Thinking about a new design for a website, brochure or direct email? Messing around not quite getting the idea you want? I’ve had my share experience in that. I used to think and think and think, but the right idea just didn’t came out. Recently I’m getting more and more results out of my idea’s and the idea’s are getting better too. I’d like to share this so others might benefit from it.

How did that happen?

Well, it’s pretty easy honestly. I use the mind map method to write down everything that’s related to the topic I need to design for. For example, if I need to design for some electric car I’ll write anything down that’s related to the matter. In the end I’ve got everything related branched around that main topic. Now that I know that I mark the important ones, at least the ones that I think are important.  When I’m ready I got a clear overview of items I can relate to in my idea’s and ultimately…the design.

» Read more about the mind map method

No limits

Okay, I finished the mind map. Time to move on to form idea’s. Thanks to the mind map I’m able to stay on topic, I know what I can or can’t use. The brainstorming can begin. I always try to see no limits what so ever. Don’t think in technical limitations or design limitations, think outside the box! Everything is possible as long it’s related to the mind map. During this process the most stupid, hilarious, bad and good idea’s will come to mind. Write them all down!

When finished I chose the best ideas and order them in a way that I think will feature the coolest design. After that I’ll do the same with the technical department (coding) of the idea. When I do everything right, I’ll end up with a list of  ideas that will feature the greatest designs and a list that shows me the ideas that will calm down the coders. Now I just need to find the one that fits best for designing and coding. Make sure they do not affect each other regarding time and limitations. Most of the time however I don’t make that decision, the whole project group does.

Lately there is a lot of discussing around Google and it’s social “failures”. Google Buzz was for most tech guru’s a 2010 #fail. I admit it has some issues, every social media website has, but I think it’s a great tool for discussion based interaction with other people.

You just need to find the right people!

And that’s one of the problems right now, a lot of interesting people aren’t found easily. I just bump into them on someones Buzz. However, this problem has a work around…just follow the following interesting buzzers:

• Results: Google Buzzers of the year 2010
• Buzzers recommend buzzers

Having worked around that obstacle there is one other problem people have, one I personally understand and could support. Buzz is inside Gmail and it needs to come out of it is opted a lot. Currently Buzzers are communicating through a interface which is implemented within Gmail. For me it works great, it integrates fairly well and I think it has to stay, whatever will happen. But an outside application should bring some more people to Buzz.

A frontpage for Google Buzz

Yeah, it would be wiser to have Buzz also operating outside Gmail. Like a fellow buzzer mentioned the URL - www.google.com/buzz – would fit perfectly well to use as the external Buzz Frontpage like Facebook and Twitter have.  This front page should be easy to navigate and would feature high levels of usability.

But what should be on a Google Buzz frontpage? I really don’t know honestly! Twitter and Facebook do it so differently that I don’t quit see the best approach. Below you’ll find the two social giants next to each other. Maybe someone who reads this could advice? I personally don’t like the Facebook frontpage, it’s to busy!

So how should a Google Buzz frontpage look like?

Currently the closest Buzz has to a frontpage is a Buzzers profile. An example is shown below. Everyone will see it’s a fairly simple and easy approach to a profile page. I personally don’t have problems with this set-up, but I have to admit it doesn’t look fancy at all. And that’s probably the problem right now. It doesn’t look as fancy as Twitter or Facebook. It isn’t customizable with own themes, colors and graphics like the other two have a bit more. I think the Buzz profile and the frontpage would be able to facilitate these features to users.

A funny thing is, Google has the tech available within iGoogle, Docs and Gmail already. Themes can be created there and setting up the page by dragging and dropping is also a feature Google offers in a lot of its products. So is there some lack of communication within the company? Or haven’t we seen anything yet from Google’s Social adventure? The next months will give us the answer on that I believe.

Last week I blogged about 5 websites which worked inspirational for me. I’m planning to post a similar article every week where I mention the websites which were most inspirational and creative for me. I hope I can provide a simple and easy way to show the fantastic work others have made. It’s also nice to have it around for myself to look back at once in a while!

