< freshBrew />

Although I must admit I might be in a smaller group of web/interface designers: I love Fireworks.

It wasn’t always this way. I have been a Photoshop user since my early years in high school, in and around the Photoshop 5 days. Like the rest of the world I have used it for both photo editing, graphic design (maybe a little print design…), and web design. It was the tool for everything. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

During my college web design education Photoshop was the clear bread-winner for web designers. One of my design teachers (and a great photographer), Dave Robinson, introduced Fireworks to the class. It seemed most of the class was not interested, but the introduction did spark some curiosity.

Read More

Recently I have been reading the book You Are Here by Christopher Potter. The book explores our universe, where we are in it, and how we stumbled upon this conclusion through a couple thousand years of science. It is pretty awesome.

However, one thing I have noticed is there seems to be a bit of filler words; words that could be trimmed, and make it much faster to read.

Read More

A huge trend in web design lately has been FLAT design. If you have just shown up to this party, flat design refers to zero gradients, letterpress, shadows, lighting etc… that give a design dimension. It is fitting that this trend has followed both a previous trend of Apple-like dimensional design, and Microsoft’s push on it’s flat Metro interface.

But some naysayers out there claim that flat design is sometimes just a cheap cop out, where actual design is avoided.

So, let’s sum it up:

The Flat Supporters

Flat UI Kit by Riki Tanone

Somewhat obviously spearheaded by the folks in Redmond (Microsoft) and their adoption of classic swiss design style they refer to as Metro.

It is has been also said this has been caused by designers working with smart phones, but I believe it might be a bit more than that:

“Every so often there is a new fashion that comes about in design for any number of reasons, not the least of which is technology, and now there has been a reaction to mechanistic-looking design where you press a button and get a specific look,” Mr. Heller said. “In response, designers have started to turn to flatness.”

“…part of the push toward flat design was to try to escape the overabundance of design that looks digital, where things “have started to look cliché.

Read more: The Flattening of Design

The Dimensional Party

TwitSpark Betadesign 1 by Davy Kestens

If we join (or stay with) the dimensional party goers, we get to use all of those beautiful, albeit sometimes distracting, design elements.

This seems to sum up the difference quite well:

“The fundamental thing about flat design is that it is a restrictive trend that ought to be questioned. Perhaps it’s cheaper to develop, design or maintain, but if taken in its literal interpretation it could result in a lower quality user interface.” Source

However, what I believe is the more important thing to note about these two design trends, is what the designer is doing with them.

Read more: Calling Bull$#!%: On Flat Design

This week I decided to feature some of the most inspiring design and visual companies:

Prologue

Engine

Buck

Rareview

Happy Cog (Jeffrey Zeldman & Co.)

Climax Media

Ordered List

Rethink Canada

Take a peek and don’t forget to enjoy.