MOMA have established a seriously inspiring online exhibition to accompany ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘. It explores the impact that technology, science and (increasingly) digital media has had on all aspects of design, from visualisation to bio-mimicry.

The interface is richly packed with content and whilst I found it a bit hard to navigate at first, once I let myself wander around the site as if in a real-world museum, the process of discovery took me on a very enjoyable journey. Every exhibit I visit is joined to the next with a line, looping across the index to show me what I’ve looked at. There are 300 projects on display online, which is 50 more than the physical exhibition.

It’s hard to pick a favourite, but after my journey on the tube this morning, I think I have to go for the Flyhead Helmet from the Environmental Transformer project.

Which exhibit would you choose?

I’ve noticed clients recoil at the phrase “Rockstar Developers”. The image of a drink, drugs and - gulp - sex-crazed development team smashing up their dressing room is problematic for many reasons. I kind of recoil from it too. It’s yucky. Nevertheless, ReadWriteWeb has published a list of the ‘Top Ten Traits of the Rockstar Software Engineer‘. It makes fascinating reading, especially if you work closely with one. The official list goes up to 10, but I’ve added a few of my own, and shuffled. See if you can guess which ones are true. Please feel free to suggest some yourself.

1. Loves To Code
2. Gets Things Done
3. Is Rubbish At Table Footie
4. Continuously Refactors Code
5. Uses Design Patterns
6. Wants To Be a Creative
7. Writes Tests
8. Wears Black T-Shirt 
   
9. Has Hairy Arse
10. Leverages Existing Code
11. Collects Something
12. Focuses on Usability
13. Writes Maintainable Code
14. Reads 52 Books Per Year
15. Can Code in Any Language
16. Knows Basic Computer Science
17. Follows Alternative Fashion System

Here’s a reminder of what we’re up against.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE

The Swedish monitoring service Pingdom has published a couple of graphs of the Web’s growth from zero websites to 162 million. I’ve added my own commentary to the one below. This post is brilliantly, economically, unemotionally, frankly Swedish.

According to the latest numbers, there are more than 162 million websites on the internet today. We have come a long way since the first baby steps of the World Wide Web. Back in January of 1996 we had 100,000 websites, and if we go back to mid-1993 there were only a total of 130 websites. Not much need for Google in those days…

I was watching TV last night when the Berocca ad came onto the box.

It’s an ‘homage’ to the ‘Ok Go’ YouTube video (below) and involves some boring-looking generic ’suits’ going all oddball on some gym equipment that’s (inexplicably) been left in the street in response to someone nearby preparing a super-dose of the orange fizzy stuff. It’s a pale imitation of the original and caused me to reflect on how much ad creative is already effectively sourced (in terms of inspiration) from community and media sharing sites. Some traditional ad creatives you meet (by no means all of them) can be a little snooty about the wisdom of the crowds. However, just like the journalists who you sometimes hear slagging off social news and blogging sites only to find they routinely start a new assignment with a visit to Wikipedia, it seems that many are taking inspiration from folk-media.

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One (or two) of the things that characterise the Web 2.0’sphere is (a) an almost unnatural predisposition to omitting vowels and (b) delight in new stuff.It was only a matter of time before The Onion entered the fray with frrvrr.com, touting a social network service that introduces you to people you don’t know, based on shared purchase history and your browsing habits, medical records and CCJ’s.

As ever, The Onion is so close to the bone it hurts. I particularly like the description of how it works:

When you sign up, Frrvrr’s AvaTroll Accelerator™ will download itself onto your desktop and begin cataloguing your web history, or “webtory,” from the past eight months. Once it gathers all of your information, it creates a personalized avatar of you based on the snapshot of you gleaned from web usage and sites visited.

Hate to think what my avatar might look like. Could be worse than the one here…

How do you create a distinctive look and feel for a website that helps set it apart from the rest of the marketplace? Type, font, colour, image choice? Where does the inspiration come from for creating the best solution at the right time for the right client?

I recently found myself asking just that after finishing a project. Before I started designing I knew that one of my key tasks was to find a typographic style that would not only unify the site’s content but also make the site feel different from its well established competition.

Here’s an example of the typographic style we put together for the site: (I’ve used a background image and font colour a mile away from the content of the original site so as not to cloud the issue)

The idea for using type in this way — at an angle on a white background — seemingly came fully formed. However, when I step back, I’ve found it very intriguing to ask myself where the inspiration for this part of the design came from.
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