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.