Are graphic designers ruining the web?

No, but neither are the Germans up for a bloody big war.

Fortunately, some things move on, unlike John Naughton. Cliff came across this article on The Guardian website yesterday and shared the love (or lack of) for it around the office. It ruffled my feathers to say the least – who are these people that want content only websites? I thought I’d be able to think of some instances that I would prefer simpler websites but I can honestly say that I can’t think of any reasons I’d want to view a text only website over a fully functional, beautiful, all singing-all dancing site.

With any form of considered communication, balance is generally the key to success. A website that is well designed and contains user friendly functionality is usually best balanced with being able to load at an acceptable speed. Studies show that over 60% of people will click away if made to wait for more than 5 seconds for a page to load – you can load a lot in 5 seconds, you don’t need ugly websites.

Toilet humour

The Exhibit bar in Balham, South London has installed the world’s first pee-controlled video game units, developed by engagement marketing startup Captive Media.

Every urinal in the gents has a 12in LCD screen that’s hooked up to a (hands-free) console which features the game ‘Off the Piste’. Drinkers masterfully steer their pee from left to right, under the watch of infra-red sensors, to navigate a skier down the slope, gaining points for taking out penguins! At the end of the game, players are encouraged to post their scores via mobile to Twitter and to a live leader board so they can compete with their mates.

PriceRunner – New digital brand identity

During the second half of the year, Firedog has been excitedly working away on the PriceRunner brand refresh. The refreshed visual identity, logo and website header is the first brand refresh in the company’s 12 year history and went live at the end of November.

The refresh was influenced by softening the brand image, as research states that many people do not trust shopping comparison sites and frequently confuse them with the financial comparison sites that spend large budgets on advertising campaigns.

New take of the old masters

The other day I came across this post from Boooooom and it really made me laugh. A brilliant idea from Booooooom & Adobe, a competition to recreate any famous piece of art in a real photography. Some of the submissions are amazing, others… not so good – but funny though.

This challenge is aimed to students in the UK is worth £10,000 cash prize. The rules are only recreate the original picture with photography and this means no painting or drawings and the deadline end soon, so if you are interested, hurry up.

A fake logo – who ya gonna call?!

Whilst stumbling around cyberspace the other day I came upon a site which showcased some nice examples of logos that have been created for fictional companies to be used in films or on television.

Fauxgo, is a blog site dedicated to chronicling the fictional logos used in television and film. It did spark some interesting debate here at Firedog – which logos we felt was the most iconic and distinctive – as well as inspiring us to think of all of the other “fauxgos” or fake logos we’ve seen on the silver screen.