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As designers we seem to have lost our courage, churning out identical brand ‘solutions’, posting Dribbble shots of the same regurgitated formula.
Perhaps it’s the lack of control on the web. Perhaps it’s the increasing need for an international outlook, and the consequential safety offered by Helvetica. Perhaps it’s the diminishing respect designers receive from clients whose nephew/cousin/neighbour/husband thinks that Arial is the best font for her new site.
Once in a while it’s great to remind ourselves just exactly why the 1930s were so glamorous, why the 1960s were the heyday of advertising, and just why americana tugs at the heartstrings like nothing else.
If you’re looking for inspiration, to escape the sterility of contemporary design, or are just looking to bathe your eyes in the effortless cool of yesteryear, check out the Tumblr blob typehunting.com by Jonathan Lawrence. A collection of old school lettering, logos and signs, it’s the perfect way to while away a lunch hour.
Here are some of my favorites:
Which of these lettering examples is your favorite? Do you think modern designs are as diverse? Let us know in the comments.
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Zuly Gonzalez and Beau Adkins used to work at the National Security Agency. Now they run a cybersecurity firm in Catonsville, helping companies defend against online threats.
They're the embodiment of why Maryland officials call the state the nation's "epicenter" of cybersecurity: big federal installations here that focus on cyber problems, and all the private-sector growth related to it.
It's no surprise then that much of the activity revolves around the government. But some groups and firms are trying to push the state's cybersecurity boundaries to grab more of the commercial market at a time of tighter federal budgets.
Light Point Security, the startup Gonzalez and Adkins founded, is one example.
"We've made a business decision to really focus on the commercial side first before going strong after the government — because we come from the government and we know what a hassle it is to get into the government," said Gonzalez, Light Point's chief operating officer. "It's got such a long sale cycle."
As criminal activity and warfare move online, protecting information, networks, intellectual property and thecritical infrastructure of everyday life — such as banking channels and power plant controls— is a high-stakes, high-value proposition. It's a sector that state officials have promoted for years, including with a new tax credit, because they want as many cyber jobs as possible to end up here.
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Recently I posted a tweet about the idea of pixel perfection and it struck a chord with a few people, so I thought I should elaborate:
Too many new web designers chase pixel perfection. You should do what’s practical, not what’s possible.
— Nick Pettit (@nickrp) August 6, 2013
Pixel perfection doesn’t have a technical definition, but it’s basically the idea of working so hard on a design that almost every pixel has been given some degree of consideration. The contrast of every border is sharp, the space between every content module is exceptionally proportional, and the weight of every font is just so; and admittedly it looks pretty great. On the web, a pixel perfectionist will strive for a ridiculously consistent experience across every device, every browser, and every screen resolution. They often take pride in their ability to deliver on this promise to their clients.
There’s a time and place for pixel perfection, and the web is not it.
In the fine art world, they say that a painting is never finished. Neither is a website. There’s always going to be something that you can do to make it better, even if that’s taking a design from 98% to 98.2%. If you carry this mentality through every last detail, you’re doing yourself and your stakeholders a disservice, because you’re spending a lot of time on things that don’t make a big impact.
I think the desire to tweak every detail comes from print media. Reprinting a large run is almost impossible, so it’s important to get everything right the first time. This is why major publications have lots of editors and people proofreading before they hit the press.
Things change constantly on the web, so if there’s a few small issues here and there, it’s very easy to roll out a quick update. Sure, first impressions count and you need some solid follow through after that, but don’t spend 90% of your time squeezing out the last 2% of beauty. Staying up until 3am fixing a weird padding bug in an older version of IE isn’t going to convert more customers, so get something out there and start finding the real problems. The beauty of the medium is that it’s easy to iterate.
Drawing on the comparison between print and web once more, I think the physical nature of print makes it more difficult to experiment, especially in fine art where the processes are more labor intensive. The cost of experimenting on the web is almost zero, so you should try a lot of things and see what works.
Experimenting is how you grow as a designer. By trying out lots of different things and exploring the broadest possibilities, you’ll rapidly figure out where to focus your time. You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t, what you’re good at, and what you need to improve. Sometimes you’ll even stumble upon something that nobody has explored before, which is pretty fun. This is a big reason why I’ve been using CodePen lately: There doesn’t need to be an immediate practical application and context for your ideas.
