Uba Kontrovasie

Zazzling Zoom

I was surfing the web for t-shirts today, just looking and not buying. I want to print my own, there are so many Banksy tee’s available but no Binoy Varghese tee’s or any of the artists that I like.

Anyway I stumbled upon Zazzle.Com, which at first looked like any other t-shirt website, however, after some exploring I discovered the neat product zoom feature on their home page.

I haven’t seen it anywhere before, but I think it’s pretty dang cool because it eliminates the need to leave the product gallery in order to zoom in on products. I didn’t delve into how they’ve done it, probably some ajaxery at play.

Tags: ajax, art, Design, e-shop, ecommerce, fashion, online shop, tee shirts, usability, web design

A train, some raisins and childhood memories

I’ve been busy recently, what have I been up to?

Errmm…doing site audits, working on pitches and taking trains to Manchester.

Manchester is cool, lots of construction work under way and old boarded up buildings, which were full of character and plastered with graffiti.

On the way back to London I bought a packet of chocolate covered Sun Maid Raisins, I’d never seen these anywhere before.

If you were a child of the 80’s like moi, you’ll probably remember The California Raisins ad’s, TV show and songs.

How cool were they? All the kids at school use to watch the show and munch on the raisins, not because they tasted fantastic (without chocolate), but because raisins were cool.

That show and the ad’s were pioneering examples of brand entertainment, contentainment or whatever you want to call it. I don’t know about you guys, but thanks to those ad’s I’ve always subconsciously associated Marvin Gaye with dried fruit.

Tags: animation, brand entertainment

Geometry, circles and things

Kapitza have just released a book of geometric art, I’m a big fan geometric/linear art and geometry because It takes me back to my childhood. When we were kids my Mum use to teach us how to draw all kinds of shapes and patterns using compasses, I know, I know most kids just used to settle for Crayola’s and sugar paper but we got compasses.

Those early influences are probably what got me interested in art and graphics as a kid, they’re also the main reason as to why I’m not an Accountant, Pharmacist or an Investment Banker like the rest of my cousins and local friends.

Thanks Mum

Tags: Design, geometry, graphic design, kapitza, linear, linear art

JQuery is child’s play right?

I found this tutorial the other day on the Google tech talks channel. They have a 12 year old child genius giving a lecture on JQuery to a class full of adults. Look at how confident he his as a presenter, very impressive!

JQuery is essentially a Javascript library, which is used by many designers/developers for handling HTML events, adding animations and Ajax to websites and web applications.

It is also used for advanced CSS manipulation, enabling websites and web applications to have richer and more dynamic UI’s.

Tags: ajax, animation, css, HTML, Jquery, RIA, RIA'S, UI, web applications, web development

Cool Soap

I’m really liking the Malin+Goetz product packaging. It’s been around for quite some time, however, I like the way the type descends, gets smaller (in size and weight) and fades in colour.

I’ve been a bit cheeky and copied this style for a few powerpoint presentations. It’s quite a cool way of showing how drawn out some tech/marketing definitions look. I briefly show the slide with the definition and then flip over to the next slide, which contains a single easy to digest sentence interpreting the word/technology/theory I’m trying to explain.

The M+G website is also quite minimalist in it’s appearance and this ties in nicely with their packaging design.

An overall excellent use of the iconic Helvetica font in both package and web design.

Tags: Design, helvetica, minimalism, minimalist, package design, product design, Typography

Gmail goes arty

So I pressed refresh on my gmail browser tab the other day and up popped a notification for a new feature, themes!

I had a browse and then selected the space theme, or something of that nature. The theme I had selected was quite cheesy and it reminded of me using Encarta 96 (There’s a blast from the past!).

What annoyed me slightly was the fact that it was hard to navigate my way around the menu and change the theme back to something that I liked. It’s quite easy to change themes once you locate where the theme settings are (on the settings page, themes tab), however, this isn’t very clear initially.

Gmail is quite Ajax heavy therefore an extra dialogue above the inbox to confirm theme selection would be ideal and it would improve over all usability.

I found the themes themselves to be quite mediocre, may be Google should open up theme development to the open source community like firefox/mozilla have.

Tags: ajax, Design, gmail, google mail, menus, navigation, themes, usability, User Experience (UE)