What I learned from Jeff Veen and Hay Net
We design websites for people. Well at least that’s who I thought we were suppose to be designing for. Anyway, when I browse the web I see a bunch of cluttered up web pages and unwelcoming copy text. Somewhere along the road the user has been cast aside for personal agendas, corporate politics, intrusive marketing tactics or some other reason. A lot of sites try and fill every inch of the page with as much information as they can, creating a confusing message that leaves the user unsure of what they need to do or where they need to go.
Where did simplicity go? Jeff Veen provided a brilliant example of good web design by showing us a picture of the old Hay Net website. He said people come to Hay Net for 2 reasons, they either have hay or need hay. So what does Hay Net do? They provide their users with 2 options of have hay or need hay. Brilliant. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we are designing web sites.
I now present you with Hay Net.
* Update: It’s a shame the new Hay Net site decided to clutter things up.
Inspiring words from Jason Santa Maria
At An Event Apart in New Orleans, Jason Santa Maria gave an inspiring talk on why Good Design Ain’t Easy. Here a few quotes from my notes of his presentation.
“The message comes first, it’s not about making everything look nice”
I’m so glad to hear someone say this. As a web designer our primary focus should be on creating a design that clearly conveys the message of the site, not on creating a graphical masterpiece that looks nice. Of course it never hurts to have very functional web site that looks good. Jason goes on to say,
“It’s not fair to compare print to the web. They are different animals”
When we design a website we need to break free from the print design mindset and realize that we are designing for the web. The web has different constraints and different objectives then print does. Also when we evaluate a web sites we need to evaluate them like we would different animals. Good web design is different then good print design.
Sneak Peak of the new Virb
I have always been a fan of the Virb Inc designers. They have a clean, simplistic style that is rarely found on high traffic web sites. For the longest time they have been redesigning the inner and outer parts of Virb. They recently posted some screen shots of their new design and it looks good. Actually, everything these guys design looks good. The new site should be a breath of fresh air from mybook and facespace.
