

The evolution of a website design - figured
http://thinkvitamin.com/features/the-evolution-of-a-website-design/

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chime
Personally, I like clean, minimal designs. I'd have been happy with anything
between 2-4. Stage 12 (or finished) is completely over-the-top for my taste.
Tags are hard to read (red is too dark) and don't tell me anything about the
depth or breadth of discussions that will be on these topics. Devdays font is
coming off too strong in the final one. In Stage 4, StackOverflow was clearly
visible and Devdays seemed pretty significant too. I was instantly able to
make out that it was a 5-city dev conference by the folks from StackOverflow.
In Stage 4, he could have highlighted some of the key words from the
description to give more value to specific 'tags' and put simple links for
buy-ticket, speakers etc. As it stands, it's very high on graphics, definitely
very impactful, but not too clean or simple. However, that being said, it is
still a very good design.

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mlLK
The more I write code the more I agree your sentiments, but when I start to
reminisce why I got into web-design in the first place it had nothing to do
with the web but more to do with the user's interface; thefwa's most
influential [flash] site of all time is Eric Jordan's 3rd release of
<http://2advanced.com> available at <http://v3.2a-archive.com/>. It is
anything but minimal but it remains clean, intuitive to use, and downright
awe-inspiring.

IMO, this is an example where a complex view [along with a modular sense of
control] can work for busier interfaces.

[added_edit] I think your Stage 4 criticism holds true and for a very good
reason, which is that most web-designers don't know how to control or present
a view as something the_developer/the_user can rationalize and digest in
visual terms according to the model of which it is representing. Generally,
the view doesn't need to obsess so much in how the model _looks_ but I think
why 2advanced stands out in this regard is how he is able to encapsulate
control according to the view and present a modular sense of what information
means according to the spaces it occupies.

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mahmud
Hell is flash web pages. I go through tens of advertising agency websites a
day and it's all that crap as far as the eye could see. I have to leave click-
directions for people to get them to a particular "form", because the bloody
thing has no sense of URLs.

It's OK for a design studio's website to be over the top, because they're
trying to wow you. But outside portfolios and games, please just give me a
vanilla, responsive websites.

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mlLK
You are right, web-site's _design_ and a web-site's _user interface_ are not
the same. If anything the UI is just 'a space where stuff can happen' the
design should be responsible for handling whatever is happening.

As long as HTTP reigns supreme as a transfer protocol, so will formatting
source files as text...

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apmee
"I’m not feeling that good about the design at the moment as it’s shit," made
me laugh.

Also it's always heartening to see even great designers like Mike have to
scrabble and grab for inspiration.

~~~
tdavis
I've found there are generally four stages to my own designs:

    
    
      1. This is shit
      2. Okay, I'm getting somewhere
      3. This is pretty good!
      4. This is shit
    

I don't know why, but if I look at a design for too long I end up hating it,
even if I liked it initially. So I try to get away from my work quickly if at
all possible.

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chriskelley
As an animator, this happens to me often - even if the stuff is good!

After you view something for hours on end, your mind become numb to the
nuances that make it great. On a tight deadline there isn't always the luxury
to actually get away from it. My solution is to look at some work of other
animators that inspire me - but only for a couple of minutes - then go back to
my animation and prepare myself for the "Single Viewing Moment of Truth". I
get one or two truly objective viewings of it until my mind slips back into
the abyss, so I keep my pen in hand ready to scribble notes about what I see.

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euroclydon
So does this guy design the covers for Wired magazine? Because that's what it
looks like.

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patio11
I was just looking at this and one of my Japanese-speaking colleagues walked
up and said "Whoa, nice site design. Lots of impact. What the hell is it for?"

I don't think I can improve on that comment.

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figured
The way he worked through the design really resonated with me, especially when
he would break away from his original only to come back to it later on.

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ianbishop
I liked the second last design more. Christmas at StackOverflow!

