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2008 In Review -
An Experiment In Editorial Design
A few days ago I started writing about what I learned in 2008. The first draft was about typography, then I wrote a bit about music, followed by a draft about film (and video in general). With a few drafts in place, I wondered how I would design the articles. I really like how the current design iteration of Wolf’s Little Store turned out, but deep inside, there’s a certain desire to design the content, instead of dumping your blog post into a fixed template.
I believe more web designers should follow Jason Santa Maria’s example to design individual articles within a set of “rules”. Designing from scratch is always good fun, but defining a ruleset and working within that ruleset can lead to wondrous results. Some projects at work I design the website, design some examples, and at a certain I leave the website in the client’s hands. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always painful to see your design go awry. It’s part of the job, but it leaves you wondering whether there is even a place for art direction on the web.
That being said, please enjoy my personal review/best of 2008 in five categories: typography, music, film, reading and a personal selection of visual interestingness from the catalog. The overview of categories can be found here.
nice work
December 13th, 2008 at 8:01 ∞Hehe, I’m a big fan of JSM’s view on art direction on the web myself. I think there may even be room for art direction on the web, only not in the form of webdesign companies offering “art direction services” to, say P-magazine. I think the traditional form of of an art director within a company that could actually use art direction on their website (most obviously companies that deliver content) may even become reality one day. The market just needs to evolve a bit more… Wouldn’t it be beautiful to have web magazines evolve into seperatly designed HTML+CSS pages, in stead of a wacky conversion of the PDF’s into some kind of unfriendly flash-application? It would of course have to happen within a general framework, but magazines are designed that way too… Oh yes, the web has a lot to learn from print!
December 13th, 2008 at 11:23 ∞[...] gooien. Als ik even in de archieven duik vind ik Design the Content en het daaruit voortvloeiende experiment. Dat heeft geleid tot deze nieuwe layout, waarin ik meer richtingen uitkan om de inhoud van [...]
January 12th, 2009 at 1:11 ∞This is the coolest website and stories that i have ever read…its useful for me as im a lecturer and always motivate my students with these publised stories…thank you …and waiting for plenty more…
June 30th, 2010 at 11:54 ∞