There’s a been a lot of online hubbub about the new identity of the 2012 London Olympics: in the design world, the dailies world, and even the medical world [thanks D.C.].
Me? I think there are two ways to explain this logo. First, it was designed by a team of novices who didn’t know what to do and came up with something as a joke and decided to see how far they could take it. This little team got it to go all the way to 11, with investment banks now jumping on board the happy bandwagon. Go team! Second, the logo was designed by a very earnest set of designers who were deliberately attempting to break some non-existent mold and ended up delivering just that: mold.
The resulting logo is not only butt-ugly. Worse, to me, it’s illegible and intellectually thin.

During the past few weeks, My Yahoo!, which has remained my homepage for over 8 years despite everything, has changed its banner advertisement style and service. It hasn’t been noticed much in the media, for some reason, but I’ve really paid attention to it.
First, the banners appear to be the same size as a typical, large rectangular banner than you might see on other sites: 728 by 90 pixels. But Yahoo! is serving them in Flash instead of JPEGs or GIFs. This is unusual for banners that are static. It seems to be a waste of resources but I’m betting that Flash is allowing Yahoo! to measure rollovers and other visitor behavior that more static media will not.
Second, these are designed to be modular and similar in style. It looks as if there is a small team of Yahoo! designers that take the advertising specs from a sales person and then build the banners to look alike, but not too alike. For instance, the banner I’m looking at now says “home theatre systems” in large type on the left and “Everything You Need to Know About home theatre systems. Find it here.” And then there is a smaller link on the bottom left reading “home.informationking.net” and a dark arrow points to it. Why is the first part of the sentence in title case and the second part in lower case? It’s either because the sales person didn’t write it down correctly, the client didn’t approve the final copy properly, or the designers are pumping these things out. Or all of the above. Or, it’s just some cool way of writing copy these days.
Third, there are no images in these ads. Because a design agency isn’t art directing the banner ads, there’s no muss and no fuss. No product images, no logos, no fat heads rolling their eyes.
Fourth, these ads use the same typefaces throughout. The font is a bit thin for my tastes but works very well in the context of these banners.
I don’t mean to be critical of this methodology of advertising. Google pioneered (or, actually, simply popularized*) the use of plain text ads. We’ve gotten quite used to advertisements looking the same but reading differently. For Yahoo!, I think it means that they’ve come across a semi-novel way of consolidating their advertisement display while not making it plain text, which necessarily takes the shape of Verdana or Arial these days. Yahoo! is on to something here – keep the banner ads clutter-free and clear but compelling to read because they’re distinctive. Because these ads are unlike anything else, my eye gazes at them, in part thinking they’re news and in part thinking they’re of interest.
What is disappointing about Yahoo is its total lack of care for potential customers. When I click on the “Advertise with Us” link at the bottom of the My Yahoo! page, I’m taken to an outdated (the copyright date is 1994-2004), uninformative, relatively useless page that requests much too much information. It’s no wonder that Google, whose clearly written and constructed advertising page, earned $3.66 billion last quarter.
Yahoo!’s profits during the same quarter dropped seven percent. Couldn’t Yahoo! spend $10,000 to revise its advertising page and hire a couple of copywriters to review their new banner ads?
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* It was Metafilter that got the ball rolling way back in 2001 with its TextAds, a system homegrown by publisher Matt Haughey.
P.S. A little further digging shows that Yahoo!’s <a href="main advertising page is different from the crappy My Yahoo! one. It makes me think My Yahoo! is not being updated or upgraded and that iGoogle and Netvibes really are the future of portal homepages.

I’ve been trying to explain the difference between these two things (design and art) for, oh, about 20 years, but Joshua Porter does it way better and more simply than anyone else I’ve seen. The differences are perhaps not as stark as Porter desires but his point, that design is about usability and art is about expression (political, social, psychic), rings.
In case you’re skeptical, here’s the firstmost of his Five Principles to Design By (and I really recommend reading the rest):

Technology Serves Humans.
Too often people blame themselves for the shortcomings of technology. When their computer crashes, they say “I must have done something dumb”. If a web site is poorly designed, they say “I must be stupid. I can’t find it”. They might even turn to a book for Dummies to get it right.
This is horrible! People should never feel like a failure when using technology. Like the customer, the user is always right. If software crashes, it is the software designer’s fault. If someone can’t find something on a web site, it is the web designer’s fault. This doesn’t mean that the designer has to hang their head in shame…they should see this as a learning opportunity! The big difference between good and bad designers is how they handle people struggling with their design.
Technology serves humans. Humans do not serve technology.

