Web sites promoting exhibitions can be notoriously boring and often result in a page with just intro text, date of event, and a lonely picture. We’ve found some nice exceptions of sites that break the mould and give the user a more enriching experience. Onedotzero , a London-based moving image and digital arts organisation, has created a clear, concise and considered site. The site is simple in terms of interaction, easy to navigate and the design is clear and clean. The MoMA site for their exhibition ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ dates back to 2008 but still feels very fresh and exciting. The site shows links of information through dynamically moving lines across the screen, making it a part of the exhibition itself. The web site for the Paris Design Week doesn’t offer much content in addition to key information, but we do love the treatment they’ve given their Google maps.

• Onedotzero
• MoMA
• Paris Design Week

Like Einstein put it, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. In web design, invisible design means keeping the user experience as simple as possible. Dieter Rams, the forefather of “invisible design” and writer of the book ‘As Little Design As Possible’ embraced form following function. His products, always designed around functionality, have been an inspiration to companies like Apple. A good digital example is the user interface of Google Plus The small animations and simple visual signposts efficiently hide the complexity of the site from the user. Oliver Reichenstein, founder of iA, wrote an in-depth “G+” review of the service.

• As little design as possible
• Google Plus
• Oliver Reichenstein’s review

Our time is being squeezed and our attention fought over left, right, offline, online. When bombarded simplicity cuts through. It’s always challenging and brave to develop and to back the essence of a brand or campaign execution; but ultimately if committed brand work comes together in a ruthlessly simple site execution the result is incredibly effective. We enjoy seeing more and more of this focused assertive brand distillation in action. This year’s global Twitter repositioning ‘Discover Twitter’ was a simple one page site explaining itself in 3 sentences. EF language schools sold the simple dream of summer love in a foreign city in four beautiful videos in their ‘Live The Language’ campaign. And HTC’s ‘Quietly brilliant’ brand comes unassumingly to life in HTC ‘Sense World’.

• Discover Twitter
• HTC ‘Sense World’
• EF ‘Live the Language’

Online creating an audience, maintaining an audience and developing audience advocacy is about staying in touch. Ongoing editorial is a very natural way to keep talking to people. You can push the content to where people expect conversation – Facebook, Twitter, email – and you can engage people closer to conversion on-site. The trick as marketers is to create an engaging ongoing content platform that requires limited resources to maintain. Mr Porter’s Father’s Day content is a good example – insightful but concise creative leads straight to shopping recommendations. Man City’s site is another example. They have totally editorialised the club investing in a platform that dramatically brings the club to life.

• Mr Porter ‘Father’s Day’
• Manchester City FC

Our old friend ‘The Fold’. We’ve discussed you a lot. Where did you come from? Where do you go? What should go above you? That top of the page real estate is valuable and should be treated with respect. But once you know the rules it’s good to break them. In a world of endless page rendering, touch screen tablets and of course the good old scroll wheel mice, we love how creative the Internet is becoming with page length. From Facebook and Twitter to trendy parallax design and one pager sites long scrolling pages can communicate a unique narrative. Puma’s ‘Clever Little Bag’ site pulls together a diverse range of campaign content and functionality. INQ walks you through their ‘Cloud Touch’ product demo. And Nike ‘Jumpman’ uses endless page length for a typographic led basketball ad.

• Nike ‘Jumpman’
• Puma ‘Clever Little Bag’
• INQ Mobile ‘Cloud Touch’

HTML5 is a major revision of how the web is put together. Much of the development is in incorporating and developing multimedia functionality that has previously been bolted on technology within a browser. Other advancements include smarter use of offline storage, geolocation data and forms. Early HTML5 examples are already hinting at the possibilities. MSN’s ‘Royal Wedding’ timeline shows more seamless, high definition use of interactive animation, images and audio. Rough Guides ‘Make the Most’ site, in a similarly seamless fashion, visualises geotagged flickr photos wonderfully. And of course the now seminal ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ music video from Arcade Fire that pulls together video, animation, and geotagged satellite imagery into your very own personalised music video. Very exciting.

• MSN ‘Royal Wedding’
• The Wilderness Downtown
• Rough Guides ‘Make the Most’

The Content Days focus on topics such as the Web Content Management, actual Delivery Server and CMS-Solutions for intranet, extranet, websites and portals. It is a forum for knowledge transfer between clients and partners of the OpenText Website Management Group, as well as between technology providers and those who are interested in Enterprise Content Management (ECM).

This years OpenText clients and partner conference in Germany is taking place on the 5th and 6th April at the Hotel Dolce Unterschleissheim in Unterschleissheim, near Munich. And for the first time, there will be the Content Days in the UK, taking place on the 7th and 8th April, at the Twickenham Stadium near London.

Munich | London

http://www.opentext.de/3/global/events-contentdays-munich
http://www.opentext.com/2/global/events-contentdays-london

For all these years, our beautiful designs have been taken by our technical team and transposed into a language that web browsers can interpret in order to render these amazing designs to our users across all the different browsers and platforms.

And we’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing this. We’ve loved it – we still do. It’s what makes us all tick. Delivering these beautiful designs.

But the thing that has made us happiest recently is Microsoft’s objective of ridding the world of IE6. Hallelujah. Praise be to the browser god. Thank the Lord!

For so long this toad of a browser – this software abomination lurking around like a bad smell – has blighted our studio. It has put boundaries on our designers, limitations on our technical team, red faces on our PMs and testers. It has single-handedly put stress into our days and in some cases fragmented relationships in our teams. Screw you IE6!

But no more! Never again will we need to use the phrases ‘IE6 workaround’, ‘IE6 hack’, ‘graceful degrading in IE6′, ‘lack of support for PNG alpha-transparency’. We can go back to concentrating on our designs and writing proper HTML and CSS without that nagging thought in the back of our minds.

You’re history IE6. History!

Crossrail is a pioneering transport programme that will bring huge benefits to the people who live in London and South East England. Young Crossrail have launched an educational campaign aimed at schools affected by the Crossrail works. It is mainly promoting the theme of lorry traffic safety and construction site safety as traffic will increase and more construction sites will emerge as the work progresses. The aim is to make kids aware of these changes, as well as teaching them about the history of London transport.

Yet more fun, interactive games aimed at kids – we love this!

Great news for ID Media and two of our partners. We’re on the short list for two categories at this year’s BIMA Awards. Firstly we’re nominated in the very competitive Education & Outreach category for the Spelling Bee project we created with The Times. The project is now in its third year and we’re hugely proud of what it has achieved. And secondly we’re a nominee in the Property, Construction & Engineering category for Bryden Wood’s brand site. We think it’s a thing of a beauty and are hoping the judges will as well.

The Times Spelling Bee has been nominated in the Education & Outreach category.

Bryden Wood’s site has been in the Property, Construction & Engineering category.