Wikipedia’s brand isn’t known for flashy design, colors, or honestly really being much of a visual brand at all. That’s what makes this site redesign a great study in the value of UX principles in design. In fact, “subtle” was the entire point, so as to keep the site familiar to users. At first glance, the changes may be hard to notice, but start to use and search the site, and you can definitely tell: there’s a new sticky header that follows you down the page, making top level navigation much easier. The search function has been upgraded to show autocompleted terms and images. The sidebar now has collapsible options, for personalization of the user experience. Not every redesign needs to make a giant change to be successful, and this is a perfect example!
When the Portland branch of the Army Corps of Engineers selected projects and images, and wrote up their calendar for 2023, it was very educational and encompassing, but it wasn’t super…interesting. Enter their PR specialist Chris Gaylord, who recognized exactly what it was missing: giant cats. Yes, seriously! The calendar sports 12 carefully selected projects, and to appeal to the casual viewer, cats interact with all of the structures pictured. It’s a super refreshing way for an otherwise dry government agency to spread awareness, and great outside the box design thinking! And what’s best: you can download the calendar for free. We don’t even live in Portland, but we got it, and it’s worth it.
If you ever wished your state had a custom illustration, today is your lucky day! Artist Bogdan Katsuba has made bespoke, minimalist illustrations of all 50 US states. Many of them are pretty self-explanatory, like a bear for California and a lighthouse for Maine, however, as Georgia residents, we are going to need a little bit of an explanation on our frog design! In our opinion, Texas’ cowboy-hatted rattlesnake wins best in show.
You’ve seen the acrylic pour videos online (we know you have, they’re fascinating!), and now the technique has made it to packaging design! It was probably only a matter of time, but we love the result. Artist Craig Black was tapped to design packaging for BrewBird, a pour-over coffee brand, the “pour” connection just clicked. The startup coffee brand wanted a look that would stand out against the usual coffee bean motif of most other coffee brands, and it’s safe to say they got what they wanted. It’s certainly caught our eyes, and we can’t wait to see what this new upstart coffee company does!
Spotify is here yet again with another cool experience: an audio time capsule called Playlist in a Bottle. Users can collect their current favorite earworms and put them in a drive that will then be inaccessible until 2024, shortly after you get next year’s Spotify Wrapped. They’ve also got cool song-inspired prompts, like “pick a song that reminds you of your favorite person”. Once you collect all your audio memorites, Playlist in a Bottle will keep them safe for you for the next 365 days. But don’t wait too long to make yours, Spotify is only leaving it open until January 31!
Well-timed with the recent success of the whodunnit movie Glass Onion, Hasbro has redesigned and updated the classic board game Clue! The fan favorite has been updated not only visually, but also in game play, character backstories…and possible motives to the murder of Boddy Black. This is a very cool visual revitalization of a time-honored classic game to make it more accessible to modern players, with the new characters now skewing younger, and more importantly, diverse.
