FUNNY FEELING
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
No Visible Hardware
I've had a great opportunity to create the identity for an amazing architectural firm in Los Angeles. The firm is called Escher GuneWardena and they are completely subscribed to the Modernist way of architecture. White boxes on hillsides of LA. Talking with them about architecture, website and identity work has led to many interesting perspectives of design. They believe that everything should be tied to a function and have a strong, driving concept behind it. Below are a few points in website design:
1) No scrollbars, textfields or hardware of any kind should be visible. On a site visit to an apartment they were designing, I noticed that the walls were seamless, no door handles or molding. It was sheer white plane that wrapped around the room. Even the door hinges were concealed within the door.
2) Entrance to a space. Why should a site visitor be presented with any information when they first enter a site? Shouldn't there be a "foyer"? Wouldn't that be more eloquent? The partners both agreed that the site should have a soft landing page before the visitor sees the content. Maybe this could be a new trend of "slow" sites? In their building designs, the door always opens to a foyer and slowly leads the visitor to the main living space, never directly.
3) The size of the space reveals the function. We did something similar in our Blux web site which was a brilliant design decision. Content dictates the size of the button text. The partners loved the idea of allowing information to control the design. Similarly, architectural plans shows that there's a reason why bathrooms and closets are smaller than living rooms.
4) Content sorting. What if architecture could be sorted by color, elevation and size? Rem Koolhaus's monogram S,M,L,XL is organized by the size of the building. I suggested that Escher GuneWardena may have a chance at being whimiscal by sorting their projects by elevation to the LA landscape.
1) No scrollbars, textfields or hardware of any kind should be visible. On a site visit to an apartment they were designing, I noticed that the walls were seamless, no door handles or molding. It was sheer white plane that wrapped around the room. Even the door hinges were concealed within the door.
2) Entrance to a space. Why should a site visitor be presented with any information when they first enter a site? Shouldn't there be a "foyer"? Wouldn't that be more eloquent? The partners both agreed that the site should have a soft landing page before the visitor sees the content. Maybe this could be a new trend of "slow" sites? In their building designs, the door always opens to a foyer and slowly leads the visitor to the main living space, never directly.
3) The size of the space reveals the function. We did something similar in our Blux web site which was a brilliant design decision. Content dictates the size of the button text. The partners loved the idea of allowing information to control the design. Similarly, architectural plans shows that there's a reason why bathrooms and closets are smaller than living rooms.
4) Content sorting. What if architecture could be sorted by color, elevation and size? Rem Koolhaus's monogram S,M,L,XL is organized by the size of the building. I suggested that Escher GuneWardena may have a chance at being whimiscal by sorting their projects by elevation to the LA landscape.