Turbomilk

One day I spotted a rather unusual poster. It looked very special and I was won by the pleasant mix of colors and simplicity.

It turned out that this was one of the posters made for the Olympics of 1972 in Munich. I was surprised by how fresh and contemporary the work looked realizing that the poster was created almost 40 years ago. I decided to study the style of this event more carefully and started web surfing.

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Judging by the many online reviews, the brave souls who have downloaded and installed the beta version of Windows 7 are, in general, pleasantly surprised. Your humble servant likewise entered into the ranks of the brave souls. I confirm: it’s actually pleasant to work with No. 7. However, given the many new and different functionalities, and well-written reviews of other authors, allow me to throw in my two cents worth in our particular area of expertise: visual interface design.

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I will start with stating that I am not a fan of web 2.0.  I consider this term to be rather ambiguous. No, I am not against social networks, I would vote for AJAX with both hands, and I am writing this article straight to our blog. It makes no sense to me why one would need web 2.0 if not just for fooling venture capitalists. However, regardless whether we like it or not, this term enters our life and our clients start asking us about “web 2.0-styled” design.

And what is “web 2.0-styled” design? Letters pictured with reflections? Rounded corners? Let’s drop these cliche’s for being infinitesimal and consider some examples. I took some liberty to compile a short list of the most vibrant, as I see them, representatives of the new wave in web design.

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There is an opinion that non-standard theming is a property of an entertaining, non-serious application suited, in any case, for home, non-professional use. Moreover, this opinion is carved in the holy testimonies of Windows UX Guide:

As a general rule, application theming is appropriate for programs where the overall experience is more important than productivity. Highly themed applications should be immersive, yet only used for short periods of time. This rule makes theming suitable for games and kiosk applications, but unsuitable for productivity applications.

Non-standard visual style equals enemy of productivity. This is gives as an axiom. Is it really so?

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