In the world of brand design, choice of colour provides the potential for a wealth of carefully crafted and powerfully communicated messages about your brand.What is the most popular and dominant colour online?
Creative community blog COLOURlovers researched the brand colours of the world's top 100 sites and discovered that the web landscape is dominated by a large number of blue brands, however red does occupy a large amount of space. What’s driving this? You would expect that companies organise extensive branding research and market tests to select the colour/s that project the correct message to entice the consumer to the brand. Unfortunately many of the brands that have grown to be global web powerhouses started as small web startups, while large corporate giants with branding departments spend quite a lot on market research, branding, etc.
Lots of the sites listed above got started with brands created by the founders themselves with little to no research into the impact their color choice would have.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook was once asked why he chose blue for his site design… “I’m colour blind, it’s the only colour I can see.” …and now 500 million people around the world stare at his mostly blue website for hours each week. (COLOURlovers)
While the initial rationale for the brand colours may be trivial, the impact that these dominant brands now have in the web landscape will no doubt influence smaller companies wishing to share the positive colour associations they created. Therefore blue and red will most likely continue to dominate, but we can hope that new brands entering the market take a different perspective and decide to push the colour boundaries of their brand.
Source: Truly Deeply
Monday, February 7, 2011
The colours of the Top 100 web brands
Monday, April 19, 2010
New website for Paul Smith
One of my favourite fashion designer's, Paul Smith, has launched a new website.
The new site is both an e-commerce site and a brand showcase for the internationally renowned fashion business. (Smaller-scale online purchasing had already been available on the site since 2004, but it has now been ramped up). It's a simple, clean HTML interface with large, animated images and it results in a strong visual impact.
Paul Smith World is a section of the website which features creative and art projects by the designer. This will be refreshed on a regular basis to encourage users to return to the site.
The new site certainly offers an enhanced user experience and I imagine it will greatly drive online sales.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
M&S website voted most user-friendly
According to a new Online High Street Report from web usability consultancy Webcredible, M&S has been voted the most user-friendly website of all UK high street brands.
It is a surprise result for M&S as its site only came ninth on the list last year. Meanwhile, WHSmith came joint second, whilst John Lewis maintained its place of third on the rankings.
The criteria used to evaluate the websites includes browsing, navigation, the checkout process , searching and product display pages.
Despite widespread improvements, there are some basic areas where retailers need to do better on, the report found.
Areas that could be improved include using the same form for logging on and registering, allowing customers to alter the number of products displayed on a page and changing the colour of visited links.
See the article in full on BBC News
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Marks & Spencer: new site design
Over the last couple of months Cinnamon Creative has been working on designs for many of the pages of the completely revamped M&S website which launched today.
The main visual difference is the new widescreen '1024' format that allows M&S to create more vibrant landing pages.
The new site also aims to improve the complete customer experience. New features include catwalk videos, fabric swatches and a carousel image suite which brings the clothes to life. The new site also includes stock availability information when customers select their sizes.
Check out the new site here and media coverage of the work here.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Pretty Loaded
Pretty Cool is an archive of preloaders that preload other preloaders:
www.prettyloaded.com
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Grid-based design - two essential tools
Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to website design. As a tool grids are useful for organising and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts.
www.grid.mindplay.dk is an amazingly useful website - it's a handy tool for dabbling around with grids and typography when starting a new website design.
GridFox is a Firefox extension which places a grid on top of any website. If you’ve started your design from a grid-based layout, you can now easily check to make sure everything is lining up the way you had planned.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
New Cinnamon Creative Site
Cinnamon Creative has a fabulous new website! Have a look round and let us know what you think.
www.cinnamoncreative.com
Friday, December 26, 2008
Amazing interactive site
Created in Flash using Masayuki Kido's own 3D library, Eco Zoo is a stunning interactive site - a 3d virtual pop-up book, full of cartoon animals and lush illustrations in a story that teaches through play.
It's aimed at children with characters encouraging kids to perform simple tasks like using re-usable shopping bags and turning electrical devices off at home, but rather than lecturing kids about saving energy, Eco Zoo lets them discover, through the animals' stories, how to be energy-efficient in the home.
This site is not only technically brilliant, it has real charm too.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The nuttiest portfolio site I've ever seen (but well worth a visit)
This is an internet experience that will leave you both bewildered and enchanted. It's a portfolio site for the Dutch web designer Coen Grift, and operates in a highly unique style. Instead of viewing the site by clicking on various pages, you use a hand to drag your way around one enormous, apparently endless, piece of pixelated art. There are plenty of strange sound effects too (be prepared for some salty language).
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Great web design
I think the design of this website is spot-on. It is for Tibits - a new vegetarian restaurant, bar and food-to-go venue that opened in London this week.
It is the first British outpost of this Swiss chain which explains the excellent site design. It is by famed Swiss design agency, Feinheit (which incidentally means 'elegancy' in German).
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Scrabulous has been reincarnated as Lexulous
So one of my lovemarks, Scrabulous, has already been axed...
First it was removed from Facebook but I managed to overcome the situation by continuing games with my two deadliest opponents via email Scrabulous.
Then, without prior notice, a week ago the website came down and was replaced with a GoDaddy.com placeholder page, as a result of the ruling by Delhi High Court. It was ruled that the Agarwalla brothers retain the right to post their word game online, but are not allowed to use Scrabulous, Scrabble or any other “similar sounding” name.
So now we have www.lexulous.com, that is exactly like that game we won’t ever mention in the same breath.
Oh the joy!
I have to say though, I think the new site could do with a bit of a design spruce-up... it's looking a little uninspiring. I hope those brothers know where to come for some design direction!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Web designs for Marks & Spencer
Ladies and gentlemen of the world - buy some key pieces from M&S courtesy of some of my new editorial page designs for marksandspencer.com . Women - click here. Men - go for it here!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Lazy web design tools
Great time-saving tools - very useful to generate quick backgrounds, tabs and reflections:
- Stripe Generator
- Tartan Maker
- Image Reflection Maker
- Tabs Generator
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
...And another for the M&S series
Further to this post, the latest in the series of the 'What's Hot' designs commissioned for www.marksandspencer.com appears online this week.
The live link is here.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Latest Design Work: Hot Trends for M&S
Here is one of a series of brand new designs commissioned for www.marksandspencer.com for the 'What's Hot' section of their e-commerce site.
The bold and funky design has generated approximately 10,000 clicks in the one week it's been live, with a conversion rate of 2.7%, and it will now form the basis of the new template for all the 'What's Hot' pages in the coming weeks.
