When was the last time you thanked me?

Designers – fuck you all! I want to be more than just another fucking fallback font in your web designs. I don’t care if you like Helvetica better, you miserable cunts – you need to treat me better than this.

Think I’m too boring? Well, go use fucking Platypus then, dick-face. I’m sure the rest of your tacky team members will think it captures the youthful spirit of your shitty company.

You know what? I’m on every single fucking device you own! Only Linux people have managed to avoid me (and honestly, I don’t really want to be on a device that is used for porn 63% of the time – I’m better off without those nerds).

I’ve seen myself on a Mac, and I looked pretty darn handsome. I’ve even managed to pull off a fairly decent look on a Windows machine.

Despite all of those things – all of the amazing things that I have to offer you – you still choose to ignore me in your designs.

Sure, I’m popular, but don’t you think it’s time for you designers to show me a bit more respect? To thank me every now and then?

(photo by ‘mattschwarz‘)

The traditional publishing house, Penguin Books, has decided to look in the direction of the iPhone/iPad application market with what they call “iPad Imagineering”. They’re not producing applications nor prototypes, but simply ideas for what to do when they have to go digital with their content. There’s definitely a few intelligent and great ideas within these different iPad apps they are presenting.

Wired Magazine (in collaboration with Adobe) also recently released a video of their ideas for how to transfer their printed magazine to a tablet device.

Have you got any other good examples of traditional media which is trying out new things with upcoming devices?

UPDATE: Also refer to an old blog post of ours on the Future of the magazine

As internet connections and servers get faster, we’re seeing more and more sites using autocomplete to assist their visitors in making complex searches in a snap. Unfortunately, a lot of these sites are styling their autocomplete results in a less-than-optimal fashion. Here’s three guidelines for how to style autocomplete results:

 

Google is a poster child for designing autocomplete results.

1) Highlight the differences, not the commonalities

You should always highlight the differences in your autocomplete results since your visitor will already be aware of what he has searched for. Also, when given a list of results with commonalities, it’s the differences in the results that are meaningful, not the elements that are being repeated (typically the search term).

Unfortunately, many sites highlight the search term – the commonality – as opposed to the differences. The popular jQuery autocomplete plugin even has this as its default styling, which could be the reason why so many people highlight their results this way. (Whenever you use open source plugins, take a second to think about the default styling and see if it actually makes sense.)

Guideline #1: highlight the differences in your results (preferably by making it bold).

2) Avoid visual clutter if results are simple

Unless your typical search result is going to extend over multiple lines, you should keep your results as clean as possible. Just highlight the differences (see the above guideline) and the active row.

Many sites use all sorts of different visual clues to separate even simple results, alternating row colors and horizontal lines being the two worst sinners. This is unnecessary clutter, which makes it difficult for your visitors to quickly scan the results you’re presenting them.

Guideline #2: don’t use alternating row colors and horizontal lines, unless your typical result is very lengthy (longer than a single line).

3) Only show a few results at a time

Don’t show anymore than 10 results, you can show more results on your actual search page, and if your your typical result is more than a single line you should probably show even less results in the autocomplete.

Autocomplete results are for quickly making a complex search query or selecting a specific item from a list of possible options. It shouldn’t be considered a replacement for an actual search page. Also, a visitor looking for very specific results will have no trouble finding them since she can quickly filter out everything that’s irrelevant by typing in a few extra characters.

Guideline #3: only show 10 or less results at a time (use a dedicated search page if you need to display more).

Show me the meaning

All of the above guidelines are about emphasizing the meaningful data. You want to put that in the spotlight and have everything else fade into the background (or not appear at all).

When getting back a list of suggestions for better search queries, it’s the differences in those results that are meaningful. When reading a list of search results or suggestions, it’s the text of each result that’s meaningful. And of course, when searching a huge database, it’s only the 10 most relevant results that are meaningful.

Good design is about emphasizing the meaningful data. This goes for styling autocomplete results too.

Isabel, one of our interns last year, is starting up an independently published, non-profit publication named “Selfmade Magazine”. She is looking for contributions, so hope some of you out there want to participate. We’ve included a full description from Isabel about the project.

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“The first issue of “Selfmade Magazine” is standing in the starting blocks. In order to make it as many-sided and comprehensive as possible, I need your help! Participate with your photos, illustrations and texts!

The theme of this edition is “Man as ruler”. It is about the examination of the human species and an analysis of its actions. These may be topics such as environment, politics, war, but also abstract and banal everyday-life-situations. Let your imagination run free and be critical!

The format of the magazine is A4, holds about 60 pages and is printed in b/w. The cover will most likely be produced by screen-printing. In order to sell small editions, the issue will be send to book- and magazine-stores, like “Motto” or “pro qm” in Berlin, later on.

As you can see, the subject is quite open. Please send your ideas, concepts and submissions until March 20th, 2010 to hello@hirnkraut.com. It doesn’t matter if your submission has already been published as long as it fits in. Visuals naturally have to work in black and white.

If you have any questions and/or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am looking forward to your contributions!

Best regards, Isabel.”

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You can also check out Isabel’s portfolio on her website, www.hirnkraut.com