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Sara - Fleetwood Mac
I had forgotten this song and I have no idea what happened and it came back to the stage of my mind. I guess this is music anyway. The voice of Stevie Nicks is a crystal made to shutter crystals. Listen to Sara a Saturday morning while the rain falls silently outside. You 'll love it.
Over the hill - Monika
You may not know Monika if you live outside Greece. Monica is an extremely talented young performer and music writer and such a song, Over the hill, is a song many musicians would wish to write one day. Do search for it in YouTube and you 'll see why.
I believe she should go abroad and try not to belong here in Greece. She is too good for us.
Ultramarine - Michael Brook
Ultramarine is a storm, is a rhythm that makes your heart stop beating for a moment. I discovered this instrumental song in the Heat soundtrack (De Niro, Pacino - remember?) and since then there is not any single fall I don't stick to it. It requires a decent sound system because you won't want to miss a beat.
Wild horses - Mazzy Star
OK, I love Hope Sandoval's voice. Especially during falls. Wild horses, yes the song of Rolling Stones, performed by Mazzy Star is such a warm and beautiful song that you feel the band playing only for you. Even the darkest moments can be a bit sweeter because of Wild Horses.
If Obama becomes the next president of the USA, I think his website will have played a major part for his success. Obviously, he and his partners treat their website the way they should: as the most solid and valid vehicle to promote their ideas to all people around the globe, 24/7/365. This website is their virtual home, which is neat, tidy and welcomes a visitor and a future fan of their party.
Aesthetically, barackobama.com stands at higher level of a typical american website but at the same time the major colors of it are 100% american. However, it is simple and all the blue colors of it don’t make it look crowded or dull.
Thanks to the clear organization of the content, it becomes useful to a US voter. Furthermore, visitors can find a number of ways to promote their favorite candidate by following simple steps e.g. buying a t-shirt. I like this approach, it is another way to see how a website can bring money.
Why design makes the difference
Good design is not magic. And good websites are not being made by magicians. This website works so well because of some design rules have been followed. The rules are:
The excellent typography
The right use of negative spacing
An old good quote says: “many people can choose a good font but only a few will tae typography”. barackobama.com treats typography so well.
I won’t try to explain the details. I only want to mention that the previously shown text has been perfectly designed. Despite the fact there is no image in there it welcomes a visitor and it invites him to read it.
Similarly, the designers of this website know how to treat the negative (or white) space. Each text flows, there are clear messages and there is no rush to put all the content above the fold. Each banner has been wisely designed and each call to action is clear and intuitive.
Combining such characteristics with the beautiful icons and the rest of the colors, the website becomes engaging, beautiful and easy to be used.
barackobama.com is great because all the design issues mentioned above serve the real king, which is of corse the specific content of the website. Text, images, videos and generally each content item has been placed at the right place. The same design would be of no use for an. e.g. website for world travelers.
A designer votes…
If a was a US resident and if my vote was determined only by what I see in a browser I would vote for Obama.
I am not claiming that baracobama.com is perfect. If you take a look at the code behind it you will notice a bunch of mistakes. All I am trying to say is that design can make the difference and websites for political parties rarely look so well.
I used to see falls as a chance to start new things. Now I don’t. I don’t know why. Maybe because I couldn’t really start doing new things or because now things don’t have a real starting point.
Anyway, a fall is always a fall and this is enough to make us feel fresh and awaken.
Such people could be designers, developers, marketers, bloggers, tutors etc. We aim to create and publish helpful content for them and make their Web life easier and more fruitful. We want to involve readers in the project, so we wholeheartedly encourage visitors to send us their articles and see them being published.
CSS3 is being developed and supported by a dream team of designers and developers and I must say I feel lucky I work with these people.
As I implied before, CSS3 is a project for Greek people only, so if it all sounds Greek to you, you ‘re right. It is Greek. For the rest of you dear readers I can only say, do visit us and play with us.
First of all I want to mention that this post is not a exhausting test. I just used these browsers for a while and detected some issues as a typical (or should I say novice?) user.
(And of course I don’t forget both browsers are in a beta version)
Chrome just works
Sounds natural.
How about Internet Explorer? Not exactly. The first time I tried to run IE8 I saw the following message, despite the fact I never installed anything to any prior version of the browser.
If you don’t disable the add-on you ‘ll never you use your browser.
Chrome is smart
That doesn’t mean IE8 is stupid. Not at all. I am just trying to say that Chrome makes our life easier.
My cache is empty, my history clear and I start typing the URL of A List Apart. As you can see, Chrome detects the website and makes some suggestions. I can visit the site or look for the term I begun to type.
(Click to enlarge)
IE8 doesn’t get it.
The position of the Refresh button
In all browsers the Refresh button is placed near or next to the Back and Next buttons. It sounds normal.