For example, I made this CSS filmstrip (below) because it was an idea that popped into my head and it seemed like a fun way to spend an hour. I’m not totally thrilled with the way it turned out and it probably has a lot of cross-browser issues, but that’s not the point of experiments like this. If I decide to use it on a production website, I can worry about all of those things and work on them. More importantly, if I decide to create a similar experiment, I’ll have all the experience I gained from this one.
See the Pen Film Strip by Nick Pettit (@nickpettit) on CodePen
If you’re making things all the time, you’ll become faster and better. Focusing hard on one thing will give you tunnel vision and can make it difficult to see the big picture. By moving rapidly from one idea to the next, you’ll start to find efficiencies and patterns that can decrease the amount of time you spend on each project. I pause to mention this, because increasing your speed is a lynchpin of your value as a web professional. If you’re billing per project, you can work on more of them, and if you’re billing hourly, you can increase your hourly rate because you get more done in less time.
A website is never done, so learn how to put down the paint brush and move on. Everything is temporary.
The post Don’t Be a Pixel Perfectionist appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
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WebRTC, an open standard for real-time communication between web browsers, is a game-changing technology that’s projected to reach one billion devices by the end of 2013.
This emerging web technology is so popular right now that the recent WebRTC Expo had to expand twice to be able to accommodate what would eventually be over 700 attendees.
While there are as many challenges as there are opportunities surrounding the success of the communication-enabled web browser, the WebRTC standard has already secured a strong foothold.
Web developers should be taking notice.
For those of you unfamiliar with WebRTC, I’ll provide you with a quick, high-level introduction.
WebRTC is an open-source project that seamlessly enables real-time communication (RTC) in the backbone of modern web browsers.
This means web developers can now utilize voice, video, and peer-to-peer connectivity via simple JavaScript APIs, with no additional plugins or installs required.
WebRTC’s website
Led by Google, and released in Google Chrome version 23, the web technology has since been adopted by Mozilla and Opera, bringing it closer to its declared purpose, which is "to help build a strong RTC platform that works across multiple web browsers, across multiple platforms."
Why is WebRTC important, and why should web developers be paying attention?
Real-time communication is not a new concept, and proprietary closed-source services like Skype and Apple’s FaceTime are already household names.
However, the interactions that existing RTC applications have facilitated for years are only a glimpse of what’s to come.
We are on the verge of a merger between voice, video, and data — unified, open standard communications within the browser — and it’s going to be disruptive.
Web developers should strive to learn about WebRTC because, where there is disruption in technology, there is opportunity for those of us at the forefront.
Until recently, real-time communication services were impeded by development and distribution challenges that were prohibitive to innovation.
For example, developers fluent in proprietary communication technologies (think VoIP) could be hard to find, and thus expensive.
Furthermore, once an application was developed, getting it in the hands of the end-user required them to download and install software or plugins, hindering distribution.
Things have changed.
Now, any web developer can build communication-enabled web apps using (relatively) simple JavaScript APIs, with no installs required for the user (as long as they’re using a modern, WebRTC-enabled web browser).
Suddenly, small businesses and new entrepreneurs can compete in a communication industry once reserved only for corporations with millions of dollars in capital in the bank.
WebRTC could revolutionize, for example, the way a small e-commerce website owner communicates with her online shoppers, or the way members of a web community like Reddit or Quora interact with one another.
All of these new imaginations will bring forth new web services, innovative Internet business models, and will impact the way people interact with the Web and everyone on it.
Consider the business opportunities that WebRTC is opening up; Dialogic Inc. recently released the results of their WebRTC survey. The survey was administered to 169 key executives in the service provider and application development industries.
86.9% of the respondents indicated that WebRTC is significant in their product roadmaps.
Interestingly, the survey found that most respondents predict the education industry (36%) will be the vertical market most likely to benefit from WebRTC, followed by adult entertainment (17%), online gaming (14%), healthcare (13%), financial services (11%), and, finally, hospitality (9%).
Examples of online videogames utilizing WebRTC can already be found. For example, Google’s Cubeslam, which uses WebRTC for audio and video communication with the people you’re playing with, as well as to keep your game in sync, is a simple demonstration of how WebRTC can one day revolutionize online gaming.
There are also plenty of companies out there focused on sales, customer service, and collaboration applications, which to me seem among the most natural directions for the technology to progress.
