th Issue which called it a "wonderful catch-all design and imagery blog" which isnt far from the truth.

Pitch has some of the finest line art renditions on the net. It is sleek, the colors are masterfully chosen as stark constrasts and offshade versions of one another. The whole site is built to have an old-world feel of victorian wallpaper and little knickknacks, subtle occurences that as a designer, I admit I love. In particular, the fonts used on the page are a curious blend of a highly stylized italic serif and a strong typewriter font, albeit one that appears less humanistic and more showy, lending the whole page a 70s vibe that is replicated on the computer.

Although I am not interested in a number of the articles written by her, and cant always agree with her tastes, she has a charm about her website that cant be captured in a few hundred words. Her site has wit, wisdom, movement and grace, from the forms of interaction on the site, to the way the page loads and text is spaced. Even her writings act as a form of artistic achievement themselves, often poetic and full of self-referencial humor which is brilliant by any design perspective. My only fault with her page might be in the navigation of the blog pages, which should be readily accessible at both top and bottom of the page to allow for instant access to her links to images. Altogether, I would rate this blog an eight of ten if I had a rating system for art, but I dont, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

N.Design

Although not as well known as Mark Zuckerberg or Angelo Sotira, Nick La has made a name for himself in the niche designer community on the web. N. Design is Nick La's personal studio site, offering links to many of his other personal works, and a number of useful web tutorials. Because he has so many different sites, and a number of sponsor sites which certainly don't diminish the value of his sleek work, he has created a majorly trafficked, and well designed web blog.

When I first came across this site in 2009, it had very little content and was nearly impossible to navigate. Since then, the site has become not only better organized, but also shows off some design tricks that break the standard walls of web 2.0 template. Most notably is his use of gifs, which he has layered on multiple axis lines, with a standard repeated background, but to the casual observer it appears as though he has a single enormous image as his header. Using javascript, and hidden layers, he has additionally created some simple popups which are relatively low in bandwidth, but add just enough interaction in the page to be engaging, without being distracting, such as we find with myspace and its unnecessary habit of highlighting everything a different color.

Needless to say, the site was built for designers with a masterful understanding of the design aesthetic, and the web aesthetic as well. But that's not to say it doesn't have its shortcomings. In the first instance of encountering the site a year ago, it had incorporated some out of place adverts into its sidebar which were too close to the site's aesthetic for comfort, and remain unchanged. While ordinarily I would not complain about stylized adspace, which often the designer has no say in himself, the space mimics, but also fails to incorporate with the overall image. The cartoon look would be better off boxed in, displaying a separation of styles on the same page, rather than attempting a conversion that isn't possible.

That said, such is the sites only fault. It is easily navigable, with links to his network of sites both at the head, on the right column, and at the bottom of the page, each in a way expected by that form of navigation. His other sites, among which are Themify, BestWebGallery, and IconDock, are all decent resources to look at for any web-based needs. As artist sites go, this belongs on anyone's list.