Via.

The Swiss-born modernist graphic designer Erik Nitsche created some amazing posters for General Dynamics including the well known Atoms for Peace series.

If you're obsessive-compulsive or just love colored dots (or both, as in my case), this might be for you.

In a recent Boston Globe article, Matthew Battles invited several designers to compare the Bush-era whitehouse.gov with Obama's. They were asking: "Why does the site look better than Bush's?" and "What does the new page say about Obama's approach to governance?"

I'm not sure I completely buy their answers to either of those questions

The format of the article is to take some page element —the use of color on the page, for example— and compare the new with the old. But it feels like the comparisons aren't objective for the most part.

What are you supposed to be looking at here? The colors.

For example:

"The Obama site now has bold graduations [of color], texturing; Like Apple.com, it calls for reaction and collaboration" The Bush site, by contast, was muted and chaste, a pastel blue limited to the margins..."a set of dinner plates that only come out for visiting foreign dignitaries."

Really? Does that sound like an objective assessment or are we projecting with the metaphors here?

Instead of saying "the use of bold color focuses attention on headlines and interface elements" we get some partisan statement about how Obama is Steve Jobs and Bush is a stuffy old guy.

The article is seven paragraphs about form and one about function. If you compare the two sites, the content of the new page is not substantially different from the old one. In fact, it may be less genuine than Bush's. Obama's "blog" is a rebranded feed of press releases— there's no two-way communication. Besides a coat of paint and rearranged furniture, what's really that different about the new site?

The article is asking us to read too much into the new design. I like Obama and I like his websites, but I think there's some cognitive bias at work here.

Congratulations, its 2009 and you have a new website

Websites go in and out of fashion rapidly. With rare exception, there are few websites from even four or five years ago that would look or function as good as they did when they were first launched. To compare Bush's site with Obama's as though they were somehow contemporary is akin to comparing a Pinto to a Prius.

If the Bush whitehouse.gov launched today, I'd bet you it would look very similar to the current whitehouse.gov.

Obama's design looks better because it's up to date. Large slideshow images, subtle texture, bold use of color, serif fonts, active voice in navigation elements, whitespace, center orientation — you've pretty much run down the list of the top web design trends of 2009.

You could argue that a Bush website that launched today wouldn't be as good because he's behind the times, but I disagree. I don't think any web designer today (working for the President, no less) would put together something like the old White House site. It's just not done that way anymore.

Let's address the elephant in the room: maybe we like the website better because we like Obama better.

The Presidential reality-distortion field

Obama has a good brand— a very good one. So good, in fact, that it has spilled over into what people think about his website. Perhaps that's the real story here?

I applaud the effort to get newspaper readers to think more about the design they encounter online, but I hate to see personal politics get in the way of what could have been a more objective discussion about better page design.

Thursday, I'll speak a bit on another reason this article misses the mark: poor graphic design.

See you then!

Greenpeace recently released a very nice campaign promoting the use of energy-efficient light bulbs. This campaign really speaks to us, as it exemplifies both an ethical kind of messaging and a clever, reductionist aesthetic. We really like the (visual and content) drama of the light bulb-noose double entendre. It's powerful stuff.

We might have suggested an inversion of black and white, which would have also served the double function of instantiating material reduction (by requiring less ink), and "lit up the room" so to speak, showing the light bulb as it functions, rather than as a dormant artifact waiting for employment.

Nevertheless, a very solid idea well-executed.

I love her use of bright colors and marker as a medium. The texture, combined with the repetition of shapes makes this series of illustrations simple, yet rich.

(This particular piece is my Twitter background, until I can find the time to make a huge version of the DLB guillotine)

Via.

Nothing too revelatory for the BlogLESS regular here, but I thought I'd offer you a little story. This all happened in about ten minutes last Friday, and in those minutes, I found myself mentally reinforcing a few key maxims for web design.

Read More...

Truly one of my favorite illustrators. I really admire Blair's grasp of color.

Her palettes start with these natural, desaturated colors that she layers over with bright, decidedly unreal hues. Everything ends up being so well-balanced on the page. It gives her pieces this great blend of the mundane and the fantastic.

I think a lot of illustration today practically assaults the viewer. The linework is slick and often heavy; colors are too-bright against a minimal field. By contrast, Blair's is more contemplative-- there is restraint at work.

Most of all, I dig Blair's forms: that strong, yet fluid, "gestural geometry" I find so appealing in artists like Modigliani and Matisse and in contemporary illustrators like Bruce Timm. (I think it speaks to the architect in me.)

Cynics might dismiss her work as "cute", but Mary Blair was ahead of her time. Look at all the work today that is inspired by Disney animation --Pixar, for example. Blair's legacy is a part of that.

For more examples of Blair's work, check out these collections on Flickr and Drawn!.