As you might imagine, I spend a fair bit of time trawling design consultancy websites. I think you work best with people you admire, so I deliberately find designers whose work I like and then pester them. Eventually they agree to a meeting or tell me to go away. Happily, it's usually the former: designers are lovely. (All those featured below, remember I said that.)
Anyway, during my recent rovings, I have detected what seems to be something of a theme in the design website world. Can you spot it?
Apologies for singling out the above (especially the ones I work with), but it's quite striking isn't it? I know there are others, too, but these are the ones I've remembered. Have you seen any more?
Smashlab has a similar motif going on if I recall correctly.
Posted by: beth | Dec 04, 2007 at 15:04
I was thinking the same thing! here's some more:
http://www.1h05.com/
http://www.8gg.com/defaultEn.asp
http://www.liveandbreathe.co.uk/
Posted by: Kate Andrews | Dec 04, 2007 at 15:29
Credit where it's due. David's been tracking this trend for some time: http://www.davidthedesigner.com/davidthedesigner/big_picture_home_pages/index.html
Incidentally, do you work with Slater?
Posted by: Richard | Dec 04, 2007 at 16:03
Yeah, that's right, you tell him, Richard.
Posted by: davidthedesigner | Dec 04, 2007 at 16:21
Interested to see how many different methods are used to produce such similar results.
A quick look at the source shows NB:Studio do this with most elegance.
Posted by: Chris | Dec 04, 2007 at 16:23
Actually, I think I might start trawling writers' websites and see if there's a trend towards using lots of words.
Posted by: davidthedesigner | Dec 04, 2007 at 16:23
I imagine this is related to technology and how now we can manage to download gigantic pictures like this. More impact than the sites who have tiny thumbnails of images.
Here's another in the city I work in. http://kolegram.com/
Posted by: meg Gough | Dec 04, 2007 at 20:12
David, apologies and respect. I shall immediately sign up to your blog in the hope of avoiding any similar embarrassments in future.
I knew, I just knew, that doing a design blog would mean going, 'Anyone noticed this?' and getting a little slew of 'Er, yes, Mike, we've known that for about 10 years.' What can I say? Blame Ben.
Richard, I'm about to start working on a few projects with Slater for the first time. Or at least I was until I wrote this post.
Posted by: Mike Reed | Dec 04, 2007 at 22:18
Apology accepted, Mike. And yes, sign up to my blog immediately and help me out with this speling and punctuation' malarky. Its the sort of thing that isnt easy for us designer's, you know (just ask Ben).
Posted by: davidthedesigner | Dec 04, 2007 at 22:42
This one is pretty impressive:
http://www.thetouchagency.co.uk/
Posted by: Andy Musgrave | Dec 04, 2007 at 23:31
David: done. And I think you may be making sport with me on the punctuation. I shall flounce out if you're not careful.
Posted by: Mike Reed | Dec 04, 2007 at 23:49
Small world Mike. One of my colleagues is just about to move to Slater.
Posted by: Richard | Dec 05, 2007 at 09:40