3 ways to go beyond Web 2.0 design
Story bySjors Timmer
Sjors is a User Experience Designer, currently doing his MA in Digital Media in London and actively blogging about t-shirts. In the past he(show all)Sjors is aUser Experience Designer, currently doing his MA in Digital Media in London and actively blogging aboutt-shirts. In the past he has worked as lead designer for social and e-commerce sites.
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First:
Flickr.comprobably one of the oldest Web 2.0 companies that didn’t go along with the bling hype. The interface is clear and simple, but still looks shiny cool.
Second:
Cnn.com, got a new fresh design last year, and is one of the finest examples of how to make a site without gradients and without drop-shadows behind each box.
Third:
Hulu.com, only around for a few months now, and a living proof about designing a good site that mainly exist out of white space. (It It is still in beta, but you can get a login within a day, check for somemore screenshots here)
three ways to go beyond Web 2.0 design
So what is it that all these site have in common?
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Grids and white spaceOrder your site with mathematical precision, create a grid where each column has a certain width, and stick to that format. Another thing is making things stand out not by making them really big, but by adding a lot of white space around it, some things on Hulu just needs to be clicked because there is noting else that catches the eye. Mark Boulton wrote agood tutorialabout it,Khoi Vinhwrote ablog postaccompanied witha pdffor it.
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Typography.There is a lot more into typography than only choosing which font you are going to use. Without even changing the font you can already differ two text blocks from each other in different line-height, different grey scales, and different sizes. Once again Mark Boulton wrote awonderful series.Another good point to start with is Oliver Reichensteinsarticleabout typography.
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Colors, and shades of greyI already mentioned the use of different shades of grey to differ texts in importance, and especially sticking to one or two colors and grey can be easy tools to create an attractive yet clean site. Flickr especially manages the grey tones pallet very well. Veerle wrote agood articleandColorLoversand Adobe’sKulerare worth visiting too
To sum it up: master your grey skills, keep your distance, and get some mathematical madness for order running through your blood. And you will be on your way to go beyond the drop-shadows and big starry things with text in it.
