Ah, the new face of Guinness. “Why is a beer logo rebranding the top news for the week,” you’re probably wondering. “I don’t care about Guinness,” you're probably thinking. “What does this have to do with UI design, guys, seriously” you probably are screaming at your browser window. (PS: please don’t hesitate and get help if this all sounds like you)
To address these hypothetical concerns, well, we love this facelift. It’s hard not to, and once you read about it hopefully you'll love it as well.
The Guinness Facelift is not only something completely out of left field among today’s flatter (though not necessarily better or worse) design panorama, but a great example of the craftsmanship that was so closely tied to the design profession in days of yore. Experiments in printing methods and joining forces with an actual harp-making company were two of the processes Design Bridge followed to achieve the harp’s resulting three-dimensional, physically viable look. (If someone were to build this, they would not only be able to accomplish so – they’d be able to keep it in tune as well) Naturally, the harp and the new wordmark succeed in retaining the Guinness look and character, while bringing a craftier, masterful edge to the beloved beer. And for us as designers, or simply for people interested in the craft and even visual arts, this is a delight to witness.
Other Design-relevant News
Focuslab also unveils a facelift
The consistently excellent FocusLab surprised us with a stunning new website a few days back. What else can we say, really. As expected, it’s almost annoying how good they are!
Good lad Anton reveals how he transported buildings to the desert
You might have seen Anton Repponen’s beautiful project Misplaced (and if you haven’t, you probably should). Following Misplaced's debut into the wild, Anton put together a detailed behind-the-scenes look of its making, and it's breathtaking.
Marvel grows so much a style guide starts to develop
Some of the people on our team are crazy about style guides, so they were specially drooly about this one. This first version of Marvel's style guide is, clearly, still in its infancy (especially when compared to monsters such as Saleforce’s Lightning Design System), but it shows a lot of promise considering how thorough and well-documented it is thus far; and the best part: it’s open source! We’re really looking forward to see how this expands in the future. And remember kids, being invested in your style guide from the beginning is the key to your style guide’s success!
Spotify buries the hamburger
If you go back a few weeks and read carefully, we sneakily shared an article that mentioned issues that put Spotify’s interface in the “this could be done way better” column, most of which drew attention to the Side Drawer, or Hamburger Menu style of navigation. And the Spotify overlords have listened! Unfortunately we haven’t received this in-app update yet, so we can’t comment on it, but just from a theoretical point of view, this should make everything way, way easier.
So, we went on the internet and found...
Grafik - The digital hub of the beloved Grafik magazine is thriving with features, reviews and articles on contemporary design, and it also possess one of the hippest, most design-y looking layouts we’ve seen in awhile. It seems like Grafik they does know its audience.
Shitty UI/UX Analogies - The Self-Explanatory Link for this issue. Because really, who doesn’t love increasingly nonsensical pictures of things labeled as “UX” and “UI”?
Our Condolences to Kuala Lumpur - As far as we can tell, we have kept a streak of sharing things generally perceived as pretty, nice or… at least well-thought or well-made. But things like this also happen in the design world, so… yeah. Gee.