Here are some examples of Internet companies already focusing on WebRTC:
It isn’t difficult to imagine a world in which you click on a "Contact Us" link on a website and are then greeted with a representative on video asking how they can help out.
Imagine that a user was performing their online banking and runs into an issue; with WebRTC, they could share their screen with one of the bank’s support agents and be walked-through in real-time towards a solution to their issue.
Looking a support agent in the eye over your computer might seem unnerving to many consumers at first, but it might become the norm in the near future, if WebRTC takes off.
As a web developer, you already know that you should always have your eye towards the future in order to keep your talents sharp and relevant.
Though the success of the standard is far from certain, it’s a good bet that WebRTC will continue to gain traction in the web development community.
The communication-enabled web browser is here to stay, and I look forward to seeing what new apps and companies are born from people like you.
Check out the following resources for more information about WebRTC.
Max McChesney is the founder of Expat Assistants and the former Finance Director at Teledini, where he first started following and learning about WebRTC. Originally from Atlanta, GA, he now lives in Patagonia, Argentina. You can connect with Max via Google+, LinkedIn, or Twitter @maxmcchesney.
The post WebRTC: An Opportunity for Entrepreneurial Web Developers appeared first on Six Revisions.
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A viral app is the highest achievement on iTunes and Google Play. It’s an app that customers eagerly share across the Internet, through social networks, email, chat and word of mouth. It’s like rocket fuel, and it is the best case scenario for an app developer because word of mouth is far more powerful than any paid advertising. Ad clutter is everywhere, and people just ignore it.
No one trusts ads, and they cost too much for developers anyway. But humans have shared stories since we’ve been using rocks as tools. We’re naturally built for viral sharing.
But getting your app to spread faster than celebrity gossip takes a lot more than bolting on some Twitter and Facebook buttons. It requires strategizing a world of social interaction inside your app.
Virality is about interacting with people and enticing them to participate. Virality isn’t a marketing strategy that can be executed once you launch. It has to be thought through and built into your app from the beginning.
To succeed, your app must pass these four tests:
First and foremost, your app has to have a gem — something valuable to share. That something could be a photo, a great wine, a turn-based game, an article, a playlist or a five-mile run. It’s your customer’s little pride and joy, and it has to be shareable.
When users share their little gem, they’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling that keeps them checking into the app over and over. The more they check into the app, the more praise and delight they will get from it. And when the app’s audience grows, the value just keeps going up.
To figure out whether your app has any gems, ask yourself these few questions:
The typical viral flow starts when the user creates something and then shares it, leading friends to discover the gem and download the app so that they can get in on the action:
The typical viral flow strategy of apps.
With this approach, the most obvious way to offer social interaction in your app is to add buttons so that users can share their creations (or actions) on Twitter, Facebook, email and SMS. For example, the Faces app enables users to design silly faces of friends that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and email.
Social interaction in the Faces app has a typical viral flow, because it only lets users share images.
Unfortunately, this approach misses a lot of opportunities, because only some of the users will share, and only a small percentage of their friends will actually see what they’ve shared, let alone click on the link and download the app themselves.
To go truly viral, you need to engage your audience. Every time they use your app should build on the previous experience, so that they get more value out of your app. And as the audience grows, that value should just go up.
Think of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. No one sees the true value of these apps the first time they use them. But the more you put into Twitter, the more you get out of it.
You don’t have to dig too deep into viral principles before you come across something called the viral coefficient. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries defines it as “how many new customers will use the product as a consequence of each new customer who signs up.” He claims that a viral coefficient greater than 1 will lead to exponential growth, and a viral coefficient less than 1 will lead to hardly any growth at all. I won’t get into the details, but the math looks like this:
viral coefficient = (average number of users invited by each active user who invites someone) × (proportion of invited users who actually join or become active) × (proportion of active users who invite others)
One important element missing from this formula is the time it takes for a customer to try the app and share it with their friends. The key is to get your users to invite their friends in the shortest amount of time possible. How do you do that?
The quick and dirty method is to just tap into their address book and spam their friends. But then you’d be abusing your customers rather than caring for them, and it will backfire in the end. Instead, try the five principles outlined below. (Most of the examples shown are iOS apps, but the principles apply to all platforms.)
The best apps appear so effortless that the design fades into the background, making the task at hand surprisingly easy. This is “flow,” and it has nothing to do with processes or charts. It’s about being completely absorbed in doing something you love and not being distracted by confusing or burdensome steps. The user loses a sense of time and self and becomes completely immersed. It’s why you can’t stop playing Minecraft and why your friend just spent three hours on Pinterest.