It only took over a year of (part-time) work, but I’m thrilled to announce that MANOVERBOARD is redesigned, revised, and renewed.
It was a huge ordeal because designing for oneself is a bit like being a psychoanalyst trying to gain insight into one’s own parents’ dysfunctions. I spent hours and hours anxiously thinking about what kind of company I wanted to project, what kind of voice the content should produce, and which clients to feature and how. Because the site has to appeal in equal parts me and the universe of potential clients, I sweated and squirmed my way through nearly every stage of the design and the content development. I spent a few mornings at various non-wireless coffee shops, getting away from email and folders full of projects, so that I could write simply and simply write. I came up with at least six potential designs for the new site. Some of them sucked a lot. Others were so good that I almost ended up using them, though I’m thankful I did not.
The resulting website forced me to really think through some of my core beliefs about design. They are as follows:

• Create a beautiful container. I learned this when I designed the Barneys New York site a few years ago. There was no need for me to emphasize the decorative, the typographic, the obscure, the bizarre, or the visual form. I knew that Barneys would consistently present beautiful, unusual, and striking product and editorial imagery. My job was to create a gorgeous frame that could showcase the company’s photography and then get the hell out of the way.
• It’s not about you/me. Too often, designers work hard to over-represent themselves and their cleverness in their designs for clients. Some clients might appreciate this but I suspect those that do will probably fail. A designers’ responsibility is to present his or her clients’ work in the best of many possible lights. If, coincidentally, the designer gains kudos for their work, that’s nice. But the focus of the design should always be the client—and their customers.
• Everyone is equal. I’m a huge fan of Web accessibility and I feel it’s my responsibility as an educated designer to make sure that most of my clients’ content is accessible to most people. I know I can’t always do this, despite my best attempts. But keeping accessibility in mind in designing sites makes me feel that I, in a small way, am contributing to the democraticization of information online.
• Make it easy. Too many websites, even today, ten years after the commercial Web’s birth and growth, are hard to use. It’s sad, really. Bad technical practices, lack of foresight, and plain old laziness on the part of designers and developers make the Web a sometimes overly complicated experience for the average Joe. When designing, I always try to get in the head of a potential visitor to a site; I know I don’t always succeed but I have a brilliant colleague that can set me straight when I stray from the path. Making it easy for visitors means, to me, making potential visitors’ lives just a little bit easier.

Extra special thanks to Michael Barrish for helping with every phase of the site’s design and development, including producing the stellar CSS code and markup.

I used to be able to draw. Someday soon, I plan on getting back to it.
In the meantime, there’s design.
In the interstices, there’s digital illustration:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjcHhjt6bYo]

As an avid Newsweek reader, the new Time is simply lovely. Almost makes me want to subscribe.

I really want these two cups. Even better is the photograph of one of these cups in context.

I’m redesigning my business’ website. A few weeks ago, I tried converting the new design into pure gray and it looks really, really nice. (I don’t even know the proper spelling of gray/grey, and it still looked nice.) Lately, I’ve been thinking that everything will soon be in shades of grey/gray.
One of my favorite Mac/technology blogs has been in battleship gray forever. The author, John Gruber, and many others, believe that Apple’s new operating system, due out early next year, will sport a fine new graphical user interface that takes gray to the next level. Gone will be the translucent and transparent iconography that Apple and Windows users have come to enjoy. Gone, hopefully, will be red, green, yellow, fuscia, and lilac. (You can see a little of what the future holds by downloading Disco, designed by the Dutchman Jasper Hauser.)
Other things are grey. Mice are gray. They have been on the planet a lot longer than we have. Cockroaches, too, are often a shade of grey. They have been around longer than mice. Elephants and dolphins, who are probably smarter than humans are, are gray.
A few years ago, VW came out with a beautiful shade of gray for its Passat and Jetta cars. That gray had a blue feeling. I don’t know what grey does for driver visibility on the road. Probably not too much. This is probably why you don’t see too many of those grey VWs anymore.
I used to know somebody who worked at Grey Advertising. Grey has a terrible (and sadly ungray) website.
Sometime during the time I wanted to become a doctor, between the ages of 4 and 21, my grandfather gave me Grey’s Anatomy. I poured over it, but apparently not enough.
In Poland, there’s such a thing as a grey market. It was essentially a means for newly liberated citizens to find and get work without having to pay the government immense taxes. It worked. Perhaps it still does.
It’s said that when someone’s skin turns gray, they’re dead.
The aura that swamis and other priests see around people is usually a beautiful shade of some color or another. I understand that smokers cast an aura of grey.
I also think that we cold all end up as Grey goo. That might be fun. But I hope Apple comes out with its grey operating system first.

