design

My Brand New Logo

There are numerous tools online that help companies and teams with their design and branding. But I don’t remember seeing anything as simple and as impressive, in terms of both the process and the result, as My Brand New Logo.

Pick a company name, a slogan, provide three keywords describing the company, and you’ll instantly get a rich selection of automatically generated logos. You can further customize the ones that you liked with layouts, colors, and more.

If you are a startup on a budget, give them a try – no need to spend big coin on a designer just yet.

The Evolution of Brands

“The Evolution of Brands” is an interactive timeline showing how the logos of some of the major global brands changed over time, starting from the year 1900 all the way to 2017.

Executive summary: we’ve got more brands now and their logos got a lot simpler.

Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs

“Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs” is one of the best articles on color theory and the relationship between color coding, hardware, and human color perception, that I’ve seen in a long while. Scratch that. That I’ve seen EVER!

I was already somewhat familiar with the subject, so I scrolled through the article twice, quick read it, and will have to spend even more time with it. But if you want to really understand how this part of technology works with humans, it’s the best resource that I can send you to.

History of Icons

History of Icons looks at the evolution of icons used for desktop, mobile, and web. There are plenty of nostalgia triggering screenshots from a variety of systems. Given that nobody could ever afford having all of those systems, I’m sure you’ll find interesting screens from computers you didn’t have or didn’t see.

The Difference Between UI and UX

Via this article (in Russian), I came across this blog post discussing the differences between the design of the UI (user interface) and the UX (user experience).

In many cases, the incorrect expectation is that an interface designer by default understands or focuses on user experience because their work is in direct contact with the user. The simple fact is that user interface is not user experience. The confusion may simply be because both abbreviations start with the letter “U”. More likely, it stems from the overlap of the skill-sets involved in both disciplines. They are certainly related areas, and in fact many designers are knowledgeable and competent in both.

However, despite the overlap, both fields are substantially different in nature and – more importantly – in their overall objectives and scope. User interface is focused on the actual elements that interact with the user – basically, the physical and technical methods of input and output. UI refers to the aggregation of approaches and elements that allow the user to interact with a system. This does not address details such as how the user reacts to the system, remembers the system and re-uses it.