Cullmann Design Blog

With the RTM version of Windows 8 being released, I’ve had a chance to dabble in the interface and spend some time ‘working’. It’s really quite nice. It’s very usable and intuitive OS for day to day use and Windows 8 has all of the winning components from the previous generation and quite a bit more.

The Windows 8 user experience, formerly known as Metro, is beautiful to look at. The graphic approach to the user interface and chrome is current, user friendly, and honestly, a very relevant solution for both powerhouse desktops and tablets alike.

What has really captured my attention is the integration between Windows 8 and their peripheral platforms. The tablet platform, Surface in particular, seems like an ideal pairing that extends the desktop as a platform and may completely replace it. Windows 8 Phone is also an impressive offering. Despite the smartphone market being well serviced by iOS and Android, I think this new scrappy platform might still have a shot.

I think that for the first time perhaps a decade, Microsoft has a truly innovative solution that can be an ideal platform for Creatives. Crazy as this idea seems, for those who produce content for a digital audience, Windows is a producing an almost ideal offering for writing, designing, developing, and supporting big digital ideas.

The desktop environment itself serves many purposes for the creator (as in content creator). Traditional applications can be run in keyboard and mouse mode and now, through large touch screens and hybrid overlays, users can select, scale, move, draw, paint, and otherwise interact directly with the user interfaces via touch screens. For additional or supplemental input, Windows 8 tablets can be paired with desktops to extend the display or used as a touch input like a Wacom Tablet-ideally suited for creative teams.

That same tablet is an ideal portable interface for capturing ideas. Photographing from life, drawing, writing, recording audio and video can all be done on the device and acted upon using the same software that’s run on the Windows desktop. Content can also be synchronized and used immediately on a desktop interface if additional computing power is required (video being an example of such an instance).

Windows 8 Phone offers another example of a similar scenario. Smartphones have become our planners, wallets, health centers, cameras, notebooks, and sketchbooks. Having a truly synchronous environment would make the lines between these platforms irrelevant and hurdles of the past.

I’m looking at Windows 8 as a bit of a reinvention for Microsoft and would like to see people really consider it as a contender for their workstation. This is a chrysalis moment for Microsoft. Although they have a market majority, they have lost some of their relevance to companies like Apple and Google. This new crop of software is something that shows a renewed attention to users and a serious shot to stay connected to the market they helped create.

I think there is real opportunity for Windows 8 to find a place as a Creative workhorse. As OS X starts to show a move towards a very consumer oriented experience via Mountain Lion, Content authors will need heavy-lifting, high end workstations to create videos, web sites, manuscripts, mobile apps, and new media creations. The new Windows 8 experience can bring much of the user experience offering to users and also support a multi-window, heavy-lifting, experience at the same time.

Apple’s ultra-high pixel density displays have been available since the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2011 and more recently, the iPad 3. The newest iteration appears for desktop computing in their MacBook Pro line. Many speculate (and this is a safe speculation) that a stand-alone Retina display, or all-in-one iMac is soon to follow.

What does this mean to web design and the people who design and develop websites? Quite a lot of changes. The need for a change was already called for. Smartphones are outselling features phones. The arrival of the tablet as a major platform is clear. Content syndication for everything from Kindles to TVs is a mandatory for content creators. The Retina display is simply another platform with its own needs and user preferences.

The concept of Design (with a capital “D”) must change. Designers, and those who hire them, need to abandon the idea of precise control over how a user is presented with content, pictures, and branding. The very idea of visual design needs to give way to addressing the user’s (or viewer’s, or reader’s) needs.

This is going to be as true for the Retina display as it is for a smartphone or tablet. Images may have to be presented cropped, expanded, or perhaps omitted entirely based on screen resolution, physical size or connection speed.

The ultra high pixel density of the Retina display will become a playground for high-end visual websites that are able to provide a massive amount of bandwidth, fast servers, and a hungry audience looking for an exciting new experience. This will be a minority of webs users though. How will designers and developers address this gap in capabilities? How will a website owner serve content to an Android phone on one end of the spectrum and the 15.1 million pixels of a 15” retina display at the other?

The simplest solution is that web designers will rely much more heavily on typography. Typekit, Fontdeck, and Google all offer impressive libraries with support on many platforms. There is already a resurgence of type-driven design that is supporting desktop and mobile. The Retina display’s clarity will be the perfect vehicle for such design.

Responsive web design, another growing trend, is another solution. By using the browser’s dimensions to change the design structure, a designer can address a small smartphone screen and a desktop experience by changing type proportions, the size of images, and even hide elements.

Server-side technology is already being used to dynamically alter content based on user and connection variables. Providing high resolution images to target a user’s platform would be complicated, but something skilled developers could deploy. Popular frameworks also support this kind of implementation so that designers with access to their webhosts can upload a variety of different sized images to support all types of users.

It’s not clear how the design and development community will respond to this new challenge, but it does, from a design perspective, shake up how visuals can and should be approached. This will also be a watershed moment for developers as new and more targeted methods are created to push content to bit-hungry users everywhere.

If this subject interests you and you’d like to learn more about designing for multiple devices and a wide variety of users, visit A List Apart, a great resource for standards based design techniques or Dan Cederholm’s website Simplebits.

Vimeo has become the epicenter of fantastic creative short-films and great storytelling. A new short by Josh Clason, part of the Depth of Speed series is an excellent example. A wonderfully filmed story showing celebrating the art of pinstriping. Part artform, part commercial design, part modern religion, the film highlights the what keeps this American art alive well past its celebrated prime.

To learn more about the artist and his work, visit Andy Kawahara’s blog.

HBTV: Depth of Speed – Andy the Pinstriper from HBTV on Vimeo.

eMails have been part of the marketer’s arsenal since the first websites sprouted from the digital protozoa. They lack the flair of social media, the metrics of websites, or the sizzle of YouTube. They are still a very valuable resource and a great way to engage an audience.

I’ve put together an basic outline of what makes for a strong marketing email. This is a good primer for anyone who is getting started in emarketing or if you’re starting to see the trend back towards the use of emails and email newsletters.