

Ask HN: Who are the top UI designers on the web today? - jayro

It would be interesting and useful to know who the top 5, 10 or even 20 designers are and what they've done that's so impressive, innovative, useful or loved.
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jmulder
With all due respect to the aforementioned people, but personall I think the
real rockstars are the leading designers behind sites like Yahoo, Amazon, CNN,
BBC and digg's Daniel Burka. Designing for such a large audience while still
keeping an eye on a company's goals and vision is what really is impressive.
Making something look good is the easy part -- making it work flawlessly in an
pre-existing environment with an incrediblyt large audience is the challenge.

~~~
irondavycole
A lot of my UI pals disagree, but I think the guys at Amazon and CNN are
killing it, certainly operating at the highest level.

~~~
seldo
CNN are great at cross-linking and surfacing content, and the latest update is
furthering that goal. Amazon...? Not so sure. They succeed despite their
fugly, confusing UI rather than because of it.

~~~
irondavycole
Fugly is up for debate (one probably not worth having).

Confusing I'd like to hear your defense for. I don't _personally_ find it
confusing.

Regardless, what is a better measure for the success of a product's interface
than its ability to support a company's objectives? Amazon's site is doing
just that.

~~~
arnorhs
I personally think Amazon's pretty fugly

I also find myself scrolling around and looking for stuff alot on amazon - too
much _recommendations_ and stuff...

~~~
petervandijck
Which is exactly what they want you to do :)

~~~
chunkyslink
Just because they want you to do it, doesnt mean its very good.

~~~
kareemm
it's good for business.

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nwjsmith
The work they do over at <http://metalab.com/> is some of the best I've seen.

Edit: Oops! He's right, <http://metalabdesign.com/>

~~~
mtrichardson
We have been incredibly impressed with the work Metalab has done for us -
<http://urbanairship.com/> and our admin interface at
<https://go.urbanairship.com/> . Couldn't recommend them highly enough.

Also, totally love Refresh Media - <http://refreshmedia.com/> \- they did
<http://bacn.com/> for us.

~~~
unalone
I visit Urban Airship and my first instinct is to hate how little padding
there is between your iPhone image and the image right below it, which strikes
me as overlarge.

~~~
mtrichardson
Thanks for the feedback! that's actually something we did after our contract
with them, so it's no surprise that we didn't do that well :)

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steerpike
You're asking about UI designers and most people have provided links to
Designers - two different beasts in my view.

I think stackoverflow if one of the best examples of brilliant UI I've seen
recently - certainly one of the best I've seen on the web - but it probably
wouldn't make my top list for beautiful design.

~~~
tokenadult
_You're asking about UI designers and most people have provided links to
Designers_

This is the crucial point in this whole discussion. If the user has a task to
accomplish, the user may indeed want the task to be accomplished in a
beautiful environment, but most of all the user wants the task to get done.
User interface design is first of all tested by seeing whether or not any
typical user anticipated for the site or for the application can accomplish
the task successfully.

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callmeed
I've always been a fan of MetaLab's work

I also really like what Sofa does: <http://www.madebysofa.com/> (checkout the
enstore demo, epic: <http://www.enstore.com>)

Ryan Singer of 37signals was very impressive when I saw him speak at RailsConf
this year. I definitely think he's up there. <http://twitter.com/rjs>

------
bkbleikamp
A couple that come to mind:

<http://subtraction.com> <http://cubancouncil.com> <http://madebyelephant.com>
<http://jasonsantamaria.com> <http://markboulton.co.uk>
<http://hicksdesign.co.uk>

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richcollins
I think our designer (<http://dekorte.com/>) did an awesome job:

<http://shop.stylous.com/>

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davidw
Is there a way to measure it, other than subjective tastes?

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kingkilr
I'm a big fan of Nathan Borror's stuff: <http://nathanborror.com/>

Also Wilson Miner: <http://www.wilsonminer.com/work/>

And Greg Newman: <http://carbon8.us/>

Keep in mind that I don't know many designers, so I've pretty much just listed
all the ones I know.

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mikecuesta
I don't think it comes down solely to the designer, instead think of the
company and team of professionals who make a great UI possible. A great UI
design trapped inside of a photoshop file is useless. It takes the effort of
multiple people to make it happen - I think a better question to ask is what
companies are creating the best UI's that are actually being used today.

