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A new work made by me is on air. It is the blog of the Greek journalist Nikos Moshovos. The name of the blog is Typologos.
Nikos was very happy from our cooperation for his previous version of his website. When we started talking about a new and fresh design I thought we could create something good once again. His activity would be covered well by a blog. So we first took this decision in seconds and then we looked for the details.
Information Design
The particular blog didn’t include anything too complicated. Except for the huge content which was dispersed into many categories. (What is now uploaded is less than the 1/3 of his whole work).
What we both wanted was to make the life of his visitors easy. Which means that any article should be 2 or 3 clicks away. So, the sidebar was to hold all the categories.
Layout & Artwork
My first approach was something which would remind a newspaper, since Nikos is a journalist. However he wanted something less dull. He wanted vivid colors which would remind each visitor that this website is Typologos, nothing else. The color combo is now bold but not tiring.
Apart from this, I used both serif (for the heading) and sans-serif (for the rest of the text) typography just I like to do. The layout is not something extraordinary mostly because we both wanted to keep things simple. The CSS was written especially for this blog of course.
I am glad Nikos is happy from the final result. I know he has great plans which include this website and I wish him the best.
You can find Typologos in the work area of this website.
I listen to Porcupine Tree since 1997, the era of Signify. Their new CD, Fear of a Blank Planet, was the most difficult for me to grasp it and realize what I was listening to. It took me more than 10 times to play it again and again and still I am not very sure I get the details.
First of all I have to say I believe that these guys are remarkable. After Deadwing, their previous work, a contract with a new label, more audience and more money they don’t take the easy way. On the contrary, they make difficult to listen to music and acid lyrics.
This work has to do with a single thing: how kids grow up in modern cities. Total boredom, pills and drugs, guns, shopping therapy and a long term denial. All these are reflected in their music too. Rage and intension most of the times, chill and void some others.
The music
Porcupine Tree keep changing their music and keep producing new music. How many do the same? This group is a team, not some musicians who play their part and that’s all. None of their work is a habit and most of all this one.
Fear of a Blank Planet is harsh. Guitars sound harder than ever before, sometimes you think you are hearing thrash metal music. But you ‘ve got to notice why it sounds like this. If you do this, you ‘ll understand and you ‘ll want more of it.
What hasn’t been changed is their style and melodies which can be found even at the hardest riffs. R. Barbieri, the man behind the keyboards, does his magic again. He can make a song sound chilly or warm an unsurpassed way.
Wilson keeps experimenting with his voice and that’s very interesting especially during some “sensitive” parts of songs. I do believe he is one of the most important musicians of his era. End of story.
The lyrics
What’s inside a teenager who is growing up in New York, London or Athens? How does he treat school, his parents or his everyday life? These lyrics are not smooth.
X-box is a god to me
A finger on the switch
My mother is a bitch
My father gave up ever trying to talk to me
The boredom of having tasted everything and there is nothing new, the dull of TV, the elusiveness, the longing of escaping. It doesn’t matter how, you just want to go away.
Let’s sleep together right now
Relieve the pressure somehow
Switch off the future right now
Let’s leave forever
You go the mall. You get bored. You steal. You get bored. You watch porno and you get bored. You find a gun. You take pills to change your routine and in the end you get bored.
We’re lost in the mall, shuffling through the stores like zombies
Well what is the point?
What can money buy?
My hands on a gun and I find the range, God tempt me
Well what did you say?
Think I’m passing out
Two words for the end
Fear of Blank Planet is a difficult and amazing CD. You first realize it is not easy and then you discover its beauty. Of course this is not music for everyone. It doesn’t matter.
I am glad Porcupine Tree are not mainstream. I am glad they change and they become better. You see, there is this creeping music lowness which engulf us day by day. I am glad these guys are still alive and kicking and their music makes our days and nights better.
I have no talent at sketching. It is impossible for me to sketch anything which resembles a real thing, unless diagrams. I ‘ve learned to create diagrams during my studies in Physics at the University. However, in Web design it is useful (and sometimes relieving) to sketch your next project on paper. Of course it is also much easier than making e.g. a human silhouette.
Some months ago I bought I notebook (partly affected by Khoi Vinh) and I said to myself “I ‘ll make something in the end - no matter how useless am I”. In the end I was surprised. Not because I discovered a hidden ability but because I saw that sketching can help you a lot sometimes:
You create a mockup faster and you focus on usage. It is easy to fix a scenario by beginning from a single word.
To make mistakes is good because you can’t delete them. It is easy to come back later and see why you shouldn’t make the same mistakes twice.
Mockups quite oddly are very friendly to other people
A mockup is a future guide for something completely different
Your notebook is a field of experiments. The other day I started from the notion “tag”, I tried to make a metaphor on the paper and I ended up with something very original and interesting.
