AbsoluteB.com

It’s been an insane 2 weeks! Since coming onboard with Bonobos, the amount of work has never pilled on as much as it has in the past 14 days.

To start off with, I’ve lately inherited the responsibilities for everything to do with phonebook ads. Everything from their design to their final distribution and communication with the sales department. Besides creating SEO strong and beautiful websites, Bonobos also creates phonebook ads for its clients. Don’t laugh too hard, I chuckled a little too when I thought that there were still people out there who even own a phonebook. But despite the fact that it Is a diminishing market, it remains profitable to be a part of. Despite this, you wouldn’t believe how many badly designed phonebook ads are out there! I think it has a lot to do with companies designing their own ads in MS Paint rather than hiring on a professional design firm to get the most attention necessary out of an ad. Many of the ads cram too much uninteresting information into them and don’t get a clear message across, next to the fact that they’re just really ugly! Not that I care what other companies decide to do with their designs. It just makes my job that much easier, as long as the client doesn’t butt in too much. …read the rest of this entry »

As the saying goes; “the customer is always right” and I believe that to a certain extent. Obviously in this line of work, we have to aim high in order to make the client happy when it comes to the projects they bestow upon us. I take a lot of pride in the websites that I design and build and when a client’s expectations are surpassed and when whatever they initially had in mind pales in comparison to the end result of my work, I feel a real sense of accomplishment. This week however, I experienced client intervention to an all new extreme! So much so in fact, that the website I had initially designed and built and was so proud of will unfortunately not be finding its way into my portfolio.

Before I go any further and get into it, I would like to share this link which I got from a Bonobos colleague which pretty much sums up my story, but in a much funnier and more graphical way. Check out How a web design goes straight to hell. …read the rest of this entry »

If you ask me, Google.com is one of the best and ugliest looking sites on the web at the same time. It’s bare and raw simplicity and functionality make it so pleasant to look at and use, while at the same time, I can’t help but think, WTF? I could do a better job… couldn’t I? Google just works and does what it does best very, very well, and yet, by design standards, or at least by my own, it’s far from bring the most awe inspiring design I’ve ever seen. And yet, even though there are so many ways I could imagine improving the overall look of the site (all IMO of course), it’s a design which cannot be improved. Even the bezel and shadow on the logo on the home screen could almost be considered too tacky!

I bring this up because these past few days I have been exploring designing a search site in a lot of depth. It’s not something I’ve done before and it’s a very interesting and tricky situation I find myself in, it’s certainly one that intrigues and motivates me. Google, as cliche as it may sound, has been the standard to go by of course, but purely from a functional stand point. I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to whether it would be possible or not to design a search site in my own way… in a different way. …read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit, when I design a website, the choice of font, though absolutely crucial, is rarely a difficult one. When I design a logo or some kind of identity however, it’s a different story, but because I’m designing a potential image or vector, the decision to use a unique font isn’t as difficult, because designing a website means my choices are pretty limited because of the tiny list of standard fonts installed on a viewers computer. In any case, I personally am a bigger fan of clean and simple fonts and prefer the use of sans-serifs in my designs, though should a project call for it, serif fonts do have their moments. It’s not always a big deal though; besides the logo or the headers of a website, I don’t find using a unique font for content all that important, or even good practice. Sure there are ways around it like creating an image of the font, but the use of alt tags isn’t very SEO (though I’m told it is improving all the time by our SEO specialist at Bonobos), and since I would usually only use a unique font for headers and titles and such anyway, that would mean leaving out the H tags which is a big SEO no-no. But now I’ve come across a pretty awesome solution called Cufon (sorry that I came across like an infomercial just then). …read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been with Bonobos for over a month now and so I’ve only written about learning new stuff and stuff not really working so I thought it might be time to showcase some work I’ve been doing which I actually can show just to prove that I’m not sitting around merely admiring my Apple dominated work space; which has turned out pretty sweet I gotta say, though I’m finding it hard to justify €25 for an Apple iPhone doc.

Anywho, this isn’t the first nor the only project I’ve been working on since joining the company obviously, as there are many, many more, but seeing as this one has just gotten approval and the client is pretty psyched about the design, I figured this would be a good one to start off with.

