Link Up is one of the coolest design networks in Denmark. 1508 has linked up with them, and would like to invite you to join the Link Up Live 2.0 after-work meeting on Thursday at 5 pm.

Read more below (please note the invitation is in Danish). Make sure to check out the new Link Up logo. It is designed by Cleo, alias Clea Simonsen, who is one of the cool 1508 designers :-)

/Rix-alive

The graf above (Google Analytics - great software) points out an interesting shift in web navigation of today. The 28,87 % is the share of users landing directly on the Home Page of a Danish Trade Union. This means that 71,23% of all users on this Trade Union website skips the homepage and goes directly to sub pages of the site. Earlier on the share of users entering a site through the home page was much greater than today. One of the main factors in this change is the upcoming of search engines such as Google. Now people search for content and is directed to the relevant page immediately.  So why am I writing about this? Why is this interesting? Because this change in user behaviour should change the way we design for web.

Web Navigation 2.0, as I so webish called it in the headline, means that the need for navigational instruments and overview possibilities on sub pages is about to be redefined. I say this because users for the time being have no clue about the total content of a site when entering via a sub page. Besides what information they can get from the global navigation, content navigation and the sub page itself, there isn’t much overview. So I predict that related information, and visualisation of site content is going to be something we will hear a lot more about in the years to come. Agree?

PS. I just found this great example: Apples new homepage. Take a look to the left of the Leopard-box. A great way to offer tons of information in very little space. Try to imagine news, calendar, hot products and vacant jobs on a corporate website in this form. Cool hhm?

During last week’s Copenhagen screening of Helvetica, the director Gary Hustwit asked all graphic designers to raise their hands. A fairly large number of hands were not raised. It is hard to say if these belonged to very cool graphic designers who couldn’t be bothered, or if they were the hands of non-graphic designers (like Hustwit) who just happened to like type. Fact is that BBC World recently reviewed the Helvetica-film, that MoMA currently runs a very successful exhibition to celebrate Helvetica’s birthday and that the danish newspaper Politiken had an article on Helvetica last saturday…

Is typography becoming some sort of general hobby? Something to be discussed at dinner parties and on first dates in the future? Will »what kind of music do you like?« be followed by »tell me about your favorite typeface«? The film Helvetica certainly describes how graphic design and typography has been adapted by non-designers, and how it is used to express individuality and identity as on myspace.com.

The film features (among others) Wim Crouwel and Massimo Vignelli looking very pleased with themselves and their careers. But as they flick through their excellent helvetica-based design from the 60s, it is hard not think that their clients were much easier to seduce and persuade than today’s clients. That Crouwel and Vignelli were respected as specialists in a way that is sadly no longer guaranteed. Today we discuss size, colour and composition with our clients, but will we be discussing x-heights, terminals and ascenders in the future?

The article »You know the type (you just don’t know it)«, written by non-graphic designer Nils Thorsen:

Cleo

Everybody’s talking about the blessings of social media, but the other day I got this depressing message as I accidentally discovered that I once registered as a youtube user and hit the profile button.