Okay, this weeks nominees are:

60 Inspiring Typography Designs

Using typography only in your designs? Probably not, most designers I know don’t use typography only and I don’t do that either. However, these examples show that with the use of text only, you can achieve cool and creative designs! Just see how some have created a graphical representation of an object by using type only.

Amazing Photography Stars Shots at Night By Ben Canales

Great shots from photographer Ben Canales from the nightly sky. Interesting and inspiring techniques used! Currently busy creating similar shots myself….doesn’t work out quite yet =).

Excellent long exposure photography

Nice to see how a long exposure adds a very mystical feel to photo’s. Even when the scenery itself hasn’t that full mind blowing photo potential it still makes it prettier from top to bottom. A cool technique to impress!

Beautiful backlit Photography

A list of photo’s where a backlit effect is used. Because the main light source is at the objects or persons backside it gives these nice shadow results. Keep in mind that it’s hard to get the perfect shot when using these sort of techniques. I always need to set up and take a lot of shots to reach a similar effect.

15 cool photo manipulation and illustration by Wojciech Magierski

Just very inspirational and one of the coolest stuff I’ve seen in a while. You gotta see it to believe it!

Cool 3D logo designs

3D is hot lately! Everything is getting a 3D variant in the design world. Check this website for some great examples of 3D effects on company logo’s. As you can see it’s also possible to create a 3D like effect by using 2D techniques!

That’s a good question I might say. I myself use different kinds of social media like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Buzz of course. You can find me on semi social media like YouTube and several photo websites too (RGBStock for example).

On all these websites I’ve got different people following me. Some of the followers and people that I follow myself are overlapping on the different social sites I use. For example:  A lot of my Google Buzz followers I also follow on Twitter or Facebook. Why? Well thanks to all the easy import functionalities every service provides. I also use every social media differently. The overlapping follower group will concur that probably.

So, how do I use these different social media? Well, that’s what I like to point out. Every service has its own uniqueness. I probably don’t use the full potential of each one of them but I like to think I’m on the right pad.

Twitter

I don’t use Twitter a lot when looking at the posting frequency I have for posts that are solely for Twitter. The most tweets I made are coming from Google Buzz. There I discuss and post a far lot more. Maybe that’ll change in a month or too, but right now I don’t think so.

One of the major issues I have with Twitter is the fact that discussing is almost impossible for me. The stream is flooded with so many things that, by the time somebody replies to one of my tweets, I don’t know on which one they commented and need to search back.

But Twitter has also a lot of cool stuff! Without this I would’ve never created a Twitter account. As a graphic designer Twitter gives me tons of links to other designers work. These links are a huge source for inspiration and creativity. They also get me more knowledge!

Unfortunately it takes a lot of time to catch all these links and I don’t have the time to check Twitter all day long. But having said that, I can still get enough inspiration to put into my work and hobbies! Therefore Twitter is here to stay for me.

Facebook

Facebook is a whole other ballgame. It gives you a lot of features like Twitter does. I can find interesting stuff and I can manage to get the knowledge I’m looking for from Facebook. However, it just doesn’t work that intuitive like other social media! I need to do more, to find the same I can get on Twitter twice as fast.

I also use Facebook to connect with classmates and real-life friends. The other connections I have besides them are coming from, yet again, Google Buzz.

Some major issues I’m having with Facebook are, the available options you need to figure out yourself and their stupid auto opt-in features they implement without respecting the users privacy.

I’ll keep using Facebook to communicate with classmates however and also keep flooding my tweets / buzzes in there. It’s not a platform I’d be using for conversation and only comment when I feel like it. Therefore Facebook will be one of the social media platforms I’ll get rid of when I need to choose between the different ones.

LinkedIn

This is one of the first social media platforms I began to use.  I use LinkedIn mainly to connect to fellow colleagues, (ex) classmates and people I worked with like other graphic designers, printers and photographers.  I also use it to find interesting people I might need in the future.

I use LinkedIn also for the variety of groups that exist there. It’s a great source to find knowledge in regard of graphic design and marketing. It features also nice discussions that I like to follow. I don’t actively discuss on it however.

