Blog

While the social media arena has seen its share of contenders, MySpace remains the most heavily trafficked site on the web, and easily the largest in its class. Therefore it’s no wonder when the networking giant makes a change, people notice.

Today MySpace launched improvements to its design and architecture. And now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, our office is proud to announce our collaboration with San Francisco-based Adaptive Path for the launch of the new designs. Our collaborative efforts began six months ago with AP as they lead the charge with effective interaction solutions. Sequence stepped in to create visual designs for the global navigation, the splash page and the profile editor—all of which you can see at myspace.com.

Stay tuned as we comment further on our personal and professional experiences during the MySpace redesign.

When the web started to become a business and marketing tool that needed to look professional and eventually have a ‘wow’ factor, graphic designers were quick to respond. Their core skills around typography, color, layout and overall branding mixed with the underlying foundation of communication seemed to be the best fit. This fit hasn’t changed – but the designers have.

Designers originally used their traditional skills to create beautiful sites and over time learned things such as optimizing a photo at 72dpi and how to use HTML fonts in a way that creates just as much of a visual interest as graphic fonts. But over time there has been an evolution of the role that designers have played within the interactive world. This shift has required designers to continue focusing on the same core skills they always have, but to combine them with new problem solving skills that involve branding, technology, business drivers, usability, content strategy, marketing and information or interaction design.

How has this evolution affected their role? Designers are pushing to create things that are innovative and account for more than just the ‘look and feel’ as they have in the past. Designers are also starting to get tired of using “Lorem Ipsum” and want to create something meaningful that includes real copy. Similar to an advertising approach, the need for rich engaging copy to match visuals is becoming a necessary part of designing. Research and usability have also played a huge role in this evolution – learning online behaviors such as people don’t read or if they do they scan a page and have particular “hot spots”. Technologies like AJAX and Flash are probably the most obvious factor contributing to this evolution, forcing designers to think about motion and “states” rather than pages and click-throughs. Technology has played an instrumental part in evolving designers to think beyond static pages and information. The most significant driver are the users themselves. They are expecting more which means designers need to deliver more.

Ultimately designers are being asked to help solve the complexities between strategy, content, design, information and technology, and this process is creating a new breed of interactive graphic designers.

Just back from 10 days of recharging my batteries in Buenos Aires – eating, shopping, snapping pictures, and of course, taking in a lot of great architecture, art, and design.

Part 1: Idarg — Argentinean Identity

On our way to Olsen for drinks, Lea and I came across Nobrand, a shop that is an extension of a project by designers Hernán Berdichevsky and Gustavo Stecher of imagenHB. The project, Idarg, is a book and a line of clothing and other products, stemming from a series of bold, graphic icons. These icons were designed “with the objective of rethinking and presenting Argentina from a different angle, through the analysis of our identity and of design from a repertoire of icons that synthesize and communicate the national self.”

Idarg is an interesting project that will also be presented by AIGA as an exhibition in New York this summer.

Part 2: Filete Porteño

Filete Porteño is a traditional decorative painting style that emerged in the late 19th century in Buenos Aires, adorning trucks, buses, buildings, signs, and eventually even the finest restaurants and popular products. It is typified by delicate, calligraphic linework, ornamental flourishes, flowers, and leaves.

And look how easy it is.

We bought two books on Filete Porteño during our stay, both by Alfredo Genovese, master fileteado. We also picked up a book on the city buses, and another on stenciling, which seems to be the most prevalent form of graffiti in the city. Here’s some pictures:

Part 3: Best. Soap. Ever.

Smells great too. From Sabater HNOS.

It’s been said that lorem ipsum (aka Greek text) is a designer’s best friend. After all, it is downright handy to drop in as a placeholder text until final content is ready. As a design tool, there’s nothing better when you need to see how much space 500 words fills up on a page. The abundance of lorem ipsum generators online makes it a breeze, too. However, that’s where the value stops.

Lorem ipsum can lead to unforeseen headaches and more work down the road. Consider this:

• The length of content suggested by lorem ipsum can be misleading or poorly influence the actual copy.
• Some clients simply cannot evaluate a design without realistic content, yet will approve a design anyway. Once real content is dropped in, designers could spend more time making revisions to the copy than Hearst did with his castle.
• Problems that arise when dropping in actual copy tend to surface at last minute, which creates stress and sub-standard page layouts.
• The approved design may look great, but the content is secondary - and it shows.
• Lorem ipsum can drive copywriters crazy because it “boxes” them in.

Not all people have a problem with lorem ipsum, but odds are most clients would prefer to see actual or realistic copy. It makes pages and designs more meaningful, and leads to more productive design reviews.

If content isn’t ready yet, designers can try a few things:

1. Sit with a copywriter and make rough text on the fly; this kind of collaboration is good for teams and can produce a better product.
2. Just write something. Is that pen a little rusty? Give it a shot anyway; just try to convey the intended meaning of the actual text.
3. If all else fails, search for similar text online, then replace it with other text later if needed.

The best plan is for designers to play an active role in creating content once the project is well defined; rough content is better than none at all, and gives designers the opportunity to add more value to the team. In the short term, it may be tempting to use lorem ipsum, but it often leads to more work in the end. Maybe it’s time we vote our typographic friend off the island.

Linden Lab (the creator of the hugely popular virtual world Second Life) has been a long-time friend and client of ours, and we were more than happy to help them with a new identity for their latest brand: the Second Life Grid. The Grid is a development platform for educators, businesses and organizations to create their own shared virtual worlds within the Second Life universe. Since we’d previously designed the brand identities for both Linden Lab and Second Life, we had a good starting point for the new logo, but needed it to also stand on its own. See the new identity and read all about the Second Life Grid at www.secondlifegrid.net.