You can see the full project collection on Behance, or visit Román’s website.

Everything Ecstatic, unfolded.

Unfolded again, but rotated.

Here is the David Carson Nine Inch Nails art for comparison:

Here is the front and back together:

Both albums have some interesting and strange cropping with photos and images. Four Tet’s has so much congestion though, it’s pretty easy to find yourself more attracted to the Nine Inch Nail’s cover.

I think Four Tet perfected their image cropping, arrangement and off-beat typography in Everything Ecstatic’s second version. The design style is the same, but much more mature—All the extra and unnecessary elements have been removed:

Going to the absolute extreme, here is an MIA cover. It’s definitely anti-design. Unlike Four Tet and NIN, the design has no visual appeal or interest. It just looks like something crapped together by a secretary. Breaking the rules of design is great, but what have you really accomplished when your piece is painful to look at?

It isn’t a mystery that Urban Outfitters has a cheeky sense of humor… And that’s really all you can say about this recent effort, a sale graphic for their online store.

This is a god-awful and funny display of anti-design. I say it’s funny because usually when a designer delves into anti-design they (often) perform it so well that it looks like well designed crap.

This doesn’t look like well designed crap, it just IS crap. I imagine they probably used MS Paint to make it rather than Photoshop or Illustrator, and they’ve repeated the word “Sale” four times: in blue on the left and right; in white, with one letter on each side; and in blue again, written backwards really small in the middle.

There are 2 pieces of ‘furniture’: 2 blue lines on the left that don’t really seem to serve a purpose.

I don’t know why I’m talking about this, but I’m sure the designers at UO’s office had a good laugh about it.

I keep hearing these second hand stories of design professors giving students these doom and gloom forecasts of the job market, and I just don’t get it. We now live in a world where absolutely everything is designed for every level of business and organization, where many of us get daily “where the hell is my website/logo/etc” emails, whilst sending out “Need a little more time!” messages. Yet academia has students convinced the market out there is flat. That it doesn’t have a voracious appetite for design that many of us struggle to meet. It isn’t flat. There’s more to do than can be done.

This contest will be Republicans (represented by right-wing PACs) vs Democrats (represented by left-wing PACs). Good luck!

On the Right:

SarahPAC

The website layout for SarahPAC, October 2010.

Featuring not much except some about information, FAQs, and contact information, Palin’s site is rather shallow (hehe). On the plus side, the layout is clean, and the photo of Palin slightly breaks the grid, adding a bit of visual interest and drawing the eye to look at her confident, friendly pose. The email sign up box and buttons are slick, though the button gradients are a bit rigid. The brown texture in the body background is too Photoshoppy, I would recommend using an actual scanned texture instead.

Typography: 4/10
Composition: 5.5/10
Depth of Content: 2/10
Buttons and Banners: 6/10

Total: 17.5/40

Republican Main Street Partnership PAC

The Republican Main Street Partnership PAC, October 2010

Pretty much everything that can go wrong in a design has gone wrong here: Early 1990′s design and typography, a super-saturated color scheme, double hyphens instead of em dashes, bright yellow highlighted calls to action, nasty type beveling and drop shadows, huge paragraph indents (combined with extra line spaces), and more.

Typography: 1/10
Composition: 1/10
Depth of Content: 4/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 7/40

Move America Forward

Move America Forward, October 2010

The martial theme here is too heavy handed: Even if the organization has a Soldier-Centered approach, we want the audience to visualize supporting the troops’ life, interests, health and well being, not think that they’re donating money to buy machine-guns and artillery shells. The large, embedded Facebook widget is always a no-no, the mini-banners in the sidebar are all different styles, making the page feel like it is covered with advertising. The 9/11 banner at the top features weak type and illustration, and the white glow on the outside of the content box is way too heavy-handed. The Twitter feed on the left sidebar is too thin on the column-width, rendering the text unreadable. Also, the header and branding is turning into a graphic stew. Depth of content, featuring lots of sections, the (poorly implemented) Facebook and Twitter information, etc, is good.

