http://www.touchey.com/blog/2009/3/6/2009-logo-trends.html

And another showing beautifully illustrated & grungy websites…these sites look fantastic but there is debate about how user friendly they are. Packed with bright colours, users might find it difficult to pinpoint where they need to go and the price of beauty is often a lengthy site load time. But they still look damn good! Make up your own mind at:

http://www.touchey.com/blog/2009/3/8/30-beautifully-illustrated-grungy-websites.html

Touchey is a good place to stop off for when looking at current design trends across the world.

What is your most secret wish? To save the world, become a famous writer or to have another wish? It’s time to make wishes come true. Here is an award winning flash experience site with games and special features created by 2Fresh.

Beautifully crafted fullscreen goodness. Lots of added extras and surprises to keep the user engaged.  A nice use of After Effects for button rollovers makes the experience just that extra bit touchy feely!  Even though this site is rich in content it seems to function relatively smoothly.  However my machine is half decent, so I wouldn’t mind finding out how it performs on something with less grunt… or even a Mac.

Visit the site here: http://www.o2vanoce.cz/eng

Me likes!

Who said the banner is dead? I know some creative’s who would love to see it dead, come to think about it so would many viewers, but handled properly and your message targeted to the most relevant customer then you get traction.

Take this little number from Nike although it’s in a 300 x 250 banner they’ve managed to cram a whole mirco site in there, I spent around 5 minutes on the ’site’  (honest, I checked on my Nike watch) I checked out the range the styling, I could even buy the product at this point, now that’s pretty impressive, I got the whole Nike experience in a single banner ad, I also like the fact that the experience comes to the viewer and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your browser unless of course you want to buy and that’s exactly what I did, strong creative, that’s target specific that sells product. Long live the banner.

If you were at the Sydney Motor Show last month, and your eyes weren’t glued to the expensive-looking supercars and not-so-expensive-looking promo girls, you may have noticed a little something we did for Mazda. 

It was an interactive kiosk that allowed people to view car specs simply by touching the screen. For a designer like me (who’s used to 72dpi), it was a nice change to be working with high res videos and a fancy-schmancy Plasma screen. And when we actually saw the beast being used by real people at the Motor Show, it gave us a nice little tingle under the bonnet. Shout out goes to Dan, our Action script guru, who helped out a lot with research and testing.

Brian, Senior Designer

 
1. DEXTER VIRAL – TEN
Oh no, not another loony running around with a blade! But hang on a minute,
like all good detectives re-visiting the crime scene, on closer inspection
this is a viral piece for the new series of Dexter. The intro to the US
news report is believable – with the taped-off police areas and CCTV
footage of the killer leaving the scene adds to the authenticity. I do like the
idea and like all good virals has that viral effect in that you can personalise
the piece and send it on giving the impression that your mate could be
next – lovely idea. After all that was revealed at the end, I thought the art
direction needed more of an edge and the line “You’ve just been given the
Dexter treatment” was not as sharp as Dexter’s blade. A good effort overall. 

2. THE HAPPENING
Quick cuts, camera zooms with deep gravelly voice-overs from the director
of the Sixth Sense – it was bound to grab my attention, so when I went
online to find out what was happening I was still none the wiser. Maybe that
was the whole point? To create enough intrigue that you’ll want to see the film.
There was ‘The Happening experiment’ which was basically a flash mob of people
all falling to the ground at the same time. I love the thought, but have seen
this idea done before in New York’s Times Square where everyone ‘froze’

3. VICELAND TIME CRISIS GAME
A shoot-em-up game with lots of blood and a high body count – now we’re talking.
As a non-Vice reader, I didn’t really understand the ‘don’ts and dos’ and as
I entered the site I was taken straight to the shooting range.
It would have been nice to chose your weapon of choice as my personal
favourite is the AK-47. Still, pulling my hard gangsta bro face I started shooting.
It didn’t feel like I was using an AK- 47, it felt more like a water pistol. More
action and sound effects would have helped the experience of a virtual
shoot-em-up world all blokes love.

4. BIG BROTHER
A virtual Big Brother house that has lovely art direction. I loved the Flash
animation (apart from a glitch when I rolled over the music stereo in the bedroom)
and thought it was well executed. The prize on offer is an ‘ultimate’
trip for two to the Gold Coast, including limo transfers and a tour of the BB
house and other things. I guess this is very appealing for the
audience but for me – who doesn’t watch BB with all the naval gazing that
goes on with a bunch of wannabe stars – this site didn’t entice me enough to
interact, so earning points and cracking codes wasn’t compelling enough (not
even for a trip to the Gold Coast) and I reckon this audience haven’t the attention
span to navigate around the site.

5. THE WORLD GAME
I thought the site design and interface was a bit stale, but I did like the fact
that they had videos, blogs and stats on the ‘beautiful game’. To be honest
if you’re a football nut this site will be a favourite. For me, it was the
videos from the English Premier League, and coming from the East
End of London I was looking for the ‘ammers, what the hell? No West
Ham and as they say around Upton Park ‘bloody liberty’. I still feel they
could have ‘real’ fans from Australia talking and reviewing games. The
site could have also used Vodcasts and not just on the blogs, and polls
from the fans would have added a bit more to the site.

6. BRATZ FASHION DESIGNER
Out of all the sites I reviewed, this site for me worked the best.
I know it works well as my three girls are on this site all the time so I
know from first-hand experience that this is a great site.
It has everything that all good online experiences should have – relevant
rich content, personalisation with the ‘Fashion Studio to The
Gallery’ where you can upload your favourite design and vote for the
best. This site really understands who its talking to, it doesn’t try to be too
clever but still manages to be very rich and immersive. This gets top marks from me.

Real Estate matching is a challenge that most of us have been through at least once, and one that real estate agents solve with an exchange of location information for customer needs parameters such as property requirements and price.

The web has given rise to a wealth of property information, and now represents a major resource for prospective buyers.  Not surprisingly, the industry boasts some of the best examples of how the internet is changing our shopping behaviour.  Examples such as Zillow,  Trulia and Realestate.com.au are continuing evolving the service of matching customer real estate needs against their pool of properties.

Hoodeo is a new online business that launched today and attempts to apply a neighbourhood filter to the property selection process.  After filling in about 10 questions (on 3 pages), you get this page.

The chart (and survey questions) graph the results according to Lifestyle, Property and Price.

I think Hoodeo should have enhanced the engagement of the survey by using images, and I believe the “Lifestyle” parameter should be sub-divided into a selection of lifestyle categories.

The site doesn’t include social features to allow customers to rate, review, share and have conversations about the neighbourhood variables.

Perspective: Whilst digital allows websites to provide functionality not offered in other communication channels, the "experience" is what separates good sites from great ones, and what results in word of mouth spread of the features offered.