You might say I use LinkedIn for business purposes only. And yup I’m also connected my tweets / buzzes to it because I think also professionals are allowed to know what I think in real-life. It helps defining me as a person!

Google Buzz

Okay Google Buzz. By many it’s one of the 2010 #fails. I disagree with that strongly however. I use Buzz on a daily bases and interact with a lot of people on it. When looking at all the social platforms I use, Buzz is used most.

That was also the reason to create a Google Buzz feed and connect it to my Twitter, just to let my followers there know I’m posting some (for me) interesting stuff somewhere else on the net! It also saves me time double posting on the different services.

When Buzz launched I immediately found some interesting people to follow. They provided me with the latest stuff in graphic design, IT and other interests I have. Therefore it’s also a great source to find inspiration on!

When I’m having trouble finding something I always ask it on Buzz (if Google can’t help) and Buzz gets me an answer within minutes most of the time.

Buzz is also a discussion platform for me. When people are discussing on it (doesn’t matter on which subject, from politics to religion and design), I like to discuss with them in an orderly and adult fashion. Buzz gives me that possibility.

That’s why I think Buzz is one of the greatest among them to use. Unfortunately due to a bad launch and lack of promotion people think it sucks….if only they would know the possibilities.

Semi social sites

Like I wrote in the beginning these semi-sites are web services like YouTube and Picasa. They all have some social possibilities but aren’t created for that purpose at all.

They come in handy though as support for social media. YouTube is connected to about all major social sites and gives the ability to let your follower’s know when you uploaded a new video for example. This helps a lot in my honest opinion because sometimes words can’t do the job!

Now you guys know how I currently use the different media and I love to know how you use social media!

Today I started adding some minor changes to this theme design. I wanted to play around with some new CSS3 features and see how it would work out on the design of this blog. It’s not all CSS stuff, I made some minor changes to the logo and footer in Photoshop. The rest however, is totally CSS3 compatible.

Minor note: To see these design changes you’ll need a decent browser. By a decent browser I mean anything except Internet Explorer. Why? IE is the only browser around that can’t cope with these new features CSS can give you. Only version 9 of Microsoft’s browser will use some of this CSS3 stuff, but it’s still in beta and not widely used.

People can of course still browser with IE and it’ll look pretty normal, but with one of the other browser like Google Chrome or FireFox you’ll probably see some neater stuff!

Okay this is what I’ve done:

A gradient using CSS3

With the CSS you’ll find below I created a nice gradient for the breadcrumbs you see at the top of this page. Normally it doesn’t have a background color at all, but I found it to be better with one.

The CSS used for this gradient:

background-image: -webkit-gradient(
    linear,
    left bottom,
    left top,
    color-stop(0.19, rgb(243,243,243)),
    color-stop(0.5, rgb(229,229,229)));
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(
    center bottom,
    rgb(243,243,243) 19%,
    rgb(229,229,229) 50%);

Drop shadows on Text headings

This is also a new CSS3 feature. It let’s you create a nice dropshadow on your text. In my case I used this technique on the sidebar headings to the right.
The CSS for this is pretty simple:

text-shadow: 0px 0px 5px #666666;
filter: dropshadow(color=#666666, offx=0, offy=0);

Rounded corners with CSS3

I also added some rounder corners to the sidebar headings. This way it’s more one with the menu bar which also contains the same corner radius. With CSS3 giving the ability to create this, it makes the images you would use normally for this obsolete. Her’s the CSS for this neat trick:

-moz-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;

Other minor design changes

I finally got the time to fix some positioning issues on the blog and also implement a new Twitter feed plugin instead of the Buzz one I used. This plugin gives me a good looking list instead of a less attractive one. And it still shows my Google Buzz posts because I connected Buzz to twitter through Feedburner. I also coded up the blockquote of this theme. It’s now clearer to identify the different quotes I use throughout the blog.

I hope you’ll like it. I certainly like the changes I made! Of course I’m open for remarks or any other thing you would like to say! Just leave me a comment.