“Peoples Archive requires and rewards patient exploration, but there’s so much here to enjoy that even a brief visit will turn up some priceless nuggets. This site is for us, not just our descendants and the list continues to grow: future contributors will include Chomsky, le Carre and - at last, women! - Doris Lessing and Paula Rego.” The Observer, 20th May 2007
Peoples Archive, one of our latest clients, was discussed in The Observer’s Review section this weekend.

Nothing to do with design, usability, or accessibility, but we love this (found via Panopticist). That said, we do love Vimeo, the YouTube competitor for the clean and simple video players.

Jakob Nielsen, Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress), Lynda Weinman and others discuss what is required to ‘create for the web’.

Nothing Earth-shatteringly new, but it always says something about an idea when the BBC deigns it is interesting enough to cover. Jakob Nielsen talks about the dangers of “Web 2.0” sites ignoring good practice, in the rush to ‘innovate’.

Over the last few months we have been working with the search engine marketing and optimisation company Latitude on a variety of projects. One of the most unusual was a brief to commission photography for two meeting rooms and the reception area in offices on New Oxford Street, London. Latitude wanted something to make their offices more interesting, to stand out from the typical. They didn’t just want the usual bland corporate art - they wanted something bold and unique to them - something that reflected that their offices lie between Soho and Bloomsbury. They didn’t want the usual postcard style images of these grand old areas of London, they wanted something that paid homage to the true rich character of the areas.

To this end we spoke to Fiona Campbell, an award winning photographer who we felt would do well to eke out the unusual and different. She spent a good amount of time researching the idea, and decided to talk to some of the characters of the area. (more…)

Apologies for using the term “2.0”, but as the web becomes ever more interactive and application-like, people are thinking about how to keep the web usable and accessible to all. Websites such as Facebook, Flickr and the whole Web 2.0 crowd are coming up with interesting ways for users to interact with information, which is great, but the danger is that each site will create it’s own method to similar actions. Luke Wroblewski discusses this: “This surge of new Web experiences that give users more control is probably the biggest change impacting usability online.”

Wordpress, a wildly popular open-source blogging and simple content management tool, is 4 years old. Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer, but very much not the owner or only developer, discusses the development of Wordpress and people’s expectations of him being a ‘Web 2.0 trailblazer’.

The Guardian, which is by far the most read British newspaper on the web, has redesigned its homepage and a few peripheral pages - and it looks great, finally giving space to more news, photography and revealing far more of the rest of the site than before. I like that they have kept the top-level navigation essentially the same as before, as it always was quite an ‘individual’ design and it makes regular users feel at home. It has a few potential negative points though. It is a very wide (940px) layout which will upset the people who believe in elastic or liquid widths. It also jars when you click away from this page and go to an old-style content page and is even inconsistent when you click into the recently designed ‘blog’ areas, such as Comment is Free, as these are left-aligned, while the new homepage is centred. They have also made the interesting choice of keeping the old-style Guardian Unlimited logo, and not aligning it with the new logo featured in the print-version. That said, I expect many of these issues to be temporary while they update - it is often better to evolve website design rather than make huge radical departures from the past, especially with such a popular and well-loved site.

Update: More can be read about the thinking behind the redesign in their News Blog. Interestingly, I was looking for comment about the redesign everywhere on their site, and could not find it, even after an internal seach. I then used Google, and it found the article immediately.

The journal has been very quiet of late, as we’ve been extraordinarily busy with our clients. That said, we have now released a small update to the Olivant website. This is the last update to this particular version of the site. The next version will be a major overhaul, including a new content management system and significant design evolution.

Flickr hosts a history of Swiss graphic design via a fantastic collection of posters from 1911 through to 2006.

Ever wondered where those almost too perfect desktop images on your computer come from? So did Nick Tosches from Vanity Fair.

One of my ongoing frustrations over the last few years is how difficult the Transport for London website is. Trying to comprehend the complex structure just to find out whether the Hammersmith and City Line is working at the weekend was always a chore - even though I had fought my way through it many many times before. So finally, in the last few days, Transport for London has updated their site with a brand new structure and visual design. I’m not too excited about the ’Web 2.0’-style visuals, but it is very easy to understand, and I can now find out if the tube is going to be useful at the weekend in moments.

Swiss Legacy is a blog that concentrates on the Swiss design and arts. I am half-Swiss myself, so I have always been intrigued by the fine history of Swiss graphic arts.

We’re sticklers for detail, but getting typography to work well on the web is not easy. Or, as Mark Boulton and Clearleft put it, typography sucks on the web - and they have a SXSW presentation online that goes into detail of how to improve it.

Twitter has recently been taking off, as Jack Schofield notes on the Guardian Technology Blog. Twitter enables groups of people to be in constant contact with their social group by sending tiny text messages to the Twitter site, such as “I’m getting on a train to Hampstead” or “I’m watching the football”. If you still don’t understand what I’m on about, take a look at this graphic on Mashable. Frankly, it sounds like my worst nightmare - even worse than having a Blackberry. I am in contact enough with the world through this blog, Messenger, iChat, email, the phone, Skype and even when I actually talk face-to-face with people. That said, I would not be surprised if this time next year I’ll be texting to Twitter from my Blackberry about how much I was mistaken.