To create flow in your app, you’ll need to remove all obstacles and doubts that users might have about using your app and sharing it with friends. Let’s go through a few examples of how your app can do that.
Offer one-click sign-in via Facebook or Twitter, rather than with a dedicated user name and password. This not only gets users registered quickly, but lets you tap into important data to grow the network.
500px offers one-click sign-in via Facebook or Twitter.
Rockmelt offers one-click sign-in via Facebook, Twitter or Google.
Snapguide offers one-click sign-in via Facebook or Twitter.
Display profile pictures of friends during authentication to increase their audience as well as yours.
Foursquare displays profile pictures of the user’s friends during authentication.
Vine displays profile pictures of the user’s friends during authentication.
Motivate users on the first screen to get started by clearly showing how they can grow their network and start sharing.
The first screen of Foursquare offers a clear path for users to get started.
The first screen of Hipvite (now defunct) encourages users to get started.
The first screen of Toast encourages users to get started.
Prioritize what is on the screen, and show top actions right in view. Users need to know what they can do.
SoundCloud puts the top action right in front of you.
Wrappit has top actions right in view.
Snapguide has top actions right on hand.
Enable users to easily post to multiple social platforms with just one tap. Always make sharing part of the creation process, and let users post to multiple websites at once. One big advantage of the Android framework over iOS is that it allows apps to share anything with virtually any other app (as long as that other app can receive the “share” intent). This opens up all sorts of interesting viral potential.
Krop Circle lets users post to Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all at once.
Glmps lets users post to several websites with just one tap.
Rexly lets users post to Twitter or Facebook or send by email, all in one action.
If you want to encourage a certain behavior, reward it. This basic psychological tactic has been used on us since we were toddlers, and it will motivate your customers to share your app with friends. Give them a gift for each friend they get to use your app.
Best of all, when someone gives a gift, the recipient naturally has the urge to give one in return.
Inviting friends and connecting with others should be a part of their daily usage. Daniel Tenner, founder of Swombat, suggests that the number of users who each of your active users invites will determine your success. Therefore, inviting friends should be a core process in your app, rather than an afterthought. Experiment with ways to encourage customers to invite friends at different points in the app.
POP’s prototyping app rewards users for signing up early and telling friends.
Reward the friend, too. Rewarding customers for their referrals can make them feel guilty that they are making money off of their friends. The best way around that problem is to also reward the friends who receive their invitations. Voila! Now your customers feel like they’re doing their friends a favor. Everyone wins.
Rewards could be:
To create a sense of urgency in the invitation, offer a limited-time promotion. This can get people out of their holding pattern by giving them an incentive to take action before the offer expires. It costs you nothing and could be just the push your customers need to convince their friends to download the app.
Sneak in secret rewards and surprise people, then watch as the app goes viral. Clear unlocks hidden themes when you follow some of the app’s developers on Twitter or if you complete a task at 2:00 am (I discovered that one the hard way). These hidden gifts create a storm on Twitter each time a new one is found, giving the app all sorts of wonderful free publicity.
Clear rewards users with free themes based on other apps installed on their device and based on when they use them.
Each time a new theme is discovered, a Twitter storm happens, making the Clear app more viral.
Some apps even pay people to use them. Not that you’ll need to go to such length, but apps like Shopkick, GymPact and Viggle let users earn real cash and rewards by using them.
With Shopkick, users earn rewards, or “kicks,” simply by walking into participating stores and checking in via the app. They can earn more kicks by scanning items and purchasing them. As a reward, users get a first look at new items in the store, and they can use their kicks to unlock gift cards and products.
Users earn points on Shopkick by going into certain stores. (Image: Hongkiat)
GymPact entices users — non-exercisers, in fact — to go to the gym, work out and earn cash. Users start by making a pact with their friends, promising to work out at the gym a certain number of days, and they set the stakes of how much they’ll pay if they skip a day. Those who go to the gym claim cash from those who don’t!
GymPact rewards people for going to the gym. (Image: Hongkiat)
Viggle is for TV junkies. It practically pays users just to watch the tube. Users earn points by checking into any TV show on the air. Users just tap the “Check-in” button, and their device listens to the TV, earning them points. More points are earned by answering trivia questions. The more points accumulated, the bigger the prizes, which vary from Starbucks gift cards to MacBook Airs.
