Arts & Croft’s

It’s the sixth annual May 1st Reboot today, in which designers all over the Web launch visual makeovers of their Web sites. You can go and see the sites that have launched under the rubric of the original campaign at May1Reboot.com, and you can see the campaign’s less Flash-intensive, more standards-friendly offshoot at CSSReboot.com. Together, both efforts can boast of literally hundreds of participants; a heck of a lot of designers have been busy nights and weekends over the past several weeks.

But the only one you really need to go see is the brand new JeffCroft.com, which is a major home run of a redesign if I ever saw one. It’s perhaps the deftest and most cohesive user experience yet fashioned from all of the various de rigeur weblog features, circa 2006: there’s a blogroll, a list of shout-outs, an integrated Flickr feed, comments on everything, a “tumblelog” that orders everything Croft touches, apparently, into a single, chronological view — not to mention a good ol’ fashioned weblog of stuff he writes, too.

It’s a kit of parts that could have easily produced chaos, but Croft unifies everything with a particular élan that has the feeling of a breakthrough. The interface is thoroughly unified and orderly, yet pleasing inventive at all levels — there’s a bold and striking effect to the whole presentation that can be taken in instantly, but it’s a nuanced performance, too (I’m not sure if anything Croft has done before has balanced gestalt and minutiae so successfully; if it has, I want to see it soon). This is the kind of design that thrills me; completely self-motivated and yet unfailingly conscientious in its attention to detail. And it makes me think that things around here are starting to look a little long in the tooth.

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Arts & Croft’s

It’s the sixth annual May 1st Reboot today, in which designers all over the Web launch visual makeovers of their Web sites. You can go and see the sites that have launched under the rubric of the original campaign at May1Reboot.com, and you can see the campaign’s less Flash-intensive, more standards-friendly offshoot at CSSReboot.com. Together, both efforts can boast of literally hundreds of participants; a heck of a lot of designers have been busy nights and weekends over the past several weeks.

But the only one you really need to go see is the brand new JeffCroft.com, which is a major home run of a redesign if I ever saw one. It’s perhaps the deftest and most cohesive user experience yet fashioned from all of the various de rigeur weblog features, circa 2006: there’s a blogroll, a list of shout-outs, an integrated Flickr feed, comments on everything, a “tumblelog” that orders everything Croft touches, apparently, into a single, chronological view — not to mention a good ol’ fashioned weblog of stuff he writes, too.

It’s a kit of parts that could have easily produced chaos, but Croft unifies everything with a particular élan that has the feeling of a breakthrough. The interface is thoroughly unified and orderly, yet pleasing inventive at all levels — there’s a bold and striking effect to the whole presentation that can be taken in instantly, but it’s a nuanced performance, too (I’m not sure if anything Croft has done before has balanced gestalt and minutiae so successfully; if it has, I want to see it soon). This is the kind of design that thrills me; completely self-motivated and yet unfailingly conscientious in its attention to detail. And it makes me think that things around here are starting to look a little long in the tooth.

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Event of the Summer

An Event ApartEric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman’s rolling design conference tour, An Event Apart, is coming to New York City in July. For the first time, it will be two days long; the first day will be devoted to matters design, and the second day will be devoted to matters code.

Count me a lucky bastard, as these gentlemen have been nice enough to invite me to be one of the presenters on the first day, appearing on the same slate as the prolific Jason Santa Maria and the scary-smart Adam Greenfield, two design practitioners and thinkers that I would gladly pay to see any time. The second day will feature the amazing Aaron Gustafson, from whom anyone can learn more about the practice and management of good code. And, of course, the estimable Eric and Jeffrey will be around too, either in “yadda yadda” mode or “as needed.”

It’s going to be exciting and I can’t wait. Registration isn’t yet open, but you can keep tabs on the An Event Apart Web site or its RSS feed to find out as soon as it goes online. Past events have sold out quickly in Philadelphia and Atlanta, so it’s reasonable to expect the same thing to happen here in New York City. Plus, if you don’t live here, you can treat yourself to a fun few days roaming the Big Apple — the July heat’s not to be missed!

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Reading About Design Is No Fun

Swiss Graphic DesignI’m in the middle of reading “Swiss Graphic Design: The Origin and History of an International Style” by Richard Hollis, a thorough and lavishly illustrated overview of the extremely influential designers and philosophies that shaped much of the craft in the last century. It’s a fantastic tour through the evolution of visual communication in the Modernist style, comprehensive enough in its account to qualify as required reading for any graphic designer, I’d be willing to say. I recommend it.

The problem is, it’s not a particularly gripping read. To be sure, it’s well written and professional, but it’s not engrossing in its narrative; the mind tends to wander a bit when your eyes run back and forth across its dense paragraphs of factual prose; the words don’t do a particularly great job of grabbing your attention and holding onto it with the authority and immersiveness of storytelling. This is perhaps owing to the fact that it’s a history book and a book about design — two non-fiction genres that aren᾿t exactly known for yielding page-turners. Still, I don’t see a good reason why the book couldn’t have been as gorgeously and expertly assembled as it is and, at the same time, also proven to be a blast to read.

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