Kenneth Grange is a bit of an unsung hero, which is probably why you haven’t heard about him until now. I can however assure you that at some point in your life you have sat in, used or walked past one of his designs. 

Kenneth Grange is an industrial designer known for designing in a friendly manner – Grange has said that he wants his products to be a ‘pleasure to use’. He sort to eliminate ‘contradictions’ in design that failed to make the products easy to use. In this respect, he reminds me of today’s digital UX designers, striving to make the web a better place.

Kenneth Grange has never had a particular style – he’s moved with the times, but what stands out for me is his repeated use of rounded corners, making his products seem refreshingly different yet still maintaining a familiar status. He makes use of the rounded corner on some of his more impressive portfolio subjects – iconic everyday British objects like London’s black cab, the InterCity 125 train, Kenwood food mixers, Thermos tea flasks and Kodak cameras.

Today, web designers use rounded corners in a huge array of their work – the introduction of CSS3 has made it easy for rounded corners to be implemented (in decent browsers) and the technique has been hugely popular amongst web designers, but there is a fundamental difference towards the use of them in their work compared to Kenneth Grange’s legacy.

Grange developed rounded corners to make his products fresh. Whilst it is true that web designers using rounded corners in their work are differentiating web designs from the straight edge of the days before CSS3, the rounded corner alone cannot make a website seem refreshingly different. As more and more websites take on a rounded corner effect, the less effective it becomes in seeming refreshing.

Take the black cab for example, the design is so distinctive and different that you can pick out a black cab with ease in busy London traffic. I know that the black cab has a lot more to it than rounded corners, but the curvature of the design plays a big role in giving the cab it’s persona, it is unusual but still inviting – something that is incredibly important to a taxi. If every car in London had that same curvature, it wouldn’t be as easy to thumb down a taxi.

It’s not just online that our everyday lives are getting rounder and rounder. Just by looking around my room I can demonstrate this. Jony Ive and Apple’s design team have put rounded corners on everything, and in some cases have made new models even rounder than before (the new Macbook for example). PlayStation and Xbox models are rounder than ever before (remember those old straight cut models). Rounded corners are modern.

To conclude, the use of the rounded corner in web design does make devices seem more inviting and friendly, but rounded corners should not be used as the main concept to make a design look fresh.

Photo credit: Jonathan Burr

On my day off I decided to reproduce the Dusted logo through CSS. CSS3 properties have allowed us to reproduce some images and icons purely with code — whilst it is pretty cool, it also has some disadvantages.

From left to right: The original JPG, CSS and CSS — but without border-radius. As you can see, the creation has been pretty successful, I used two key CSS3 properties to help achieve this. Setting border radiuses and gradients of several elements.

The finished product

Technically it wasn’t that hard to produce — a couple of CSS3 properties and we can achieve the below. The tricky bit is getting the shapes and curvature to match the image. It needs a fair bit of trial and error and you could spend hours perfecting it. Matching the typeface took longest — luckily we don’t use a font with serifs.

If you look closely, you will see a small imperfection with the highlighted layer — it should be straighter, but that was the best I could get it. Anyone got any ideas how I can make this line look more accurate? Perhaps by rotating the element slightly?

Whilst this is quite cool, is it the right thing to do?

Semantically I don’t agree with inserting empty HTML elements like divs, although I’ve inserted nbsp in some tags for this example, we really shouldn’t be inserting blank content into these elements — they exist to hold objects like text, not to be styled to look like text. HTML5 Canvas is the current web tool that we should be using or starting to use when drawing 2d elements and graphics. This is just an experiment.

Canvas however, is not supported by ‘less distinguished’ web browsers and that is a problem for developers who need to produce these 2d objects and make them appear consistent across each and every browser. CSS3 tools like border-radius and gradients are also not supported by these browsers — meaning our developments will look like the far right icon above. Here our D appears as an pixelated O — quite cool as it happens, but suicide for the brand. I’m hoping I don’t get shot for that.

For now we can just use images right?

Yes, at the moment images are just fine. If you’re really desperate to produce something with pure code, have a crack at Raphael.js — something which is accessible for all browsers. You can also do a lot more than just draw with it.

The Dusted “D.” device are registered trademarks of Dusted Design Partners Limited.

This article originally appeared on My Blog.

