Cameron Yule

Inspiration from the D&AD Awards 08

While the graphic design community may be wondering what happened at this years D&AD awards, the Website category is alive and kicking and managed to serve a mix of good, great and even one sensational project to inspire us new media types.

HBO Voyeur, implemented by Big Spaceship and amazingly only a nomination, is breathtaking in scale and may well prove to be an indication of the future of television.

Essentially a small-scale television series contained within a single website, the intricate, interlinked story–line takes place before your eyes as you interact by controlling both the viewpoint and timeline. Bonus points for having Clint Mansell for the soundtrack!

UNIQLOCK is a microsite/viral for Japanese clothing company Uniqlo which manages to make the viewer want to see more of their range by using cute, dancing, models in the videos which are displayed every few seconds.

A simple concept directed and executed so well it’s almost mesmerising. Deserved yellow pencil winner for Projector.

Orange Unlimited has been around for a little while now, but it’s still impressive. A ‘never ending’ scrolling page of brightly coloured interactive illustrations, the technical achievements (how smooth the scrolling action is, for example) are almost as notable as the design. Received a nomination for Poke.

Lastly, what roundup of amazing Flash work would be complete without a little something from North Kingdom. Their brilliant Get the Glass game for the California Milk Processor Board received both a nomination for the Website category and also the highly–prestigious and rarely awarded black pencil for Animation & Motion Graphics.

One thing I found interesting was that the map used isn’t a 3D render as you may expect – it’s a highly detailed model they had built especially for this project. Amazing level of detail and effort involved!

Designer vs Web Designer

I read an article recently on the Blue Flavor blog, Who Owns JavaScript?, which was debating where the responsibility for coding JavaScript lies within an agency. The two options they gave were “designer” or “developer” and here’s their descriptions of the two roles;

…“designers” do the client-side things (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, etc.), and “developers” do the server-side things (PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, .NET, etc.). 

After I’d recovered from the shock of imagining a designer being asked to code some nice object–oriented JavaScript or some heavy–duty AS3, I realised they were in fact talking about a web designer. An important distinction for sure.

That in itself still raises further questions for me though. In my experience from the three agencies I’ve worked at so far (one purely digital, one digital/print and now print/digital), a simplified process of building a web site runs as such;

1. Designer gets spec for website, beings planning.
2. Designer produces initial comps for client.
3. Designer incorporates client feedback into design (repeat as required).
4. Designer passes final designs to Developer.
5. Developer looks at final designs, beings planning (may feedback to Designer).
6. Developer creates HTML.
7. Developer creates CSS (may occur simultaneously with 6).
8. Developer creates JS/Flash.
9. Developer cross-browser/QA tests.

Even taking into consideration that this is a very simplified list and one intended to make a point, the dividing line there should be immediately obvious; the designer designs, the developer does the build.

Is it just me, or does this way of working make sense as opposed to blurring the boundaries?

All I want to be…

Haiku by John Maeda. Arrangement by Public Design Centre.