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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The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) is launching a new navigation scheme. Now I know they have decided to redevelop the site piece, and so there will always be a few rough edges, but at this stage it is hard to see where they are going with this.

Here is the old system.

The site has always presented a very flat structure, bringing sub-channels, such as Film up to the top, instead of placing it below a large category, such as Culture. The plus side was that there were fewer clicks for the user to get to the content. It was just more direct. The user also did not have solve the problem inherent in any classification system, ‘where did they put that thing?’ The downside was the sheer number of items in the primary navigation - 26. A user would not be able to automatically recognize the shapes of the words, due to the scale and sheer number, meaning they would have to read each of them in turn. This increased the amount of time they spent trying to find what they were interested in, but also meant it was difficult for a new user to grasp at a glance what the site contained. Such a system is neither scaleable nor flexible. What happens when you have more content and more channels? It would have been interesting to see how the traffic stacked up, or didn’t.So why change it? I would imagine for the very reasons I have mentioned, scaleability and flexibility.So here’s the new system.

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Lots of friends, colleagues and clients have expressed bafflement at the lead story on the front page of New Media Age last week. NMA suggested very explicitly (but inaccurately) that Hearst is retreating from its web strategy. We’ve been working with Hearst on strategy and design for over a year now and we knew this wasn’t the case. As planned, Hearst is simply going to be folding some old print title websites into the women’s 35+ digital brand Allaboutyou.com, soon to go onto a new platform with complete redesign.

(And, by the way, we’re currently helping Hearst Digital implement the UK’s second manifestation of social media software Pluck - and it might be the first if we can get in ahead of The Guardian).

Meanwhile, we’ll leave Natmags/Hearst CEO Duncan Edwards to put the record straight. This is his letter to NMA, published this week:

“Your front page story ‘Hearst to shut down four websites in digital u-turn’ (NMA 28.02.08) is inaccurate and confused…
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I find it hard to imagine a scenario when it would be appropriate - other than in a totally ironic way - to use any of the templates provided at Template Central.

Honestly, the site is hilarious. There’s at least 20 7 minutes of laughter to be had.

Here are some choice examples:

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