Photo credit: Flickr user sATEK

The death of Steve Jobs last month naturally prompted a huge amount of media coverage and surprisingly an outpouring of emotion online as devotees came to terms with the passing of the Apple visionary. You could forgive the twitterati for generalising on the cause of death but many official news reports continued to refer to his diagnosis as pancreatic cancer.

In fact, Jobs had been suffering from pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET), a slow growing and rare cancer that is often confused with the more aggressive pancreatic cancer. This misinformation underlines the need for better awareness and understanding of NET cancers and is exactly what our client, NET Cancer Day, aims to do via a newly designed website and social media strategy which launches today.

Now in its second year, Worldwide NET Cancer Awareness Day (WNCAD – an informal partnership between NET organisations from around the world) aims to raise awareness about cancers called neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and the need for timely detection, diagnosis and treatment; bring hope to patients, their caregivers and families; and drive action. More than 50% of NET patients are incorrectly diagnosed and initially treated for the wrong disease, for three to seven years on average.

Why the zebra?

The zebra mascot is derived from the campaign’s zebra-striped ribbon logo. It stems from the fact, medical students in some countries are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” to encourage them to think about the most likely and common cause of symptoms.  However, this approach risks that rarer diseases like NET cancers (“zebras”) will be overlooked because the symptoms are similar to those of more common diseases such as Crohn’s, IBS, asthma or rosacea (“horses”).

Building on the first year’s success

Dusted were briefed on the redevelopment of the Worldwide NET Cancer Day website after being appointed in August and following the successful redesign of the NET Patient Foundation website (which represents patients and carers in the UK). In its first year, WNCAD received more than 5,000 signatures to their online proclamation and this year the target is for site visitors to show their support via a global map featuring the zebra mascot and a virtual journey around the world. Sharing this message via Facebook, Twitter and email is naturally a key part of support strategy.

Continuing with the global community theme (and social media aspect), another map element of the site aims to join people together from across the world in a global video event brought ‘live’ on the day itself – November 10. As the day moves west, video clips (pulled from YouTube) will become available to watch – from Singapore to Sweden, from the UK to the USA – visitors will see how the World NET Community is working together to raise awareness of NET cancers around the globe.

Photo credit: Flickr user wwarby

The Google Maps API is something I hold dear to my heart, I produced my final year project using the service and received a first for my efforts. It is one of Google’s most popular and powerful tools that until now has been free to use and implement across corporate and personal sites on the Web.

Google recently announced plans to charge for high usage but insist policies have been in place for some time now. Site owners are now worried Google are about to start charging for what has been seen as free to developers for six years.

Should you be worried?

If you own a small blog? No. The charges will only apply to you if your site exceeds 25,000 map loads per day per API or up to 2,500 map loads for ‘styled maps’. If you exceed these limits your app will have to be cut to make fewer API calls, or you will have to purchase a Maps API Premier License. The price of this license will cost about 4 dollars per 1,000 page views. A web service like Twitter for example will be paying huge amounts, where their service makes a massive amount of API calls and ‘map loads’ to Google every day.

Is 25,000 map loads a lot?

This entirely depends on how popular your website is. At Dusted, one the busiest sites we manage gets about 15,000 page views a day, but crucially we hold maps for individual business locations that are located on their own sub-pages. If your website includes multiple maps then your ‘map loads’ will quite quickly reach 25,000.

If you are worried, speak to the people who manage your website, or check out your Google Analytics data. This should give you a rough idea of how many page views you are getting per day and you can then estimate a guess at how many times your map is being loaded. It is also worth bearing in mind the fact that page views are usually quite substantial when a website first goes live, it some cases it might be worth buying the premier license to cover this process.

Why are Google doing this?

This is quite simple really, Google has been trying to monetize maps silently through sponsored map markers. These work in a very similar fashion to sponsored search results, where a company pays to have their business identified at the top of a hierarchy of search results. Monetizing maps in this way is clearly unsuccessful and Google are looking for a real return on their popular mapping feature. Google have put real value and engineering into Google Maps, the quality of geocoding and data availability is second to none – so maybe we should just be grateful that the tool has been freely available for this long.

Photo credit: Flickr user akeg.