I recently glommed on to the new car blog, Jalopnik. The site is, overall, okay in terms of both design and content. (My real theory about this site is that it will drive better ad revenue for owner Gawker Media, of whom I’m a huge fan more generally.)
Jalopnik inspired me to think about how the idea of “look and feel,” which typically applies to and describes websites, might telescope to automobiles. As a thought experiment, it might be interesting to see how (recent) cars connnect to an individual (e.g. me) and how that might be described. I’ve been in quite a few cars in the past five years, so, vrooom, here goes:

• Honda Accord: Tight overall apperance and drive with very sealed interior. The ride is tight but there is a consistent feeling that the machinery under the hood is overly complicated. If broken, G-d help you.
• Toyota Corolla: Sharp looking exterior hides a boring interior with little personality. In contrast with the Accord, however, the engine feels like it will go forever – a perpetual motion machine.
• Saab 95: Superbly tight compartment with incredible sound and air environment. While the engine purrs, one drives with the tacit knowledge that one dent, one blown tire or one new alternator will set you back $1000. You drive it, though, and you’re feeling safer than anyone on the road. Except for those in Volvos. And H2s.
• Audi A6: Beautifully detailed car that sits in a driveway looking like a souped up VW.
• Ford Focus: Opening and closing the door feels like a mistake was made; the company used edge-thin metal thinking that this would be “cutting edge.” The interior looks nice from ten feet away but one worries that there will be death involved if the car crashed.
• Honda Civic: Clean, strong body and well-fitted interior. However, sitting inside, one gets the feeling that the car is made for anyone, everyone, and no one in particular.
• Subaru Outback: Tight. Drives tight. Acts tight. Looks uptight. Shows an unclear personality: not sure if this is an SUV or a car or a station wagon. But when driving in it, you know you’re “good.”
• Mercedes-Benz S-Class: Class is all it is and that’s pretty much what one wants it for. One can’t help but feel like a person of importance; it’s as if the car, upon entry, injects you with genetically superior DNA.
• Hyundai Elantra: The immediate feeling is that this is what the Chinese are going to do someday. Good superficial overall look and feel, but, underneath the copycat design, you know there’s only a few pennies of quality material.
• Lexus LS 430: A serious car for serious people. There’s nothing fun, funny, or funky about this car but when you’re in it, the car commands a kind of respect people like me don’t have. My guess is that this car would prefer someone in their early 50s.
• Mazda 3: A working vehicle. Everything works. The car works. The stereo works. It all works. Except for that one rental I had, in which the trunk wouldn’t close.

It’s the end of a small era. A few days ago, Barneys New York launched its new site, leaving behind the designs I created for them over the past three years. I’m trying to gauge how I feel about the recent departure of my work.
I had a tremendous amount of psychological energy vested in the old design, which was Barneys first e-commerce site and was built by a team of us – myself, a Flash designer, an information architect, a project manager, and an e-commerce group. But, as my wife reminded me recently, I’m “in advertising.” People who create print advertising campaigns that last one day or one week move on to the next subject, project, and client. They may have spent months, like I did, working to make sure that the “campaign” was perfect, compelling, and managable and met all of the branding, strategic, and commercial requirements of its client. At the end, when the magazines are put into translucent, blue bags, they have their work to show for it and their passions moved onward.
Web design is no different; in fact, in some ways it’s better. After my “engagements” with clients, I have a digitally extant object to show again, while a print advertising designer has only a set of pressed pages to exhibit.
Having said all that, I wish the organization, its new site and its new audiences well.