Plain Is the New Black
There’s a new air of simplicity in the air in the design of blogs, the best, most elegant example being Gilbert Lee’s new, gorgeous Plainsimple.org. It’s a fantastic piece of work that I’ve spent a lot of time poring over.
The Beauty of Heaps
The new ShaunInman.com isn’t quite as aggressively minimalist, but it does something really wonderful that makes so much sense for a single person’s blog: throw everything together (in tumble log fashion) and imbue that heap with organic, rather than architected, meaning. Brilliant.
Intelligencer Design
Speaking of blogs, New York Magazine’s not-so-new-by-now blog, The Daily Intelligencer is nothing to sneeze at. Building blog brands inside parent brands isn’t easy — believe me, I know — but they’ve done a very nice job of it. Note the ingeniously informative Previous and Next buttons on the article level. They’re doing a lot of things right, over there.
Let’s Make a DealBook
Over at NYTimes.com, we launched a new version of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook blog. The original version was one of the first projects I tackled with the design team here — that was way, way, way back this spring — and now we’ve cleaned up a lot of the shortcomings that crept their way in as a result of how green a design director I was at the time. Check out the smooth scrolling transitions on the “More sections” pull-downs.
Drawing Is Sexy
The American Illustration 25 party will happen this coming Thu 09 Nov on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I started out my career as a wannabe illustrator but never made it. Recently, after spending a more time on the Illustrator scene here in New York, I’ve been surprised — shocked, really — to find out how freakin’ sexy this industry is. The illustration parties I’ve been to lately have been chock-full of hipsters right out of Paper Magazine. It’s insane. So if you’re planning on attending this Thursday, look sharp.
A New Friday Tradition?
Actually, that was really fun and relatively easy, especially for a Friday. Given how exhausted I am by the end of the week, I’ve always had a hard time to knocking out weblog posts, which often means at least a three-day radio silence (at least) before I post again on Monday. So maybe I’ll turn this Friday Free-for-All into a regular feature. If you haven’t left for the weekend already, let me know what you think.
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