The iconic luxury brand, Orient Express, launched its first Stateside digital awareness campaign last week and Dusted were responsible for a key part of the development. Working alongside Chandelier Creative and Criterion Global in New York, Dusted built and integrated a microsite and various social media channels, featuring nine short films, which follow the travel experiences of an eclectic and engaging cast of fictional characters and real life staff members reside.

From the sparkling canals of Venice to the ‘Lost City’ of Machu Picchu, A Journey Like No Other, follows Duke, Lauren, Penelope and Max as they travel Orient-Express’ world of iconic hotels and unique experiences. This family journeys in style, seeking out adventure and enjoying their time together in their own individual ways.

Properties selected from within the diverse portfolio to showcase the Orient-Express hallmarks of authenticity and character are a romantic journey from Paris to Venice on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train, a celebratory visit to Hotel Cipriani in Venice, a vacation at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, and a trip to Cuzco, Peru, to explore the delights of Hotel Monasterio, Machu Picchu Sanctuary Lodge, and the Hiram Bingham train.

The videos have been produced by Swedish film-maker, Kalle Gustafsson, who is renowned for the style and class he brings to his fashion photography and work with luxury brands. The Orient-Express films are artistically graded and set to commissioned music with voice over by renowned actor Bill Nighy.

Orient-Express is currently ranked first in its competitive set of 12 global luxury hospitality brands in the areas of service and emotional intelligence by Leading Quality Assurance. A proud association for Dusted.

Brands and, more specifically, their guidelines have been evolving as new outlets for said brands are invented. Large brands have to consider all these various endpoints — small-scale print, large-scale print, video/television and the web being the most common. However that last one doesn’t play brand ball like the others do, especially as of late. Print and video are 100% controllable in terms of the final deliverables. In print, inks, stock, in fact all elements of the design process can be controlled, giving the brand nowhere to run. The same is true for video, with it’s fixed safe areas, ratios and colour reproduction. The same used to be almost true of the web at one point, if you take a thin sliver of it’s short history — specifically the bit after it became possible to have fine control over web page layouts and just before the wide-scale adoption of CSS3.

Most respected web designers would currently frown at that period now, with it’s table-based layouts and spacer GIFs. But in terms of a brand’s visual language, there was no better time. Web developers would pride themselves on getting a web design looking identical across several browsers on several different platforms — that was holy grail of web design and development back then. If your site looked the same in Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6 and Netscape Navigator your job was done — you’re a good web designer, and the brand’s visual language was safe.

Fast forward to the present day and what is broadly believed to be great web design is something very different. Now it’s good practice to pander to the user’s browsing technology — a practice known as responsive design. It brings a fresh challenge to designers. Now, instead of making a site look identical across various browsers, the key is to play to the browser’s strengths. This approach makes total sense. The browsing landscape has never been so diverse — not only different desktop browsers as there have always been, but we now have numerous mobile devices, tablets, netbooks, etc. We aren’t so much having to think about what piece of software the user has, but what capabilities their software and hardware have.

Responsive design is about creating a design that is fluid in terms of it’s presentation — it will change depending on the user’s software/hardware capabilities. To sum it up, dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com. This practice could potentially put web design on a collision course with traditional brand guidelines. It is most apparent when you look at how responsive design would suggest you approach the differences between old and new browsers using what is known as progressive enhancement. Lets take the example of the humble rounded corner. Support for the CSS needed to put rounded corners onto a box is quite prevalent now with the exception of Internet Explorer (versions 8 and down). Unfortunately IE still accounts for a hefty chunk of the browser market — therefore a large number that would not see CSS rounded corners. Responsive design proponents would say that if a browser can’t natively do something then it’s no big deal, let it fall back to a default (in this case, square corners). It makes total sense, if you discount any brand visual language. Something like rounded corners would be integral to a brand’s tone of voice as much as the colour palette is. In my experience it’s tricky to sell in this dynamic approach to design to clients and brand guardians although, to me, it makes a lot of sense.

Rounded corners (used here to simplify the argument somewhat) is one of the more basic examples of modern web techniques that can not, without adding extraneous mark-up, script and imagery, be achieved consistently across all delivery methods. So do brand guidelines have to evolve as the web has? Do we build these differences and other modern web techniques into guidelines? After all, there is so much more to web design now than just web pages and layout, and all these elements become part of the fabric of a brand. For example, animated interactions as much as colour can relay a tone of voice, but they certainly aren’t universally available to the end-user. So do we simply not use them, opting for a consistent, lowest common denominator approach for all, or do we let those users that can view them experience that part of a brand’s language? I don’t see why not.