Chrome follows the convention which is good, because we are actually talking about usability. On the other hand, IE8 keeps the button next to the address bar, a “feature” introduced by the previous version of the browser. So, users have to move their mouse (and their hand) a relatively long distance in case they want to refresh the page. Not good.
One tab
Chrome changes the way we perceive tabs. This is the first time that when a user closes the only tab she closes the browser as well.
Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t let you close the last tab. Similar approach has been detected in all browsers so far.
According to Chrome when a user wants to close the last tab, she doesn’t need the browser anymore. Too simplistic? I think not. I like it this way.
Compatibility view
This a new feature of IE8. This button aims to help users view a website correctly even if it has been developed according old standards or techniques which are not supported anymore.
There are many things to consider here. The first thing is that a typical user doesn’t care about the button. She only wants to see the website.
The second one is that it is very difficult to see whether the button has been pushed or not.
Finally, I ‘d like to mention the button doesn’t work the way it should. I tried to test it in a bunch of websites which I know they have been properly developed and the compatibility view of IE8 just didn’t work the way it promised. I can think of a million reasons about the existence of this button but I ‘ll try not to talk about it.
Chrome doesn’t care for such details.
Browsers and system resources
Last but not least, I need to say that Chrome requires less memory. IE8 should perform better as a child of Microsoft.
So Google Chrome (beta) seems to be a better browser than Internet Explorer 8 (beta). But I didn’t write all this post to say just that. I think that one of my posts about Internet Explorer 7 still counts.
Above all, IE8’s most important mission is to kill the version 6 of the browser family. The sooner the better.
We are talking about a slab serif family and as Lester says, it took him 3 years and 3000 hours of work. It comes in 40 families 32.668 (!) characters.
It is a great, an outstanding font and it remains slick in each of its versions.
Soho Regular
This is the regular version. See the random words and notice how beautiful it is.
Text
Soho isn’t the best choice when it comes to long text, mostly because no slab serif font is suitable for such purposes. However, in small paragraphs, titles and subtitles, it is one of the best possible choices.
Soho Condensed Thin
Look at this version. Each single character is great. I particularly like the “r”, “v”, and “y”.
Numbers & Ligatures
When it comes to numbers, it is difficult to find great one in most slab serif fonts. Not here. Great old style fonts. Simple yet readable and clear ligatures. What more can you ask for?
Stylistic sets
Each differentiation from the original version looks even better. The designer focused on the details and created characters you might use in a series of different situations.
Lester says about his font:
In designing Soho I set myself the rather lofty aspiration of designing the “ultimate” slab serif. I want it to look fundamentally 21st century. I wanted it to be supremely versatile; a weight, width and “tone of voice” to meet the requirements of even the most discerning of designers.
I think he made it, didn’t he?
The only problem (which is actually a big one) with Soho is its price. The full package costs more than €1500, but I don’t think it is too much, because such fonts aim to cover the needs of magazines, newspapers etc. The rest of us who work for the Web we can sit back and enjoy it. From a distance of course.
Some of the areas of the website are still empty, but I will soon take care of them, so please be patient. There are also some minor bugs, which they should definitely be ignored as well.
porcupine colors begun as a blog but it soon grew up. It never stopped being my virtual home and that’s why I love it so much. At the same time, porcupine colors is a design studio. We are a small but effective team and we aim to make a living by designing and developing websites and Web applications. This website should cover both things.
We are pretty happy because the greek website is getting popular and it remained both hospital and an agency website. We ‘d love to see this version becoming the same.
So here it is dear readers. I ‘d be very happy if you like it.
P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to the new RSS Feed. Just click on the guy with the newspaper up and left on the page. That’s all.
So I am going to turn off my digital life for a while and disconnect from all the things that keep me busy.
Looking back I must confess I neglected this blog once or twice and I apologize for this dear readers. You see, working as a web designer or to be more specific running a tiny design studio sucked all my time. The fact that most of my clients are greek made my focus on the greek version of my website.
Quite unexpectedly business went great. The greek version of porcupine colors gained the attention of some amazing companies. One project lead to another. This pushed me keeping it updated all the time.
Some links for your pleasure
Before I turn off my engines I ‘d like to share with you some very interesting links I gathered all this time. So here they are:
Fuck style
Designing for the Web is not styling things. It is more like architecture than decoration. The most influential article I have read this year.
iPhone meets Lego
Legos still amaze me. iPhone is… anyway, we all know what an iPhone is. Have a look at these photos where one world meets the other.
The animal noise page
Hilarious page where you can read how people generate words according to what comes from an animal’s mouth.
Similarly, the designers of this website know how to treat the negative (or white) space. Each text flows, there are clear messages and there is no rush to put all the content above the fold. Each banner has been wisely designed and each call to action is clear and intuitive.