~~~
pantalones
agreed completely.

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dschobel
Whoever designed the heroku site.

~~~
FreeRadical
I would have to disagree, I think there a quite a few users like myself that
find it difficult to look at light font on dark backgrounds for too long.

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petercooper
I don't know if we're talking "top 10 in the world" but I want to recommend
Amy Hoy - our own user _ahoyhere_ \-
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ahoyhere> \- <http://slash7.com/about/>

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vaksel
probably Jason Putorti from Mint is on the list, so impressive, he got a
designer in residence gig at Bessemer VC

~~~
benatkin
Yeah, he's the one I'd mention. I like how Mint has their own widget in place
of the <select> tag.

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ars
Top designers, or most famous designers? It's not the same.

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taitems
I have found the vast majority of my favourites through twitter. And they're
amazing for showing off WIPs and sharing freebies with you. One of the below
(I can't remember who) disliked the Wave interface so much they re-mocked it
themselves just for fun.

Jonas Rask - <http://twitter.com/JonasRask>

Jonathan Castro - <http://twitter.com/DDrDark>

MetaLab Design - <http://twitter.com/metalab>

Philipp Antoni - <http://twitter.com/PhilippAntoni>

------
jot
Clearleft <http://clearleft.com>

Stuff they've done:

<http://silverbackapp.com/>

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/>

<http://www.tourdust.com/>

<http://www.scifi.co.uk/>

<http://clearleft.com/made/wwf/>

<http://clearleft.com/made/ratemyarea/>

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GBKS
What do you think of Fantasy Interactive (<http://www.f-i.com>)? Not trying to
self-promote, just want to see what people think. We've done some big portals
like <http://ea.com>, <http://events.nationalgeographic.com/events>, and
<http://atari.com>, but also more experience-focused sites like
<http://panamera.com>

I'm a big fan of the HappyCog crew, Information Architects, and Huge, to limit
it to three.

~~~
dem0o8
Big fan of F-I work... I like <http://www.kontain.com/> especially

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Jim_Neath
Not sure about top 10 but I really like Kyle Neath who now works at Github

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simplegeek
Douglas Bowman(stopdesign.com) and Dan Cederholm(simplebits.com)--IMHO.

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lordmatty
<http://www.thenobleunion.com> \- we work with them often. Excellent iPhone
and web design. Think they are reworking their site.

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ubuwaits
Naz Hamid has done some wonderful work. I particularly like the work he did
here on a CMS project: <http://weightshift.com/design/aiga-cms-design>

I also think the work skinnyCorp does (<http://www.skinnycorp.com/>) on all
their sites is fantastic.

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thinklime
How has no one mentioned Nick La?

<http://www.ndesign-studio.com/>

Also, Dragon Interactive is pretty cool, although they can be mega douches at
times.

<http://dragoninteractive.com/>

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teej
Haven't seen the Sofa guys on here yet. Minimalist, Apple-esque app design:
<http://www.madebysofa.com/>

My favorite interactive design agency: <http://www.2advanced.com/>

~~~
arnorhs
I wouldn't consider 2advanced to be a company that's good at UI... They're
good at flash, I guess

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jamesk2
One designer not mentioned on this list is Jason Fried of 37 Signals. Basecamp
is very useful. Web App designers don't get the attention of flashy visual
designers but after repeated usage of an application, you really get a sense
of how well thought out it is.

------
richardburton
How about Ryan Singer at 37signals? Not only is he a great, functional
designer but I think he's an awesome teacher, too.