Typography: 3/10
Composition: 4/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 18/40

Huck PAC

HuckPAC, October 2010

Ahhh Mr. Huckabee, you never cease to surprise us: This is today’s first passing design! The Kevin Spacey doppelganger has a weak, rushed logo, but the “Contribute” drop down gray box breaks the grid nicely, calling an appropriate amount of attention to itself and giving the right side of the header some actual content. The main navigation buttons look decent, and have a nice effect on rollover. The Featured Item banner features clean typography, information graphics, and photography, and the social media buttons are large, trendy, and gray (converting them to gray means their varied color schemes don’t compete with the site’s overall design).

Typography: 8.25/10
Composition: 8.75/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 8.5/10

Total: 32.5/40

CPAC

CPAC, October 2010

Conservative.org’s CPAC section is mixed. The large constitution image as the body background has a cool look to it, though it starts to busy the design too much, calling attention away from the content area. Lowering the opacity on that significantly would probably help. The logo is clean, though un-concepted, and the navigation buttons, though minimal, aren’t working. Despite these issues, the overall skin feels relatively clean, especially compared to some of the other examples here. However, once we get into the content area, everything falls apart: centered type blocks, overuse of italics, HTML default blue links with underlines, pixelated social media icons with awkward spacing, a messy banner, blue ribbons made to look 3D when nothing else on the page implies dimension and lots and lots of underlining.

Typography: 2/10
Composition: 3/10
Depth of Content: 5/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 11/40

On the Left:

ActBlue

ActBlue, October 2010

ActBlue acted very blue on this layout… Way too blue. The main content background blue is way too saturated for comfortable reading, and has a variety of blue text shades on top of it. Icons are in different shades of blue also. The main navigation buttons are undesigned and underlined, the important numbers, pull quotes and calls to action are placed seemingly at random with no attention paid to typography. Typos, like not capitalizing words at the beginnings of article titles, are very distracting. Awkward background texture (tight horizontal lines).

Typography: 2/10
Composition: 2/10
Depth of Content: 4/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 9/40

Democratic Advancement PAC

Democratic Advancement PAC, October 2010

Featuring this contest’s most awkward header font/logo (see how it absolutely falls apart when PAC is capitalized?) and an almost-literal mile of text content, DAPAC’s site is simple but uninviting. The text column is way too wide for comfortable reading, and, like I said, really, really long, with no graphics, icons or any other feature to break it up. I would be surprised if anyone has ever read this column of text from start to finish (the page is too long to include on this site, if you want to see it in all its glory, go to their page).

Typography: 1/10
Composition: 1/10
Depth of Content: 5/10
Buttons and Banners: 1/10

Total: 8/40

HillPAC

HillPAC, October 2010

It appears Hillary’s designers got started on the right path, but this website never fully materialized. Maybe because there’s an issue with money (the site simply asks you to contribute to her leftover presidential campaign debt, which I would hardly call a PAC)?

Typography: 5/10
Composition: 6/10
Depth of Content: 0/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 15/40

MoveOn.org

MoveOn, October 2010

With all their celebrity endorsements, and their front and center role in the new American culture war, I assumed MoveOn would have a slick, badda-bing-badda-boom website, but no dice. It isn’t horrible, but there are lots of areas that need attention. To get started: A larger header with much more to contrast it from the content area, a logo (instead of just blue, italic sans-serif) and strong, elegant typography in the content area and sidebar.

Typography: 3/10
Composition: 3.5/10
Depth of Content: 7/10
Buttons and Banners: 4/10

Total: 17.5/40

Results!

Republicans: 86/200 or 43% of the vote.
Democrats: 49.5/160 or 30.93% of the vote.

Overall winner (and this was a pretty easy call): Mike Huckabee.

