Calvin Blog Carl
Calvin Ross Carl • Artist and Designer • Portland, OR
I write about #art, #design, and what is happening in my #studio.
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Don’t avoid a project’s technical requirements. Embrace them. Enjoy the focus they provide and the ideas they inspire.
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The Reason Why New Myspace Will Fail
This text is from Myspace’s “Library” page (which I suppose is the page to find all the songs, friends, and whatever you like) when you login for the first time:
You don’t have any connections. Check out the Discover page to connect to people and content that inspires you
Here is what the page looks like:
Let’s list the problems:
- What the hell is a “connection”?
- Why would I go to the “Discover” page? What am I “discovering”? “Connections”? My friends?
- When you say “connect with people”, who does it mean? Am I connecting with my friends, bands, celebrities, and/or strangers?
- And no human uses the word “content”. What does content mean? News, books, movies, music, what?!
- Even worse, below that text there is a little boxes of album covers telling me to “connect with a song”. Does “connect” mean I am going to just “connect” with a piece of music? I have no clue.
Overall, there is an incredible lack of clarity about just what Myspace is. And since this can’t even be explained clearly in their introductory tutorial text, I imagine the company is just as clueless with this new thing they made.
And honestly, I am a little disappointed. I sign up for every single new social networking site (hell, I even have a Microsoft Socl account), because you never know what will be the great next thing.
Once upon a time we asked people why they would go to Facebook, when we already all have Myspace. But Facebook came along with a clearer focus we understood, and we all waved bye bye to Myspace. And Myspace still hasn’t learned their lesson.
So remember everybody, copywriting is interface design. And every word helps influence the way visitors flow through your website. Something tells me after looking at the new Myspace most visitors are just going to flow right back to Facebook.
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I just launched my new design portfolio. The one I have had up for the last couple years was barely more than a placeholder. The whole site is completely responsive, so it will work on your big desktop display or on your wee little iPhone (or your Android or Windows phone if you are crazy enough to own one of those things).
Check out the site, and let me know if you find anything busted in Netscape Navigator on your 486 running Windows 3.1.
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OregonLive, the Case of the Bad Font
Some months ago, OregonLive (the online arm of Portland’s Oregonian newspaper) unveiled a new design. Overall, the design is decent enough and feels pretty good for a local news site. However, since day one, there has been one thing that has driven me mad, and that thing is the use of the font Prelo Slab.
As far as slab serif fonts go, Prelo Slab is fairly nice. However, it only works well as a large display type face. Unfortunately, it is unreadable and hard to scan at smaller sizes, which you see the OregonLive site use everywhere.
Being an avid, and occasionally rabid, news consumer, I realize the importance of making news sites scannable and easing the strain on a reader’s eyes. Prelo Slab makes the reader struggle much to hard to simply scan a headline. And once you have a list of headlines, it becomes just a flat out bad design and user experience choice.
So here is my suggestion for OregonLive.
Here is how the site currently stands:
Prelo Slab is so heavy your eye fills in all the counter spaces with black which makes it hard for your eye to distinguish individual letters.
My suggestion is to simply replace the usage of Prelo Slab with Helvetica (Arial as a fallback) on all article headlines. It is fine to use Prelo Slab for section headlines, such as where it says “Oregon Local News” and “Latest Stories”. The font size on the section headlines is large enough to gain the benefits of Prelo Slab as a nice display font.
Here is what my suggestion looks like:
So OregonLive, this is all I ask of you. Simply change your content H2 and H3 styles to a font that will encourage your readers to scan and read even more. I will be happier, and many readers who may not be completely aware of why will be happier too.
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Microsoft Points phased out in favor of cash →
Finally. I always hate using Microsoft Points whenever I download a game from Xbox Live. Nearly every time you buy a game, it actually requires the user to make two purchasing decisions. One for the points to buy the game, then the purchase of the game. Everyone of those decisions is another chance for the user to decide not to continue with the purchase. It’s just bad design and a completely unnecessary burden on the user. Good riddance.
UPDATE: Well, it looks like I lied. It sounds like Microsoft Points are staying for Xbox 360. :(
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I just changed up the design of my website, so there is no more clicking through thumbnails just to see artwork!
