I definitely think it is not. Users need to be given more, need to put in front of something fun, extremely beautiful, and what counts most, totally unexpected.

As Donald Normal said: “It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives”.

How can a simple website accomplish and fulfill such ambitious aims?

Before getting to the possible answers we need a better understanding of the matter. Here is where Noriaky Kano’s model of customer satisfaction comes to help us. Most of the sites we come across today are able to satisfy users’ basic and performance needs, but just a small number of them can meet the excitement needs.

A basic need is something which is taken for granted by the user, like for example the fact that a site should not have broken links. A performance need is something that people expect, like the use of secure protocols for the online payments. An excitement need is way more than that, it’s something pleasantly unexpected, like for example the free wifi in a hotel.

Over time, things that were exciting yesterday will be expected tomorrow and things that are exciting today will be taken for granted tomorrow. That’s why we need to continue to innovate in order to make websites not just easy to use, but delightful to use.

Creatives and designers must fulfill excitements needs by adding those small things that people won’t notice, but if they do, they’ll surely tell their friends!

That’s what Paul Annett from Clearleft focused on during his smart presentation entitled “Oooh, that’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)“. Paul’s presentation was absolutely fantastic, one of the most wonderful talks of SXSW 09.

In his talk, Paul presents few examples of clever websites. Here you can find the most interesting ones. Most of them are done with a smart use of transparencies, flash apps and animated GIFs. Check them out! It’ll be fun…

Resize the browser and you’ll get a nice 3D effect with the leaves and clouds in the background. That’s done using PNGs as background images:

Silverback

Twequency

In the below sample you can see and browse the site in the different stages of the design process, from the wireframes to the final design:

dConstruct.org

Click on the small warm at the bottom of the page…

Kyanmedia

Scroll down the page and keep an eye on the logo. That’s done again using PNGs for the logo images:

Fatuus

Able

Econsultancy

The torch switches on as you run down the page. That’s done setting the torch image behind a semi-transparent blue gradient layer:

CSS Zen Ocean

Run down the page and you’ll see the paint drops creating gorgeous effects:

Webleeddesign

Change colours of your website using a one pixel animated GIF:

David Emery

A slick advertisement for WII and really clever ideas to break things using Flash:

Wii Experience

Hema

Here 30+ examples of newspapers and breaking news sites from all around the world.

20minutes (France)

BBC (UK)

Bild (Germany)

Boston Globe (USA)

Cbs News (USA)

Chicago Tribune (USA)

Cnn (USA)

Corriere della Sera (Italy)

DN (Sweden)

El Mundo (Spain)

El Pais (Spain)

Faz (Germany)

Guardian (UK)

Irish Times (Ireland)

Jacksonville (USA)

LA Times (USA)

Le Monde (France)

Libération (France)

Msnbc (USA)

Ny Daily News (USA)

NY Times (USA)

San Francisco Gate (USA)

Smh (Australia)

Standaard (Belgium)

Telegraph (UK)

The Age (Australia)

The Sun (UK)

Times on line (UK)

Washington Post (USA)

Washington Times (USA)

Wall Street Journal (USA)

If you’re keen to read a bit more on the subject you can also take a peek at the following article where Michael Alexander presents two books about becoming a freelance designer: Being a Starving Artist Sucks and Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers.

The number of sites offering RSS feeds, a format to regularly deliver up-to-date web content, is growing rapidly. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever is interested in it. As soon as you subscribe to a RSS feed you’ll get fresh updates in real time.

Recently, I searched online for free RSS icons that could be used to identify content in different languages. What did surprise me is that I couldn’t find any icon like that. I thought it could be useful to have a set of language RSS icons to be used on those sites that syndicate their content in different languages, so I decided to design my own set of icons and make it available to anyone who wants it.

I designed 5 icons for the following languages: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Icons come in four sizes: 75×75 px, 50×50 px, 40×40 px and 25×25 px. All of them are in PNG format with transparent background, so you’ll be able to use them on every background you need.

In the zip file you’ll also find the Illustrator source file for each format, so you’ll be able to change colors, add new flags, and even resize the icons to better suit your needs, without lose in quality.

Language RSS Feed Icon Set is completely free for both personal and commercial projects in any way you like under the Creative Commons 3.0 License. We only ask you to respectfully link back to www.cssglance.com. You cannot offer them for download on your website, but you can write about them and link back to this post.

Download Language RSS Feed Icon Set (540KB – zip file)

Less is more, that’s the idea: few elements and more clarity in order to facilitate the message fruition.
Which are the features that characterize a website designed in accordance with the principles of the minimal style though?
Tautly, we can summarize them in four points:

• Simplicity, i.e. absence of elements that, from the communication point of view, are useless or redundant. The content takes the main role and whatever is superfluous or redundant is removed.
• Use of the fonts to guide the user’s fruition: margins, alignment and visual hierarchy are used to structure the message. Fonts and text gain visual interest and help the user to easily identify the important parts of content.
• Use of the white space, that allows to distinguish the different elements and to focus the user’s attention on specific areas of the page. This works still better when you add others design principles, like proportion and emphasis, in order to define clear and easily noticeable visual paths.
• Essential use of graphic. It’s a mistake to consider minimal only those websites with no graphic or in black & white. The important is that the graphic elements don’t divert the attention from the main message, but help the user to browse the site content instead.

A good combination of these elements brings clear and easily perceptible advantages, like a prompt identification of the significant parts of the page (i.e. a better usability and a more effective communication), beside a modern and clean visual appeal of sure impact.

As it emerges from the gallery we present, the minimal style is suitable for every kind of website: from blogs to portfolios, from informative to advertising websites, as it aims to give importance to the core of communication, i.e. the content.

Other articles about the minimal style will follow, in whose we will be presenting different applications of the principles mentioned above.
We would be glad, anyhow, if you could recommend us some resources that you consider are worthy to be mentioned. Thanks in advance.

(Translated by Ori)

1. 5thirtyone
   
2. Agenturblog
   
3. Aigany
   
4. Alltop
   
5. Andy Rutledge
   
6. Astheria
   
7. Authentic Style
   
8. Ben Hulse
   
9. Carbon Silk
   
10. Cherry Bloom
    
11. Dache
    
12. Daniel Scrivner
    
13. Daninko
    
14. Darrenalawi
    
15. Derek Punsalan
    
16. Designed by Anderson
    
17. Designing the news
    
18. Design TokyoCube
    
19. Dotkraft
    
20. EightFace
    

Recently, two interesting articles have been published about this issue. The first, “Information design for the New Web” deals with the principles of web applications design; the second, entitled “The user experience of a blog“, analyses those that could be definied the simplest conventions for blog design.