Luckily, this particular issue of progressive enhancement is getting smaller with most browsers now playing ball with the majority of advanced style and interactive elements available to web designers, but the web isn’t a still millpond — at times it can be white water rapids, and brands need to ride them rather than build dams to hold back the flow. The sooner they embrace responsive design the better, giving their customers a more delightful experience, no matter the technology they use to interact with them, as well as giving web designers a fresh challenge to replace the out-dated practice of consistency across platforms.

This article originally appeared on Design Assembly.

Photo credit: Flickr user kaibara87

Google Plus is the new social network from Google. This post looks into the real reasons it has come about, and outlines exactly what it does – analysing some of it’s main features and comparing them to existing social networks.

Why has it come about?

Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering boss believes “online sharing is broken. And even awkward… We think connecting with other people is a basic human need. We do it all the time in real life, but our online tools are rigid. They force us into buckets – or into being completely public… Real life sharing is nuanced and rich. It has been hard to get that into software.”

Vic’s statement could be genuine, it is true that sharing through Facebook or Twitter means the user can either be completely public or incredibly private. However, there may be a deeper reason for Vic’s concern. Google started off as a simple ‘search engine’ but has grown into one of the Web’s superpowers… To Google, Facebook is seen as a newly established power that can destroy Google’s dominance, therefore actions must be put in place to stop it.

Google Plus is an attempt at the devaluation of Facebook. It is worth noting though, that this is third time lucky for Google to produce a ‘social’ application that hits it off in the public domain, in the past: Google Buzz and Google Wave have both failed spectacularly.

What exactly does it do?

Well, it is early doors. All online applications develop or should develop as time passes by and as new applications and technologies are released. Currently, I like to think of Google Plus as a combination of tools (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Tumblr and WhatsApp) – popular tools used on the Web today…

Through Circles users can group people they are following. Users can follow strangers or industry heavy-weights (like on Twitter) or users can follow friends or work colleagues. Using Circles, users can then share posts with specific Circles – this is handy if you want to share family pictures with family or a work party with your colleagues.

Through Hangouts users can video call other users (like on Skype). Users can ‘hangout’ with more than one user, creating a kind of video conference call. This is cool, and would be useful for business, however with a feature name like ‘hangouts’, I can’t see businesses using this to communicate with external bodies or clients as the feature name has an unprofessional ring to it.

The biggest feature is Sparks - Here users can search for external content within the Google Plus application itself. This is good in its own right. However, Google have incorporated this into their search results… For example if someone you are following shares a particular link, your search results will make you aware of this. This could well effect the way sites are ranked within Google’s search criteria. Sites with more shares may appear higher than others. This would mean that search rankings would be even more diverse and varied than they are in their current state.

Like Facebook, users can Share posts – However, with Google Plus you can effectively re-share other user’s posts. This reminds me of re-blogging posts on Tumblr, or Re-tweeting on Twitter.

Huddle - This is currently, purely developed for Mobile – Here users can group chat, just like on WhatsApp, rather than having separate text conversations.

Why would people drop Facebook?

Personally, I much prefer sharing my content with selected Circles. A lot of the time I refrain from posting on Facebook because I don’t want everyone to see my post. I personally believe that Vic and Google have addressed ‘broken online sharing’. The Google Plus sharing experience is richer, mainly through Circles - by selecting who to share content with, but also through Hangouts where communication is more ‘real-life’.

What does this mean for business?

On Facebook, a user has a collection of liked pages or brands in their personal about section. Unlike Facebook, Google Plus does not hold special pages or groups for businesses (i.e. Coca Cola). However, currently there is nothing stopping a brand or business setup a Google Plus account looking to address their fans.

A big point to make – Information Liberation

Currently, Google Plus asks you if you would like the organisation to personalise adverts using your data. However Facebook doesn’t do this, it sells your information to personalise those adverts you see on the right hand side of your page. Just so you know, in 2010 Facebook’s ad revenue hit $1.86 billion – (Mashable).