You can carry your notebook practically everywhere
A notebook is much less tiring for your eyes than a screen
I am sure there are plenty of reasons why sketching is good for Web design. What were written here are the impressions of a newbie.
The next photos show my notebook as well as a mockup of a project I ‘ve been developing for some time now.
I admit it. When someone proposes Friday’s for dinner or lunch I accept with enthusiasm. It is too American for us, Greeks, but I like it.
One way of thinking is: “I would go anywhere to eat because I am hungry”. Another is: “I am going to eat somewhere where I like to be”. There are dozens ways of thinking in between. In Friday’s eating is just a part of the whole thing. The rest of it is hard to resist.
Going there is an experience
Friday’s is more than a restaurant, it is an experience. It gives you a certain mood. Items which carry a specific American tradition are on the walls. We are talking about accepted symbols such as a baseball cap or an electric guitar. Not the American flag of course.
Music is also accepted by the vast majority of the customers. You would never listen to “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen in Friday’s but you would listen to “Sultans of swing” by Dire Straits. We are happy in this place and we want you to be happy too.
Waiters with their budges and their hats are polite and clean. They seem so happy to carry drinks or to go through to each customer’s nonsense.
Seats, tables, lights, bars and generally everything that a restaurant should include seem to follow the rhythm. Everything there is waiting for you. Menus are well designed, photos are clear and each dish is described in a way that you covet everything in the list.
I still have said nothing about the food and I won’t.
Usability and business culture
The way Friday’s work is a lesson for anyone who runs business. Because everything there is usable. As a customer you ‘ll never have to worry if your drink is out or whether you ‘ll find soap at the men’s room. The cozy exaggerations of the restaurant end in decoration or in the way staff is dressed. The glasses are big and the plates white. Cutlery are special but you can easily use them. The seats are benches but huge and soft ones.
The high levels of Friday’s usability is a characteristic I would like to provide in my work. Do you think it is irrelevant? Not at all. Everything is organized. If one would criticize Friday’s it would have been for the style not the services.
When you go to the restaurant you know that it is not cheap. Then why would you go back? Certainly not only for the taste of the food. You go for what mentioned above as well. I also like the trio: berger-french fries-beer, I don’t have any problem with it. Neither do I want to go Friday’s very often.
What I do want is my work to be at Friday’s level not at burger-french fries-beer level. Who wouldn’t?
e-shop.gr is the most known electronic shop in Greece. Many friends use it and they are happy of the services it provides. However, I never used it.
Therefore I can’t judge its services, the security of transactions, the number and availability of products etc. I am sure the store is good since it has many loyal customers. As a designer I am very disappointed of what I see at this page so I don’t bother to follow a link.
Homepage is confusing
This is the homepage of the website. I can’t focus on anything. If something seems interesting is the blue banner. Unfortunately this is an advertisement so when I follow this link I am transferred somewhere else.
Another thing with the homepage is the alignment of the elements. Is there an alignment on the left? No. On the center of the page? No. Your eye is wandering but it is wasting.
If the designer of this layout wanted us to focus on the first product (the black computer) then he fails. I wish I could measure the number of the actual clicks on the product. I am sure this number is fewer than the intended one.
Respectively images of each product come with some text (center aligned) underneath them. With one exception: the text on the right of the first product (written with bold) is left aligned. This text aims to provide details about the product but it looks like it has been written for something else because it stays too far from the image.
Colors
The yellow, the black and the blue (for the links) is a good combination. The problem is the gray. I counted 9 different grays on the page! 9!
It looks like the designer of the website each time he needed to use a color he used a different gray. This is bad design.
Icons and labels
What ‘s happening here guys? These icons come from Windows 98 OS (or Windows 2000). There hundreds free icons to be used instead. By seeing these icons you tend to believe that this is an obsolete website.
Labels are written in Greek and English. This is a website only for Greeks. Why one should know English to save a page for example?
Typography
There are certain problems. The designer uses bold fonts for nearly everything!
Links are difficult to be discovered. There are blue links (gray on rollover), dark gray links (black on rollover), black links (gray on rollover) and black links (which remain black on rollover). You have to guess what is a link and what is simple text.
HTML
I didn’t expect to see such a website based on divs and CSS. Don’t ask why.
However, I never imagined I would see marginwidth or marginheight code. this is not irrelevant to the final result of course.
Conclusion
e-shop.gr is a good website, there is no question about that. There are many customers of it who would claim so. But I am afraid that the people behind it didn’t treat design things as markup, information design, typography etc. the way they should. It’s a pity for such an important website.
What we both wanted was to make the life of his visitors easy. Which means that any article should be 2 or 3 clicks away. So, the sidebar was to hold all the categories.
I listen to 
.
I admit it. When someone proposes Friday’s for dinner or lunch I accept with enthusiasm. It is too American for us, Greeks, but I like it.
