Obituary & Death Clock of web trend

Obituary & Death Clock of web trend

For piles-of-years I've worked on tweaking the web with quite a few design techniques. One unique thing I've witnessed time & again.

Whenever the prototype was presented to decision making levels, I always heard a sort of comment "I think the trend is like that...don't you think it should've been like that?" Is that a comment, suggestion or opinion. If it's the opinion, I appreciate it. But, where do these people get to know about so-called trend ?! why do people think, the delivery is not in tandem with the latest trend ? Where's this trend evolving ? Is it in the forwarded mail ? Is it in the coffee-lounge ? Is it in the catchy ads of TV ? Is it in the cool-sites-showcase-directory ? I dunno.

Ah. who sets the trend anyways? who redefines the fashion? who sets the standpoint for design, atleast in web & presentation space when a huge metamorphosis is gulping the slick design arena of design on web. Thank god ! my reincarnation in RIA & AA's* haven't pissed me off so-far, as I've to adhere to Mxml & W3C guidelines...

I could recollect the reply of Hrithik Roshan when he was asked in one of the interview: "What's your fashion trend & what's ur take on the current fashion trend ?" He replied: " Come on ! what you wear is fashion. Is there anybody sitting on the arch defining fashion everyday ? Atleast I dunno. Do you ?"

Factually, that's the beauty of vogue & trend. Design is a awesome blend of research, experience, creativity, finishing touch & output. It's all about delivering what looks best on shelf. I think, if it doesn't evokes a question, remark, curiosity, feedback, critics, appreciation or a mild pat -it's not at all a design or trend. It should tickle ones imagination & creative flair. So, I do appreciate those kinda nagging comments which comes in any form !

Saw this lovely article which criss-crosses, the soon death of some obnoxious web trends at ping magazine. It's quite interesting & hilarious !

* Rich internet applications & Accessiblity Assessment

"Joga Bonito"

"Joga Bonito"

The worldcup fever rage is on everywhere & it's all about soccer a.k.a football now. Everyday I'm receiving so many wonderful clippings, posters, pin-ups of soccer stars from my soccer loving frenz. I'm hooked to ESPN, star-sports to get the wonderful glimpse of yester years football matches, mesmerizing goals, thrilling dribblings, match-statistics etc.,

Whilst shuttling everyday, I see a 'joga bonito' massive blow-up of Nike ad near Innovative multiplex Bangalore. Was wondering what's this all about ? assumed it may be the name of some Brazilian player or so. Googling took me to neo marketing funda of Nike.

Joga Bonito means "play [it] beautifully" in Portuguese -it's a fictional association created for a Nike ad campaign. Footballers featured in the TV adverts include Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Adriano, & lot more. Nike launched Joga Bonito campaign in India too...with the WorldCup fast approaching, Nike’s Joga Bonito 5 commercials are about the celebration of pure soccer bliss & Joy, Team, Honour, Skill and Heart -the values of Beautiful football and the themes of these commercials.

Chekout this beautiful Joga_bonito video here.

Adidas is not left behind in the commercials-war. its about two kids picking the team is just cool. I love it when the smaller kid picks Beckenbaur and the chubby kid laughs. But sure enough here comes Beckenbaur. Then Zidan whispers some thing in the chubby kid’s ear, and check it out for yourself. Itz fun.

Somehow Pepsi's Christina Aguilera ad din impress me much !

Day & night at the same time...

Day & night at the same time...

Have u seen day and night at the same time ?

The crew on board of the Columbia has taken a picture of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting.The photograph was taken during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The Half of the picture is in night & the other half is day! The bright dots on the darketst part're the cities lights.

The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Amsterdam, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon,and Madrid.

The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further South, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde islands.

Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

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[Via:Pavan]

Reverse designing

Reverse designing

I believe there's a tinge of creativity silently living inside everybody. Often, a creative brain craves for some sort of change in what they see & touch. It may be for a color, contrast, a tactical & logical order, a simplicity in anything we come in contact with. It may be home, a cubicle workspace, car dashboard, sleeping room, pavements, flats we live in. I still remember few girly colleagues of my yester firms decorating their cubicles with a stuffy toys, lovely cards, tiny dolls, god-artifacts, article pin-ups, schedule printouts etc..etc.They just want some change, some nice uplifted look & feel in the space they live. Change is what they expect & it's true change is constant !

Often I get into creative swing when I see a weakly designed spaces, malls, houses, buildings, pavements, staircases, corners, curves, lifts, pale products, odd patch of gardens while roaming around the city. Lot of ideas pops out of my mind. Given a chance how I would have designed that ? How I would've arranged, colorized, restructured, and made it more-userfriendly ?

I think it's common with everybody & approach is what makes a difference with creative thinking. More or less it depends on the creative flair and flexibility of ones imagination. The design-friction is quite common with developers & designers in Software arena. Designers have a counter opinion flag to rise on developers for their lack of designing & visualising capabilities. specially in application, presentation design space. Developers focus more on functionality, rarely on usable & effective visual presentation! May be intra brainstorming, KT sessions might help ease this friction.

This very much applies to my must-not-miss-out vibrant news livewire Slashdot. It's dynamic, it's rapid. But designers resist to agree with the sucking visual design of the site. I've been a fortunate witness of lacking design of the site over the timeline.

Now, it's quite an interesting wide open contest of redesigning Slashdot. Many designers had a hands on refurbishing it in prototype. If time permits, I might mud my hands doing it...

Slashdot Redesign Part III