It’s frustrating when landing on an artist’s website, only to be confronted with a wall of thumbnails requiring you to make a choice. It’s always a nearly impossible choice to make, because you don’t know anything about the artist yet, so how do you choose?
You can even switch between the scrolling view and the thumbnail view by clicking on Feed or Index in the nav. Thanks Cargo Collective for making this all so easy.
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Just when I thought Rdio couldn’t look any better! Rdio just went through a big redesign in the last few months, so I’m really surprised to see yet another (even better) huge redesign. This really separates it from the iTunes-like look it had before and Spotify still has.
Also, a new app for Rdio called Setlist just came out, which finds what bands from your Rdio collection are playing soon near you. It’s a simple, does one thing well kind of app. Well worth those big 99 cents.
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I just sent this email to my co-workers, about how great the new Folindux website is, and I figured I might as well post the email here:
So I have never found a bookmarking app, like Delicious or Pinboard, that I thought really worked for me. I am a visual guy, and a long list of text links is a surefire way to never inspire me to visit the site again.
In comes Folindux (silly name, but great and simple site).
It’s made by the same super smart guy who made the belated Recurse App.
It’s simple. You use a bookmarklet. Folindux saves a huge screenshot of the website, and then you can really quickly add tags to it. And ta-da, you are done.
At first I was skeptical, but I have found myself returning to it multiple times, just to find that one special little website I found a month ago, where I can remember it’s great design, but I can’t remember its damn URL.
Anyway, I just thought some of you folks might find it helpful. It’s limited to 10 bookmarks/month on the free account, or you can pay $4/month for unlimited. Oddly enough, I haven’t hit the 10/month limit, but I’m still thinking about plunking down 4 bucks, just to help it keep going.
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The Tools in a Designer’s Toolbox
Originally posted on Waggener Edstrom’s blogs
In my last post, I discussed how design is purely a tool. So I thought it was only fitting I should discuss some of the other tools us designers use.
One of the most exciting aspects of working in the world of web design is the fact any two designers can use vastly different tools to create the same end result. We tend to somewhat jokingly chuckle every time someone says, “What program do you use? Because I have the Dreamweavers at home too.” When the reality is that our team uses a huge variety of tools and apps to get the job done by whatever means necessary. These are some of the tools in the toolbox that our team regularly returns too:
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We just launched a new website for the Shared Learning Collaborative! I had the privilege of designing this one from the ground up, starting with the branding and seeing it all the way through to the website. The SLC is an education technology initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Needless to say, it is pretty fantastic getting to work with a big group of people who are all passionate about their jobs and genuinely care about changing others’ lives.
Shared Learning Collaborative logos
A huge, huge thanks to Therese Bartolini for managing this whole project and making even the most complex of issues seem incredibly simple.
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Walker’s new site is a ‘game changer’
Tyler Green just called the Walker Art Center’s new website a “game changer”, and he couldn’t be more correct.
The newspaper style allows the Walker site to have a journalistic focus no other art museum has accomplished with their website. It features articles, and even excerpts from show catalogs, which makes this the first time I have ever Instapapered an art museum website. This is an excellent start and I am anxious to see if they can maintain the pace.
I have long hated art museum websites. The sites are often as mausoleum-like as their collections, and the website offerings usually don’t move any further beyond their own interests than reporting exhibitions info and the occasional event announcement. The Walker is actually making itself apart of the contemporary art discussion, and I predict all other museums will begin to copy this format from here on out.
Hopefully this leads to a whole plethora of art museums creating articles and content actually worth Instapapering.
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While our initial impressions aren’t overwhelmingly positive, this is a device that has some serious potential.
Ars Technica - Kindle Fire first impressions
The above quote could be said as an insult about all Android based devices.
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A video about the Sasquatch Festival site we did at work. Tyler Sticka, Erik Jung, and David Carroll talk about some of the things they’re proud of, and their approach to the site. Also, you can see some of our office, and my mug in the background.
Also, the guys at Invisible Creature just released some toys based upon the illustrations they did for the site.