Google are by no means angelic when it comes to data. In the past they have committed some serious acts, including a case where Google stole data from unprotected networks in the UK: read more on that here. Despite this, I prefer that Google asks the user if they can personalise adverts with data – unlike Facebook.

To sum up

Personally, I think Google Plus is looking to be far more promising than Facebook, where technically, it’s levels of sharing and new tools far out shine Facebook’s greatest features. However, will everyday ’normal’ people (people who are not as web geeky as me) appreciate it, perhaps they don’t want to move to an empty network? Facebook, has a huge user base – that is what makes it successful – Google needs to steal those users if it is to really hit off.

Photo credit: Flickr user Bert23

Just before the UK headed into (yet another) bank holiday weekend, changes to the EU online privacy law came into effect – the law that applies to how website owners can use cookies to store user information.

From 26 May website owners now need to gain ‘explicit’ consent from their users before they allow cookies to be downloaded and used, the only exception been ‘essential’ cookies such as those used on e-commerce sites and where users choose to stay logged into online services.

While the law will not be enforced for another year, failure to take any action before 26 May 2012 will result in a fine of up to £500,000 in the UK.

The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) hopes the new regulations will lead to greater control over personal data but the upshot will undoubtedly be an outbreak in pop-up warnings and messages. The Radio Times website is the first I’ve seen to do this.

Although pop-ups certainly detract from the user experience, I suspect they’re simplicity will see them widely used as site owners decide on the best course of action. It will be interesting to see how the major players handle this new legislation and how users come to terms with the potential confusion of visiting UK and non-UK websites.

Chances are, browser developers will push their cookie management preferences to the front more and build in ‘defaults’ we can check and forget about (over and above what’s possible now) but until then, I’ll leave the following advice for users and site owners alike:

• First, look at cookie
• Now, identify the cookie
• Then, smell cookie
• Finally, eat the cookie… Om nom nom nom!

Photo credit: Flickr user neil conway

Dusted USA continues to gain a foothold in the American market and just before Christmas, saw the launch of Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems (DHD) – the highly respected jewelry store based in Charlotte, NC. Dusted were commissioned to redesign and build a new site for DHD, who were looking to update and drastically improve their online presence before venturing on a market push this year.

While the redesign was of great importance, the need for a Content Management System (CMS) was also a priority. Due to frequent changes in their product inventory, DHD required the ability to update their website catalog and content in-house.

In addition to the website build, we were also tasked with managing their social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and providing an e-mail marketing platform that would enable DHD to easily create ‘e-blasts‘ and analyze the associated data (open rates, click-thrus, etc).

Alongside the online development, DHD were also planning their retail space with Dave Temple and Mike Jeffcoat of Temple + Jeffcoat, a Charlotte based creative firm who developed The Proposals, a series of DHD videos. With just four months until Christmas, we all had our work cut-out to communicate effectively and successfully deliver a new off and on-line brand.

As the project kicked-off, it quickly became clear that in order to successfully modernize the website and develop a social media offering, the existing identity needed a refresh. Luckily, our creative resource has a flair for typography and we were able to offer several solutions before moving forward with a new layout that translates very well across other digital platforms. This new identity is also soon to appear at their retail location, which will improve their visibility and attract new customers around the South Park area of Charlotte.

Although attracting a new, ‘modern’ audience was high on DHD’s list of priorities, maintaining their tradition, ethos and existing loyal customer base was also a top priority. It was vital that we adhered to their core messages – one of quality, knowledge and trust – whilst incorporating several attributes that would provide a fresh, modern approach.

In order to communicate this message, and encourage online customers to make contact, it was important to produce high quality product photography for the catalog. The shots were taken by Steve Cook who did a great job in capturing the essence of the jewelry and providing the photos which worked within the redesigned website.

The new website has been live for two months now, with an immediate upturn in visitors, pageviews, time on site and a drastic reduction in bounce rate. The email marketing platform has also successfully kept their customers up-to-date with the latest offerings and helped to communicate the revised identity and encourage brand recognition.

Moving forward, we will continue to work alongside Temple + Jeffcoat to manage the DHD brand and support their growing online presence.

EDIT: As this feed was driven by real-time technology it is now showing blank. However, if you would like to see the photos that had featured in it you can visit my flickr set of the day.