I won’t go into the whole process I went through and the thinking behind it for now. Just that Van Kooten Wijnen came to Bonobos in need of a brand to represent itself and needed that image reflected in all aspects of it’s business, so I designed a logo and the usual letterhead/business card/etc/etc to go along with it… and that’s pretty much it.

I’ve gotten a lot done this week. I got down and dirty in the ActionScript of a Flash application which displays every city and location of every telephone area code in Holland; pretty nifty! I managed to build in functionality that displays every client in every region and whether or not they have an ad in the local phone book and if so, what the size the ad is. I also developed two site designs I’ve been working on in the past week. I should say that one of them is a little out of my style since its main design consists of a screen centered container, something I’m not a fan of because of 1. requiring a center screen container, which is ok depending on the browser you’re working with and 2. it constricts content display possibilities. In any case, the sites were designed and developed fairly quickly… on my Mac that is. This week I’ve discovered just how annoying Internet Explore (IE) really is. Seriously, it really has become a situation of one vs everyone else! I’ve got a lot of experience in cross browser/platform development, but the past few weeks, and especially this past one in particular, have taught me a whole bunch of new things concerning the differences, and frankly, the issues that IE brings forward for a designer/developer such as myself. …read the rest of this entry »

It’s been about a month since I last posted and that’s mostly to do with the fact that I started working at Bonobos so any and all my time has been spent on their projects and on learning and integrating myself into their work flow as much as possible. Not just that, but also looking for ways to streamline the various processes. So far I’ve been more than happy to be part of the organization and being able to work in such a young and dynamic environment. I’ve slowly gotten to know my new colleagues better and they’ve been great in allowing me to feel a part of the team. Since moving into the new building, I’ve definitely been able to work on some great and fun projects; from designing sites to logos and functional widgets and elements. …read the rest of this entry »

From the initial contact to the moment we came to an agreement, it all happened very quickly. I received a message via AbsoluteB, completely out of the blue, expressing interest in my possibly joining Bonobos as a designer/developer. Barely a week later, having had a few conversations and giving the offer some thought, I have initialed, dated and signed my contract to develop and design for Groningen based marketing and media company Bonobos. Ok, so I don’t officially start till next month, but I’m already excited about getting started and am really looking forward to bringing and sharing my ideas in the hope of reaching higher levels of success!

It was strange; that feeling I got seeing a Windows logo boot up on my Pro was almost identical to the chills I got while watching the movie Paranormal Activity. It just didn’t seem right at all. I got around the other day to installing Windows 7 Ultimate through Bootcamp, and I have to admit that my initial impressions have been positive, not just in a sense when compared to Vista (which I never owned anyway) but also as an OS overall. Granted I haven’t been, nor do I plan, on using it very heavily. The only two reasons I did this was one; testing of cross platform compatibility of my work and two; gaming (Counter Strike: Source to be precise). 7 has been snappy and perky compared to my experience with Vista, but then I’ve read articles that, ironically, Windows has the tendency to run better and smoother on a Mac anyway, so I don’t know how it will run on your average consumer PC. I will say that compared to my last Windows experience, which was XP, it’s definitely a graphical step in the right direction, and I would actually go so far as to say that I like it.

Does it phase me into considering going back to a PC though? Nope, not even close. I still consider OS X, by design alone, a much simpler and user friendly OS, and above all else, I just love OS X, even more so since Snow Leopard came out. That’s not to say that things won’t change in the future, in fact, I’m willing to go out on a limb that unless Apple makes a giant leap forward in their next OS, that whatever comes after 7 (an educated guess would be 8) will be something for the company from Cupertino, CA to seriously worry about!

One of my favorite design studios, FI, or Fantasy Interactive. has given their website a face lift, and though it can hardly be called a redesign at all, I have to say that its a huge improvement on a design that was pretty much near perfect to begin with. I remember when FI launched their previous site, which replaced a design that was, in comparison, very flashy and inspiring, it was met with quite some criticism that it didn’t quite represent the company as it should have. That design incorporated a lot of 3D, dynamic Flash components and video and it was a whole new standard on its own. With the previous iteration of the site, things calmed down and the idea was to let FI’s work speak for itself, rather than the website itself. Given how the trend of web design is towards clean, sensible usability, which everyone seems to be following, only a few agencies like FI could go with those trends and still come out with something unique and special, and this face lift is such a breath of fresh air! …read the rest of this entry »