<http://37signals.com/papers/introtopatterns//index>

~~~
unalone
My personal opinion is that he's very good, but not great. His designs work
very well, but he never strikes me as ambitious or risk-taking in his work,
which I feel is a must for great.

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alex_c
Might not be exactly what you were asking, but I like Envato.

<http://envato.com/>

Particularly, I like their themes site:

<http://themeforest.net/>

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lexx12
My pick: \- Ryan Singer of 37signals \- HappyCog \- ClearLeft \- Unit
Interactive \- Made by Sofa

Also, I think UI design is different from Visual design. I found that some of
the posts below are referring to visual specialists only.

------
unalone
Let me cast my vote for Shaun Inman, whose two web apps are brilliantly
designed and brilliantly functional. His homepage is pretty dandy, too:
<http://shauninman.com>

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mcrittenden
As much as I really don't like the guy, I think Mark Boulton would be up
there. His UX work for Drupal (some of which is at <http://d7ux.org>) is
really top knotch.

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pantalones
i think the names of the top 5, 10, or 20 designers aren't public because they
are busy working on uis instead of promoting themselves on the web. it's all a
matter of opinion. a lot of the people mentioned below have 1-2 things under
their belt, excepting some of the more seasoned folks like bowman, vinh, and
miner. the reality is no one person is responsible for a great ui. it's a
confluence of talent. the only reason you know about any of these products is
because the talent of multiple individuals produced it.

------
elviejo
I can't believe no one has mentioned: Jon Tan His taste is exquisite his
websites are beautiful and functional.

<http://jontangerine.com/>

------
furtivefelon
Many designs on <http://csszengarden.com/> is very nice, and it has designer
contacts there as well.

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chunkyslink
Its impossible to accurately classify something subjective into a top X list.
The lists will always be skewed into the tastes of the judges or list
compiler.

Take music charts for example. The top 20 could be renamed, the '20 records
that teenagers like at the moment'.

That said I would like to say that UI designers that work for one company who
have one product, do not deserve the same amount of kudos as really skilled
agency UI designers who work on upwards of 10 UI's a year. They solve 10 times
more problems than those who work on one product.

~~~
petervandijck
Disagreed. I find that the agencies don't tend to "solve" problems, because
they're not there when their solutions are measured/exposed to the real world.
Agencies tend to take a stab at solutions. In house designers need to solve
things.

~~~
chunkyslink
Perhaps that is the case when the relationship is not right. In a lot of cases
we run the sites for our clients and dont have to ask them to make UI changes.
We spend a lot of time fine tuning and getting this part right. We do this on
a permanent basis.

But I accept your point if this kind of relationship doesnt exist and the site
is 'handed over'

------
tor
30 top web designers on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/tor/status/6525201103>

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yannis
IMHO Top UI design <http://thesixtyone.com>, anyone knows the designer?

------
dem0o8
Timothy Gray of <http://www.shelfari.com/> Great UI and UX design.

~~~
dem0o8
Few more apps that I consider great UI/UX design implementation...
<http://www.foodspotting.com/>, <http://hunch.com/>

------
numair
Aaron Sittig - <http://www.facebook.com>

~~~
petervandijck
Facebook is awesome user experience. The visual design is pretty decent, but
it's the UX that's awesome.

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huffer
surely off-topic and probably silly, but I was wondering where do all the
designers get the pictures they use? is there a market going on for such
thing? (I assume they won't shoot the photos themselves -- division of labor
and all :D)

~~~
chunkyslink
One such site is <http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php>

~~~
huffer
thank you very much!

could this stand as a sub-topic for top photo shops, branching the 'top UI
designers' main theme? (yes, I'm trying realy hard to subvert this topic :p)

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earle
Nobody has mentioned Khoi Vinh? Creative Director from the New York Times?

~~~
bkbleikamp
I mentioned him :) His personal site in subtraction.com

