The main thing mStoner does is make websites, usually for schools. To keep up with design, IA and messaging trends I look at lots and lots (and lots) of college websites. Plus it gives me a great opportunity to steal be inspired by the things that have been done well.
But lately I’ve been looking at piles of websites (can you pile websites?) that have nothing at all to do with education. Sites that are doing interesting things in interesting ways. And trying to figure out how to steal gain inspiration from those sites too.
You’ve likely seen lots of these already but they’re new(ish) to me and I’m excited about them:
FFFFound!
It’s ffffantastic. (Get it? I’m funny.) The website is kinda like Flickr — but instead of posting photos you’ve taken yourself, you’re posting photos and graphics you’ve (fff)found. As a result, the range of “topics” covered expands wildly, the conversations between users are much more interesting and the ‘related images’ are downright bizarre. Good stuff.
I Want You To Want Me
Jonathan Harris is one of my favorite contemporary artists / designers. And he’s Princeton grad (fun fact: the Department of Psychology website Jonathan designed as an undergrad is still up and running). Anyway, he paired up with Sep Kamvar to create a super-fantastic interactive installation at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The exhibition is over but you can play with a web-based version online. It explores the ways people with profiles at online dating websites go about presenting themselves. I spent a long time failing to come up with a pithy Cheap Trick reference to close out this paragraph.
30 Reasons
You may have heard that the junior senator from Illinois is running for President. To highlight that candidacy, 30Reasons.org has been unveiling a new poster supporting Barack Obama for the thirty days leading up to the election. Not all of the posters are great, but I check in on the website every day to see the latest post.
Happy clicking!