“Make the logo bi… exactly the same size.”
You know when a new boss takes over a company and the first thing they do is declare an immediate rebranding? It turns out that the monarchy has been doing that for generations.
A delightful ode to a once-divisive design.
I really enjoyed hanging out with Paul at Indie Web Camp in Nuremberg last weekend. And I like the iconography he’s proposing:
This design attempts to bring together a set of icons that share the concept of a node – a line and a point – and use this to add counters to each letter shape.
When Dan wrote this a week ago, I thought it sounded very far-fetched. Now it sounds almost inevitable.
I believe strongly in the indieweb principles of distributed ownership, control, and independence. For me, the important thing is that this is how we get to a diverse web. A web where everyone can define not just what they write but how they present is by definition far more expressive, diverse, and interesting than one where most online content and identities must be squished into templates created by a handful of companies based on their financial needs. In other words, the open web is far superior to a medium controlled by corporations in order to sell ads. The former encourages expression; the latter encourages consumerist conformity.
We’re all LARPing on LinkedIn.
This looks like an excellent proposal for agreement around discussing privacy on the web.
The section on user agents resonates with what I wrote recently about not considering Google Chrome a user agent any more:
Its fiduciary duties include:
- Duty of Protection
- Duty of Discretion
- Duty of Honesty
- Duty of Loyalty
Brand identity in sci-fi films, like Alien, Total Recall, Robocop, and Back To The Future.
This makes for a nice companion site to Sci-fi Interfaces.
After two decades in tech, I realise phones and social media won’t be going away, so we work with them. My take is that I now need to seek positive digital tools that connect more of us to the non-digital world and really benefit our lives.
Writing on your own website associates your thoughts and ideas with you as a person. Having a distinct website design helps strengthen that association. Writing for another publication you get a little circular avatar at the beginning of the post and a brief bio at the end of the post, and that’s about it. People will remember the publication, but probably not your name.
A font made of corporate logos.
I’m impressed by Mozilla’s commitment to designing in the open—one of the hardest parts of any kind of brand work is getting agreement, and this process must make that even more difficult.
I have to say, I quite like both options on display here.
Hui Jing describes her motivation for creating the lovely Penang Hokkien site:
People who grew up their whole lives in a community that spoke the same mother tongue as themselves would probably find this hard to relate to, but it really was something else to hear my mother tongue streaming out of the speakers of my computer.
She ends with an impassioned call for more local language websites:
If the Internet is meant to enhance the free flow of information and ideas across the world, then creation of content on the web should not largely be limited to English-speaking communities.
Some lovely branding work for the UK Parliament, presented very nicely.
This post goes into specifics on Django, but the broader points apply no matter what your tech stack. I’m relieved to find out that The Session is using the tripartite identity pattern (although Huffduffer, alas, isn’t):
What we really want in terms of identifying users is some combination of:
- System-level identifier, suitable for use as a target of foreign keys in our database
- Login identifier, suitable for use in performing a credential check
- Public identity, suitable for displaying to other users
Many systems ask the username to fulfill all three of these roles, which is probably wrong.
I think Khoi might be on to something here …but I also think this change in priorities is no bad thing:
Consider the macro trend of these brands all visually converging alongside the industry’s current mania for design systems. That juxtaposition suggests that we’re far more interested in implementing ideas than we are in ideas themselves.
Following on from Ruth’s piece, here are some more thoughts on sound in UI from Roman Zimarev, the creator of icon sounds.
He makes a distinction between notification sounds and interaction sounds, as well as talking about sound identity in branding.
Smörgåsbord Studio created a design system for the Welsh government, including the typeface Cymru Wales Sans from Colophon.
The accompanying video lists the design principles:
- Elevate our status
- Surprise & inspire
- Change perceptions
- Do good things
- Be unmistakably Wales
After Clearleft’s recent rebranding, I’m really interested in Happy Cog’s redesign process:
In the near future we’ll be rolling out a new website, followed by a rebrand of Cognition, our blog. As the identity is tested against applications, much of what’s here may change. Nothing is set in stone.