Online & Digital Design: Cool Websites Blog

http://www.rei1440project.com/#

REI is a company that sells outdoor recreation gear. They recently created a project known as the REI 1440 project which showcases users photos based on the time and location taken.

This is a stream of user based images that are displayed based on the time that they are uploaded. Using the navigation keys, viewers can scroll between each minute viewing photographs taken around the world of explorations and adventures.

Uploading photos to the website is quick and easy with a camera link at the bottom right hand corner of the page. Users can also select a specific date and time in order to view more images pertaining to their interests.

In order to narrow points of interest for users, the website also includes the ability to sort images by location and activity they wish to view.

A unique function also allows users to search photos based on hash tags they choose to assign to the image.

Moodstream™ by Getty Images Website

This is a flash-driven stream of music and images based on user input. The website was put up on the web in June of 2008 and uses xhtml 1.0. The css style sheet is incorporated into the HTML code source. It also utilizes javascript in its coding.

The image stream can be catered to the user’s preferences of speed, duration, transition, and content. Using unobtrusive, collapsable sidebars, the user can a mood that is more humorous or serious, calm or lively, nostalgic or contemporary, warm or cool. This forms a very visually pleasing and useful navigation structure. This is a fantastic website for getting creative juices flowing and could be recommended to the visually-inclined and the curious.

The horizontal lines through video and images represent a compression of file size but also add a consistent theme throughout the user’s experience.

Getty Images is the world’s largest stock imagery company. The website draws from its audio, video, and photo archives to create a creative and adaptive service to its users.

If the user likes a particular piece of music or image, they can add it to their “moodboard” and even purchase it from Getty Images’ library.

http://www.unurth.com/

Unurth | Street Art is a website that acts as a graffiti and street art database. It’s a very minimalistic design, focusing mainly on the photographs of the art. The white background aids in creating a focal point of each picture. They all stand out because of it. It reflects a gallery-like set up which are almost always simplistic and minimal.

The HTML type is XHTML 1.0. They also use a template program, Cargo, which offers a design service to certain website. Javascript is used by Cargo for text script.

Their main stylesheet is simply named “user_stylesheet”. They use this for the little text they have such as “Comments” and “Index” tabs.

The purpose of this site is meant to bring life to graffiti that can otherwise only be seen live. With it’s simplistic design it is simply showing the graffiti. Art enthusiasts and graffiti artists would look at this site to get ideas and simply look at what type of graffiti art is popular. I believe the creator of this website executed exactly what they wanted to do, which was to show off graffiti art.

www.ds5.citroen.co.uk./uk/

This site does a great job of creating their site to go along with the design of the car. It doesn’t really deliver a message or anything but rather is in comparison with the car. For instance, their philosophy is, is that if you love navigating and controlling the website then you will do the same inside the car. The target audience are mainly car buyers in the UK for this is a UK car and website, The navigation is used by a scroll bar on the side of the page as well as the pop out list on the other side of the page. Within the page a number of adobe and javascript programs helped out, especially with the virtual reality dashboard. This site also used the html version as its source code.

Click for website

Captains of Industry is my dad’s creative content marketing company in Boston. Their website is not completely finished (a lot of the graphics have noticeable compression artifacts) but to my knowledge the coding is done.

The website has a very strong design based on color and shape. The colors are bright enough to create a fun and energetic feel, but not so bright that they become “childish”. The rounded square motif ties the entire website together and represents a large part of what the company does: digital design. The overall result is a design that is both aesthetically pleasing and highly relevant to the company.
The website is meant to be viewed on an iPad so it is very interactive; there are a lot of visually stimulating moving parts. The code is written in HTML5, CSS, and Javascript.

A website that I find to be designed in a creative and interactive style, while using Flash in an effective manner is Waterlife: http://waterlife.nfb.ca/. This site uses XHTML 1.0 and relies heavily on Flash and Javascript, while also using CSS. The style sheet for CSS is located at css/global.css. The purpose of this website is to present the public with information about the Great Lakes, primarily focusing on the pollution of the lake and ecosystems that are slowly or rapidly being lost. The website itself is also based off of a film of the same name of the Website. However, this website, unlike the film, provides users with an interactive way to approach the information. It also gives them the ability to focus in on specific topics that they are interested in, providing them with links to outside information.
This site was created not only to bring awareness to the Great Lakes and the problems they face today, but also to help people understand how they can help. By presenting the information in a simple way they avoided overloading the site visitors with information. Also, by creating it in such an interactive way they are able to present the information in a way that will capture people’s attention.
For the design of the website they choose a water theme, which is appropriate considering the information that the website presents. By placing the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen they caused the main focus of the website to be the information that is being presented. Also, through the use of Flash they are able to make this a website that flows and moves. Also presenting the theme of water within that movement. The addition of the music helps to pull the user in turning this website into a multisensory experience.