The Vostok blog

iPad + Velcro from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Here is a great presentation by Harry Brignull about Eyetracking and why it is the perfect tool for misinterpretation. Check it out, seriously:

How much harm has eyetracking done to online newspaper design…

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about the publishing industry in general, and newspapers in particular. The decisions behind information design. The things that matter when presenting news and the things that don’t. And we remembered five little bullet points which we still abide by (and that funnily enough, are the pillars that sustain Planetaki today):

-Present snippets of information

-Frequent and constant updating

-Only one time line

-Immediacy over depth

-Use structures that are not too deep

We have yet to come up with a newspaper that has fully embraced this.  A newspaper that’s not fighting with the idea that their customers are not as willing to spend 45 straight minutes in their web anymore. That they’ll probably skim through the headlines and save the articles they want to read in apps like Instapaper or similar. There are no websites out there that make it easy  –and efficient– for users to assess at a glance the importance of a story. Kinda like it is on paper. Would you agree? Are there any newspapers you think are doing a good job?

Because when we go to elpais.com or nytimes.com we always feel well…kinda lost. You have like six or eight different formats in the space of an 160-character news (trust me, we’ve done the counting). They end up sending you all these different signals at the same time and confusing you, instead of holding your hand and, through design, telling you: “here, this is where you’ll find what you’re looking for”. So after a few minutes your head is just a mess. And you give up. (Or at least we do).

How do you read news? Directly on the newspaper’s website? Through feeds? Which do you prefer?

If we could pick a wish we’d love to redesign the web of one the newspaper’s we dig. If we ever do, what would be your wishlist? Which things would you change (which would you keep)? What do you think is missing?

P.S. (slight digression): Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a newspaper app in the lines of what Bonnier R+D and Berg have done for Popular Science for iPad?  It’s all wishful thinking though…

Do check out the post in Berg’s blog (in case you haven’t already) explaining the rationale behind the Popular Science app. Here’s the video:

But if you want to have a complete notion of what Berg’s striving for in the publishing industry, take a look at this one where they talk about Mag+:

So here it is, the best video of the volcano, by Sean Stiegemeier. It’s the only one that truly captures the beauty and fierceness of Eyjafjallajökull at the same time. In his words…

So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get.

Here is the video, (best in fullscreen mode)

Sean declared that he’d come back to Iceland to do some more shooting if he had a sponsor. We commented on his vimeo page suggesting him to open a Kickstarter project page to get the funding. Raise your hand if you’d donate a few bucks to fund his project.

A couple of days ago Mark Mackay wrote post about the loss of quality and rigor of Spanish photojournalism, specifically at El Mundo, one of the main newspapers. The article (in Spanish), titled La lamentable situación del fotoperiodismo en El Mundo, is not a rant but a conclusion based on evidence. Worth reading if you care not just about form but also content in Spanish journalism.

Senior designer Mark MacKay and Vostok’s most recent acquisition, Timo Taglieber, are working hard to develop an iPad version for Planetaki. None of the feed readers out there are up to par with the iPad. We’re hoping to change that. Watch the video for more.

Marco Arment does a great job not only at designing one of the best apps for reading online (Instapaper) but also at explaining all the decisions behind the design. I strongly suggest reading Instapaper Pro 2.2.3 now available, which could also be tittled Instapaper for iPad: its design explained.

Marco, who also happens to be the lead developer at Tumblr, dealt with several issues when designing the iPad version of his product:

• Placement of the controls: follow Apple’s lead or do what he finds it’s better (standarisation over effectivity).
• Placement of the action buttons (not where they fit but at the specific spot where you are when you may need them).
• Text margins and line readability.
• Single column vs. multicolumn layouts.
• Color and brightness for legibility (pure black on pure white on a screen is an aberration, don’t get fooled).
• Pagination tap zones (and differences between iPhone and iPad).
• Tipographies.

I wonder why Mr. Arment decided to let the user chose between 6 different fonts instead of chosing himself the one or two he thinks it works better on that context. What do you guys think about this one?

UPDATE:

Marco just answered my enquiry through twitter:

Marco: Because the people who care about fonts REALLY care about them, and appreciate the choice.

I think Hoefler Text works best, so I made it the default. I take the default settings VERY seriously.

Many of you may already know BeBanjo, the multi-talented Madrid start-up that develops software for TV and VOD operators. They recently released Movida, a web-based software that untangles the mess for international and multiplatform rights management.

To make good use of Movida’s release, we helped BeBanjo in the redesign of their website and their branding. Our goal was to help explain their products better, and to create a simple yet handsome and extensible visual system to represent them.

We started off by exploring a western theme, lots of things fitted in without being overtly obvious: BeBanjo’s name, Spain’s history of spaguetti western cinema, and the folksy personalities of the team (in a good way!).

We presented a couple of options with a western theme (boots, cacti, banjos, etc) and they fell in love with the simple shapes of this hat:

So I made a family of hats made out of lines. However, when you use a dark background and clear lines they seem more complex than needed. So we added a simple rule:

In the end we decided on keeping the logos black & white, that way we can throw almost any color or texture and it still look goods (not that we would do it!).

Head over to BeBanjo.com to check out their brand new website and identity. I’ll talk about the website later!

I love everytimezone.com. It’s a great example of how information visualisation and interactivity can solve a very complex problem. Check it out:

You may say “c’mon, that was solved a long tome ago” but common tools only give you the time difference. From that you can guess if it’s morning, afternoon, night… But you often feel confused wheter it’s “today or tomorrow or yesterday”. That’s exactly what everytimexone.com fixes.

I’m sure it would make a very popular iPad/iPhone app.

Every so often WordPress selects a theme they dig to highlight in their blog. They’ve selected ours this time around. The Vostok theme was designed by Javier Cañada and coded by Rubén Lozano.

It is now available for your WordPress.com blog and, for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs. You can read the full post here.