Paul Randall » websites

The antidote to over-stimulation

Paul — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:00:30 +0000

Whilst reading http://contentsmagazine.com/articles/space-to-breathe/, the quote antidote to overwhelm and over-stimulation struck a cord with me. Quite a lot of home pages try to do everything, but by doing this they overwhelm the visitor. The absolute antithesis of that has to be the new WorkFu site, and to say I was impressed with their new homepage was an understatement:

I literally said ‘fuck’ out loud. workfu.com is lovely. LOVE-ER-LY

— Paul Randall (@paulrandall) February 29, 2012

I was blown away. I’d just never seen anything like it on a homepage recently.

Again, I think this comes back to confidence in design. Knowing that you’ll be able to convey the desired message in such a simple way without additional clutter

When this sort of design pays off, it does it in a big way. I really made a connection and felt compelled to engage.

Being able to succinctly explain what your product or service is makes such a difference in our fast-paced lifestyle.

Forget the elevator pitch, we need to work on a eight-second pitch for the web.

You can’t force people to use your product

Paul — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:39:38 +0000

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.

I think this ex-Googler has it spot on: You can’t force people to use your stuff. How many of us have a Google account? And how many times did we use Google Wave, or Google+?

Giving Google some credit, they saw Google Wave was a complete flop and scrapped it; something Kevin Rose’s company Milk did today with Oink. Having only launched 3 months ago, they have decided to shut the service down for good.

Scrapping things takes guts (and a ton of money) but ultimately admitting you are wrong and moving on is a better thing to do then leaving it to turn into a ghost town.

Everything that can be invented has been invented

Paul — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:45:26 +0000

“Everything that can be invented has been invented”

Quote anecdotally misattributed to Charles H. Duell, Commisioner, US Patent Office, 1899

Apparantly a misquote, sometimes the web can feel like this at times. You work on a idea you have just thought of, only to find it already exists.

Whilst working on something for http://10k.aneventapart.com/ – an event where you can submit a little web app which is no larger than 10k, I did a bit of googling to find the exact same thing has already been built.

Colour Palette Creator

After seeing Andy Clarke’s post ages ago about creating colour palettes, I thought it would be a great little tool to have – and the 10k event was the perfect opportunity to make it. But I was beaten to it: http://slayeroffice.com/tools/color_palette/

And again…

A while ago I had the idea of a neverending book idea, where everyone can add a sentence to continue the book. Yep, already been done.

The same goes for website designs. I saw a blog design with the identical look to one of the rejected mockups for this blog. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t take mine further than the PSD stage; good job too.

Why am complaining?

Most of my ‘ideas’ are just that – they never get past a quick doodle in the Moleskine. I should be grateful these people are building my ideas!

Back to the drawing board

So once again, I am thinking of things to make for the event. Lets build it quick before anyone else does!

On ‘Magpie Designers’

Paul — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:36:21 +0000

In an ever-changing web world, new technologies are constantly evolving. With the emergence of alternative font display systems, new CSS effects and the increased uptake on modern browsers, designers are using these new techniques more and more. Add this to a sprinkling of current design ‘trends’ such as the noise filter, and pixel perfect line details and it makes for some very similar looking websites.

It is inevitable then that these new and shiny capabilities will catch a web designer’s eye (especially after years of browser constraints) but are we turning our eagerness to use the latest styling techniques into a world of monotonous and similar designs?

A Screenshot Showing Some Modern Design Trends

It’s worth saying that there are some great sites being produced at the minute. Something I hope to write about in a future post.

I’m a Magpie Designer Too!

This post isn’t without a sense of irony, i’m all too well aware of as this site features many of the effects i’m talking about. I’m clearly a magpie designer too!

In a years time things will probably calm down when “the next thing” arrives, whatever it is.

Condensed Type #3

Paul — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:41:28 +0000

Welcome to the third Condensed Type; A weekly roundup of typographic links from my dedicated typography account @typographylinks. Enjoy!

Inspiration

Mercedes Benz Typographic Animation
Flickr Pool of Vintage Type
Use Of Effective Typography In Logo Design
Typography Mania #13 by Abduzeedo
Vibrant Wall Typography/Graffiti from Ripo Visuals
The Best Custom Letters of 2009

Web Typography

Typechart: Preview and compare web typography. Retrieve the CSS
Revised Font Stacks
Fontspring: Hundreds of web-ready fonts at your fingertips

Fonts

Today Sans H EF Extra Light
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface by Michael Bierut
Haäfe & Haph presents a selection of custom ampersands

I am hoping to give Typography Links a dedicated website soon, where you will be able to subscribe via RSS and submit your own links. Details in the coming weeks.

Why Comment?

Paul — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:49:10 +0000

A subject that has created a bit of discussion recently has been to do with comments. With Tim Van Damme removing them completely with the latest design of maxvoltar.com and Sam Brown blogging about the subject just last week I thought I’d reply to a question I was asked last week.

Leaving comments to me just shows my appreciation to the writer. It’s not for linking reasons, or to get my name out there, but I feel it’s a way of thanking the writer or expressing an opinion I have on the subject. Most of us write blog posts in our spare time, and I know personally that I enjoy it when someone leaves a comment. It shows that it interested them, or provoked a response; good or bad. I find that the narrative of comments almost always positively extends the actual article, and if it doesn’t then it usually leads to a healthy debate.

We all read blog posts, possibly hundreds in a week, but how many do you actually comment on? Next time take a minute to leave a comment.

URL ABC

Paul — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:04:45 +0000

A better-late-than-never post on a game played by Tim Van Damme, Elliot Jay Stocks and Sam Brown (i’m sure there are plenty more people playing the game!).

Simply go to your browser, type in the letters A-Z and blog the results. So here are mine:

But rather than just knock them up in a UL like some, and being that kind of person I had to make an ordered list and use capitalised letters. The CSS to do that is:

.alphabet-list{list-style:upper-alpha}

So play along and leave your results as a comment!