I’m really surprised, given Obama’s incredible web campaign and gorgeous sites, that so many other Democratic groups have marginalized or ignored good design. Obviously, the Republicans have too in most cases, and may have even lost if: 1)  Huckabee hadn’t come through with a moderately good site, and 2) MoveOn put some of that money into building a site that would encourage sharing, viral messages, and return visitors.

And that truly is the lesson to be learned here: When you show visitors that your house is in order, that you can present a good public face, you can make your information easy to navigate, accessible and pleasurable (not painful!) to view, you show them that you know how to spend the money that they’re giving you. Not only that, but they are encouraged to return, encouraged to show others the site and are better able to spread your message since they spend more time absorbing it.

See any design pointers, or know of other PAC sites I missed that could’ve swayed this election? Let me know!

The “Template will kill design” argument is old and laughable. Most companies, organizations and corporations, when they aren’t failing or going out of business, have money to spend. When you have $100,000, or even $10,000, to spend on marketing, you spend it on something custom and exciting… Not a $49 template. Those cheap templates are used primarily by “I’ve got an idea for a business!” people that aren’t really committed to their ideas.

I also keep trying to push the idea that it isn’t about “Web Design.” A designer who refers to herself as a Web Designer is like a Graphic Designer that refers to himself as a Brochure Designer. The World Wide Web is one application that utilizes the Internet. Those that call themselves Web Designers should be able to design almost any type of interface for almost any digital medium.

In fact, I don’t even like Graphic Designer. I prefer to call myself a Designer. What do you need? I’ll design it: Logo, Website, iPhone app interface, board game, Xbox 360 game interface, Poster, CD, book.. anything. We are living in a world where Everything is Designed. Everything.

Regardless of the specific application, the need for all things to be designed is only going to increase. The key to being a designer in this world is just that: be a Designer. If you apply yourself to one application you will rise and fade along with it.

“almost all graphic designers i’ve ever met will state up front that their purpose in life is the make the world ‘more beautiful.

so, when they think of those “publisher’s clearing house” mailers, they get angry and offended by them. they always say something like “oh, i wish they would DO SOMETHING about them!” as if they were an insult to the design profession.

the truth of those mailers (like the ‘house’ brand) is that they have studied it very carefully. few things in the advertising world have been studied as well as direct mail. those ugly packages WORK.

at one point, the PubClearHouse folks decided to ‘improve’ the design and ‘appearance’ of the mailer. they even hired a big shot design studio to do it. they cleaned it up and made it look real pretty. they were mailed out and the response DROPPED dramatically. it was a disaster. so, the next year, they went back to the old ugly look. sales were suddenly better than ever. lesson learned.”

Read the rest on Art’s facebook.

Michael: Is this your position:absolute ?
3 minutes ago ·

Me: Yes, this position IS absolute. It is not a position: relative. And it will NOT float: left or float: right.

Michael: Your points are clear:both of them.

Notice there are 6 columns here, 3 per page. The outside columns are left blank to serve as the margins. The gutter between the two pages is thin, as the 2 text blocks on either side are pushed together in the middle. What you start to see is that there are 3 designs occuring here: Each page has 2 text columns that are perfectly balanced on the page. Not only that, looking at everything together you see that the entire 2 page spread is harmoniously arranged.

The spread is not crammed full of information: at least half of the surface is untouched by ink. This allows the design to “breathe.” It makes the content on the page more important and eye catching. Even though you probably can’t read this language, you want to sit and look at it. That is perfect design: It needs no improvement.

Our books today traditionally have a single wide text column on each page. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those broken in two like this. Of course, magazines make use of this extensively, using 2 and 3 columns per page. But magazines also tend to over-crowd.

These typefaces, the paper, the density, the uneven quality of the ink: All these elements come together to give us an example of lush typography from the 16th century.

Look how the margin notes wrap into the text column (especially apparent in the second image). We could apply this to current design projects just as you see it, or in other ways too. What other secondary or tertiary design elements could be allowed to “impede” on the territory of the top-level heirarchy?

Click each image to view a large version.

Source: Fromoldbooks.org.

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