Viggle rewards users for watching TV.
Because virality and privacy are polar opposites, transparency is a must. Be up front about what your app is sharing, and give users full control over whether to share. If users don’t trust the app or suddenly see content appear on social networks that they don’t want to be shared, they’ll stop using your app or, worse, leave negative reviews on iTunes.
Be transparent about what is being shared. The social fitness app Teemo tells users what will be shared before they even log into the app. Sonar (iTunes link) reminds users that it won’t post to their accounts unless explicitly told to.
This nice little message in Teemo gives users confidence in the app.
Sonar reminds users of what will be shared.
Always allow users to control what is shared. This can easily be done by including a settings screen with toggles for controlling the sharing options, like in Pinterest’s app.
The settings screen in Pinterest lets users turn off publishing to their Facebook timeline.
The more people use your app, the longer you’ll stick around. The longer you stick around, the more that customers and onlookers will say good things about you, spreading word of mouth and increasing your profits. So, think about people downloading your app as a springboard to achieving more, rather than as the finish line.
Send users useful notifications that motivate them to return. Don’t wait for them to start using your app. Keep sending them useful messages, as well as showing them tips to encourage them to use your app. This should be a part of your core features.
Also, keep sending friendly reminders and rewards to invite more friends, but be careful not to send out notifications that are worthless and annoying. That’s called spamming. Give users control over what notifications they receive and how they receive them, as We Heart Pics does.
The settings screen in We Heart Pics lets users turn off any notifications.
Create challenges in which users can partake. When Diamond Dash introduced weekly tournaments, users went ballistic. When a player beats a friend’s score, the victory is posted to the winner’s Facebook timeline. When they reach a new level, win a medal or unlock a feature, Diamond Dash announces it to their entire Facebook network. This dynamic has created a friendly competition, pulling users back to the game a stunning 18.5 million times in just one month.
Let users create exclusive groups and invite others to participate, as in the case of a team of supporters in a weight loss or training app.
Promote users with exceptional content or activities. Target power users who have the most connections — these are the mavens who will create the best content. Reward them with freebies and promote them to be managers so that they can set up special groups, create high-end invitations and keep the conversations going. And set them as an example by suggesting that others follow them.
Viddy suggests following the most popular users, helping those users grow their audience.
Let users promote each other. This will help you discover trendsetters. These people might not have the largest following, but they are using your app in new and exciting ways.
Your app should be of benefit to users, even without the social aspect. This isn’t a requirement, but it does make your chances of going viral much higher. It gives people a chance to kick the tires first. Most people won’t invite others to join the app unless they already know it’s good. To find that out, they have to road test it a few times first.
Your app must have something meaningful for the user to do right away, without inviting friends. When your user base increases, the value of the app’s main function increases as well.
You can’t make your app viral as an afterthought, like pixie dust that magically gives you a ton of users. It has to be designed into the app’s core functionality and features.
You can do these things to improve your app’s chances of going viral:
Unlike the Snuggie Blanket, there is no one-size-fits-all viral strategy; some apps simply won’t benefit from viral tactics. While adding viral features to your app might increase its virality, to really make your app spread, you’ll need to start with a clever idea and a good design. Combined with a fantastic viral strategy, these will surely make your app go Gangnam style.
(cp al ea)
© Carla White for Smashing Magazine, 2013.
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When you think of minimalism in design, whitespace usually comes to mind. When the designer is strips a piece down to its bare essentials, and opts for less ornamentation and more core, one tends to see the amount of whitespace rise and become a prominent element in the design.
But what happens when they take it in a slightly different direction? What happens when they strip down and only focus on the basic necessary elements, but they use them so boldly, so expansively, that there is little whitespace left behind?
The answer is, this showcase of not-so-minimal, minimalist website designs. Below we have collected a sample of sites that have shied away from the calls of added ornamentation, but who have not shied away from going big! Filling the whitespace with what few essential elements they have kept. Tour the sites below and see which designs speak to you.
Frank Digital definitely goes minimal in their design, but with such an active, full image sprawling across the background, it has the feel of a much more constricted design, even though there is plenty of room for the elements to ‘breathe’.
Marcs Design is another where the full image background, leaves the viewer feeling less like they are wandering in the open whitespace, and more like they are contained in a finite environ. The elements included work well together to set up this space and use it to its full visual extent.
