Red Crown Studio is one of those sites that isn’t particularly stunning in some kind of artistic or conceptional fashion, but what it does instead is tie together a lot of really good design sensibilities into a rock solid design. The site’s design is clean, readable, and makes good use of large fonts (something that’s rarely done right). They’ve also done a great job of using simplistic icons throughout the site to mix up the content design throughout the site.

I really like it when people don’t use the same template for different sections of the site, and I think that’s probably one of the biggest reasons I enjoy this site so much. Looking through the different sections of the site, each section has a unique feel to it.

I do have a couple points of critique — notably, the news section. The last, and only piece of news was posted back in December (4+ months ago). At this point, I’d just remove the news section entirely. The second point is the monstrosity of a contact form. Big fields are nice and all, but not when it requires excessive scrolling.

I forget exactly when it was that I first ran into Viget, but when I did I was immediately impressed. Here’s an agency that’s been around for almost ten years — and they still get the web. Case in point: Viget Extend, part of the Viget Labs blogs. Viget Extend is all about the development team at Viget — they share tips, tricks, and code from internal projects.

Overall thoughts

Viget Extend is different than the other sites I’ve featured here for one reason: the site really does not pay great attention to detail. Instead, it relies on an excellent concept, and wonderful overall execution & branding to bring it home. I love the concept of the blog being underground (the roots, if you will), and the font used in the blog title and section titles is very organic, attributing to the site’s overall branding. The color selection is superb and not only fits the brand perfectly, but comes out remarkably readable as well.

Let us not forget that Viget Extend is one of five Viget blogs — all of which have equally impressive design concepts: Advance, Inspire, Engage and the Four Labs Blog wrapping things up. I’d also like to point how excellent the names of these blogs are: the action names are not only relevant, but are perfectly fitting for sites aimed to engage the web community.

Context

Concepting within context is something that I often struggle with. Creating something that looks pretty is not that difficult. Creating something that looks pretty and fits the context is extremely difficult. Extend’s concept of being underground fits perfectly within the context of the blog, and I’m very much impressed with how well it turned out. Not only is it really cool looking — but it’s memorable and meaningful.

Texture

I wanted to point out something Extend excels at: texture.

Texture is something very difficult to bring into a design, and Extend has done it very well. They’ve managed to bring in a lot of texture without making the design feel muddy, too photographic, or disoriented.

Improvements

That’s not to say that I don’t think Extend has room to improve.

1. The first thing I’d take a look at are the Javascript effects. Maybe I’ve become a perfectionist with effects, but I can’t stand having those jerky show/hides on blind effects like those shown in the Search/Category/Month/RSS sidebar (not accounting for padding within your effect).

2. Crazy inconsistent code highlighting. I love the style on the gems post, but not so much on the cURL post. Speaking of which, that extend on mouseover is just annoying. Sorry, it’s gotta go too.

3. One in the same. The entire site uses the same template. The archives pages. The single view pages. C’mon, let’s mix it up!

4. Comments are basically unstyled. I’m a whore for a good comment design, and Extend definitely disappointed in this area — it’s the kind of design that’s equivalent to a designer cop-out.

Every once in a while, someone creates a site that takes a new concept and re-applies it in a unique way that just works perfect. Welcome to the new Schematic. This site takes the zooming interface concept familiar to all iPhone owners and applies it to an agency site with Flash.

Zooming, tapping, throwing

Instead of the usual action button and scrollbar approach, this site uses the interface concepts found in the iPhone. You can click in the gray area and you will get a zoomed view where you see all the pages at once. From this view you can either click and hold to throw the interface around (like you would scroll on the iPhone) or click on a tile to zoom into it.

Site map and navigation in one

This zoomed out version is beautiful to me. Not only can you visually navigate the site from here, you can see the overall structure of the site and how pages relate to one another.

Zoomed-out version of the interface | Full View

Typography

You know any site with Helvetica Neue is going to score points in my book (I’m a total sucker for Neue). But this site does a very good job of combining multiple font sizes without feeling too inconsistent. It’s a good way to play with a limited canvas (fixed height per tile) and still get the content you want in view.

Flash done right

Once again this is a great example of Flash done right. You can even permalink to specific pages as you browse. Did I also mention that there’s a fully content-functional non-flash version of the site? Check out this link with flash disabled. Also note that if you have flash enabled — that link will forward you to the correct place. This is why Schematic does so well in search engines.

All in all, it showcases everything done “right” with Flash. It’s my new favorite example to show people who say hubris things like “Flash can’t rank on Google.”

Conclusion

I’d like to applaud the Schematic team for this beautiful piece of work. Well done gang, I love it!

I was shuffling through my ma.gnolia links for another site to feature and came along a site I stumbled upon a long time ago called ISO50 — a portfolio for Scott Hansen. I was once again blown away by the quality of work and deemed it necessary to write about it immediately.

The site is an all-flash site, but I think it works very well given the fact that it’s a fixed-height design. It also provides for the whole experience to be extremely smooth and flowing. I’m a big fan of choosing the right medium for the right job, and I think flash suites this site perfectly.

Style

The thing that hit me most about this site and the work contained is the definitive style Scott has developed for himself. I think the posters really start to define his style, and that transitions beautifully into other medium like T-Shirts. Not to mention I’m a sucker for that whole vintage-ish style.

Details

Even though this is a pretty simple site, Scott’s spent some time in minute details that really tie in the experience for me. For example: the squares on the left turn a different color after you’ve visited that item. Most people today don’t even use visited link styles: so it’s nice to see someone doing this still.

Color

The final point I’d like to showcase is the fact that his portfolio uses a color scheme. Most portfolios I see today use either a singular color or black and white for the design itself. This is understandable as each piece of work often has a different and potentially clashing color scheme. However, through the use of real-world textures and colors, I think Scott’s pulled of using a color scheme in a portfolio very well.

Nitpick

I have two very small nitpicks for this site. One, I’d like to be able to permalink to specific pieces of the portfolio, and two I really dislike sites that automatically play music in the background. I really think music needs to be an opt-in choice, not an opt-out choice.

Other than that, great site — and don’t forget to check out the ISO50 Store too!

When you think of vodka, what you think of? Crisp, Pure, Hip, and Sexy are words that come to mind for me. Absolut has done a magnificent job of this with their site Absolut.com. I’ve always loved alcohol sites: they serve very little purpose (mostly just drink recipes), and are all about living out the brand.

Depth

The first thing that struck me about this site is the amazing amount of depth in the design. With just the very slightest use of reflections and gradients, the whole site really pops. The use of a narrow field of focus also really makes the graphics pop.

Gorgeous Glasses

Beautiful.

Another thing that really popped out to me on this site is the gorgeous photography/rendering of the glasses on black. I’m not sure how many of you have tried photographing transparent objects on black, but it’s no easy task. The black backgrounds really scream sex, and the glasses are crisp beyond belief.

Navigation… ?

This is the one part of the site that really turned me off. The whole thing is setup as a rotunda of various mini-sites. You have a set amount of time at each mini-site before it moves on to the next one (or if you click something in detail, it stops the timer). It turned out being really confusing and frustrating.

I like the idea of the rotunda, and lots of mini-sites: but I’m not sure the timer was a good idea. It took me a while to figure out what it was doing. Also, the Forward/Back buttons of the timer get confusing with the back buttons within the content.

Nitpicks

The other thing that irked me about this site was the forced gargantuan popup that was spewn on the users screen. The design doesn’t really require it, and I think the design would be have been far better with the flash piece simply embedded into the main browser window.

Also: the blurry, dirty reflection on the splash page was downright nasty! Ack! Someone get to that, please.

Absolut Nasty

The Porchse USA website is truly a piece of art. It’s a car site — so it’s got the flash, and sex needed to sell a $70,000 car — but at the same time reflects the perfection and minute details engrained in the Porsche brand.

The quick javascript menus on the homepage let you explore a lot of content with little effort and fill up the vertical and horizontal space perfectly.

Mini sites

In my opinion, the real success of any high-end luxury item site comes from the microsites and how they fit into the main site. Porsche did a great job here with a lot of fun little widgets you can play with.

Nice comparison chart mini-site

New 911 Cabriolet mini-site

They’ve even got a nice little payment estimator that tells me I only need to scrounge up a measily $2,500 per month to own my 911 Turbo. Not too bad.

Markup

As if that weren’t enough, the site even validates as XHTML Strict! That’s quite an accomplishment for such a large site with so much dynamic content. Way to go guys!

If someone were to ask me for the ultimate example of a digital portfolio, I would point them to Dave Werner’s Okay Dave. This site represents all that is good and right in the world of interactive design, and packages it in an undeniably personal package of Dave’s personality.

Dave’s Portfolio is on the way

I remember back in… well I don’t remember exactly when, but it was a long time ago. About the time Flash 8 was first released — because I remember the flash video piece. It was undescribable, but from the second I watched it, I knew I was going to love this site.

The site that replaced that video is probably the best combination of motion, sound, and illustration I’ve seen to date. Every transition, every easing, every loading screen is just done to absolute perfection. Tie in some home-made movies, and absolutely amazing illustrations by Dave, and you have the ultimate piece of interactive art. This isn’t some templated design spewed forth in lazy HTML. This is a hand-sculpted piece of art done in Dave’s own image.

I need not mention that Dave’s work is stunning as well. He’s one of the most gifted designers I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad to see he’s doing well. It seems like Dave’s starting up a design studio up in San Francisco. I tell you — if there’s one designer I’d like to have on my team, it’s Dave. I can only imagine the great work Minor is going to put out in the near future.

Steve Smith’s Ordered List makes it to my Marks for several reasons. I’ve always thought that Steve’s domain was one of the best on the web. Even if his logo may be an unordered list, the spirit and idea behind it is wonderful.

I’ve been keeping track of Steve since the neon days of OL, and have loved each of the designs he’s put out. The current design is a great, deeply saturated dark site without falling into the contrast-trap so many dark sites fall into (his site has just the right amount of contrast, not too much, not too little).

My favorite part of this particular design is the comments. Steve’s site was probably the reason that Gravatars are now enabled around Warpspire — they’re just so damn sexy when used correctly.

Example comments from orderedlist.com

One last comment I’d like to make on OL is the great use of vertical balance. So often on the web we see an emphasis on so-called “grid design” — when the term designers mean is “column design.” Steve makes sure to not only balance out his site horizontally, but vertically as well. The homepage is a great example of this, with little unused space. This also allows Steve to use a larger font-size since he uses the rest of the space so economically.

One of my favorite designs throughout the years has been this original version of Joyent (see Local Screenshot for reference). I think it’s a shame they had to redesign in the manner they did — it’s really taken the site down a few levels in my opinion.

Nonetheless, this version that launched was a great design. The color pallete combined with the illustrated characters really made the design feel comfortable and approachable. Yet the strong vertical and horizontal lines gave the design a uniqueness not found elsewhere in the web.