Clapperboarding is an example of using minimalist principles in theory, but as the large navigational element stands to showcase, the elements can be used with such broad strokes as to make the design’s minimalist quality feel pushed to its limits.
Engagent is one of the first sites on the showcase to really keep a large amount of the whitespace open, but as it gradiates into the main collage of illustrative content, the eyes are drawn away from the whitespace effectively focusing and holding the user’s attention to the central content box.
Mighty Radio does a mighty fine job of giving the site design the look of a scaled down to basics construction, but with such bold, active elements stretched across the visual canvas that the whitespace feels almost gone completely. The contrast of the light typographic navigation elements really pops in this visually ramped up layout.
Different Perspective takes the showcase back to the large image background with plenty of fill and visual contrast to keep the eyes moving throughout the design. The focused header and navigation really do their part to carry the minimalist feel for the design which wonderfully walks this line.
Mohiuddin Parekh flawlessly dances between full on minimalist feel and tone, and the somewhat visually joined and focused tightness that makes the whitespace not feel as open as it could. This sort of visual unity isn’t always the easiest to achieve with such varied texture and style, but here it happens with complete mastery.
Boy-Coy takes the showcase back into the more traditional areas of minimalism, allowing expansive amounts of whitespace within the design. However, what brings it into this context with ease, is the powerful deep red background color that pours across the whitespace almost challenging the viewer visually, speaking boldly to the passion behind the brand.
Colour Rich does leave its elements plenty of room to stretch out, but with the large header filled with a variety of fonts and stylishly complimentary images the design slides into this territory. Following that are the bold headlines that take command of the user’s eyes and lead them down through the content keeping them from swimming through the whitespace.
Postable‘s textured background that fills the whitespace, along with the alternating colors across the top of the page, gives the site a cohesive feel adding a finite and limited feel. This paper-eque design calls to mind envelopes and their confined space, releasing the eyes to focus strictly on the content presented, and not giving them cause to wander.
Kick My Habits once again uses a bold and daring dark color to fill the whitespace working with the design’s overall tone and centered focus. Though the color filled illustrative design ‘foot’er does attract attention, standing in stark contrast to the deep purple background, the small text paragraph intro does well holding its own and keeping the focus on the mission of the site.
RIT Online (Rochester Institute of Technology) is another example of diving into a large cross-screen image below the header which gives the site less of a minimal feel, even though its ornamentation and superfluous elements are scaled way back. In the header area they once again employ light typographical navigation to add the sleek, open feel above the aforementioned image.
12 Spokes has a fantastic design whose ever-so-softly pink stained background full of whitespace compliments the hot pink highlights throughout the site pitch perfectly. Visually creating a unity that grabs hold of the user’s focus and guides them through the content with intentional precision. Keeping the user’s attention completely off of the whitespace surrounding them.
Top Web Hosting is another site that while providing plenty of whitespace that feels visually open and lets the other elements breath, still uses what bare elements they employ very bold and very big. With large typography sections that spread across the design with such reach, coupled with and seemingly pressing against soft, but sizeable images, the site feels very tight while still being very loose.
Master Plunger dives back into the use of a full background image that fills the space left open by the sparse use of other elements to build the site. The active image, adding more character and story to the product featured, gives more power to the voice the design is speaking to the users through.
Resumonk splits up the design into distinct sections, using large bold elements to divide and conquer the various amounts of whitespace it allows to remain. The subtle texture in the background further works to limit the feel of open whitespace, even with its repetitive nature.
Laura Berman Fortgang, while playing with a bit of ornamentation to bring the various elements within the design to life, the site’s vast amount of whitespace stands as another example of the color filling the background completing the visual cohesiveness of the design. The light blue hues, cut with the hard reds add so much tone and depth to the site.
Tweed Barbers boldly launches into the viewers focus, with large imagery and typography expanding across the header. Leaving the whitespace feeling less than unoccupied and open, even though the faint image does more to complete the tone than to detract from the mission and purpose driving the brand behind it.
Secretkey is another finely crafted example of the deep, dark colors filling the background giving the whitespace much more purpose as part of the design than it normally has in a minimalist piece. While here it is used to actually mimic space, the whitespace is employed with light illustrative accents to texture the site and give the bolder elements more to contrast with.
Are these sites truly minimal? Which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.
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