For those of you with little information about Wal-Mart, like I was several minutes ago, Wal-Mart is big. Now you have it, now you know as much as I do.
Anyway, I didn’t know details regarding the company, just some ecological facts and Wal-Mart’s effort in the green field. But, according to Zoominfo, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc is the company behind Wal-Mart discount stores. The company has around 1.9 mil employees and big revenues each year.

My topic regarding Wal-Mart, is the logo which was changed on July 1st. The change is radical and there is no resemblance to the previous logo. So, my question is why would you change a logo that has been there for over 17 years? This question pops into my mind because from my point of view the old logo was … better.

OLD LOGO - It had a clean, strong font and a pleasant dark blue color. And also combined with the old slogan and the star graphic element, it had the American identity on it.

NEW LOGO - The new font is clearly not as powerful as the old one, but more elegant. It is helped by the lighter blue color and the new slogan, and together they form an elegant stable block. But I don’t know what the new yellow symbol means.

I think that the decision of changing the logo was due to a global expanding plan, cause otherwise I don’t know why they’ve made the redesign. Anyway, if you know additional information, and have other thoughts about this, please share your ideas.

As a conclusion, even if changes are needed from time to time, like in football (soccer), you never change the winning formation.

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I was just surfing on Techcrunch and in one of the comments there was a link with the new design for My MSN - Microsoft’s version for Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo! and my favorite Feedly. Oh, I must mention that the post was regarding My Yahoo! small retouching session.

So, I followed the link and discovered that Microsoft is working to improve My MSN image. As I was telling you several months ago, Microsoft is going through a big redesign process.
Back to My MSN. This service is not on everybody’s favorite list. That is because MSN is not exactly a trend setter or innovator. Regarding the new design, a big annoying thing pops into my eyes: GLOSSY buttons. C’mon guys, admit that Vista was not a big hit and go on. I mean, every mature designer will tell you that glossy is history.
But, beside that, the overall look is OK, not far from the existing one. It has more spacing and obviously more options. The response time is a little bit bigger than Netvibes and My Yahoo but it might be my connection. I really like the big and spacious header. It is quite clean and I’ve seen it used in many designs. Big headers are now not a problem but a solution in creating a good user experience.

Some recommendations
In the end I would say that the buttons can have a simple style, the white background behind the content should be changeable, the text in some content boxes should have a proper typography.

I think that the final product should be more polished but, it is a good move.

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Do you remember ConceptShare? It was that promising web application for designers and their clients. Well it still is, but at that time the company was seen as an innovative one. Right now I can say that the only good thing in ConceptShare is the logo.

Let me explain my negative feeling.
About a year ago, I heard about this company. It was something covered on Cnet’s Webware.com at Under the Radar Conference. This application was presented as a collaboration tool that helps the designer or any user, to get feedback and reviews regarding their visual work. It was developed upon the .net framework using Flash as presentation layer, and at that time ConceptShare was quite a buzz.
Due to ConceptShare’s value, Corel made an agreement and got the web application connected with their main product Corel Draw. So, at that time, ConceptShare was basically the king of visual collaboration on media files. …Not anymore!

My anger…
So, I have nothing against the product. Actually the application is quite useful. But, when all was going well for the company, the web design team went crazy. They went crazy and applied the copy/paste technique. Yes, the site changed its style and copied Apple.com style.
This is not a bad thing, because all designers know that Apple is a trend setter and their website is always next to perfect. I have nothing against inspiration and outsourcing some ideas. But this is wrong, when you copy the overall look, the placement and secondary elements as well.
Below I will show you 2 screens and let you decide weather the redesign was a good thing or bad. Honestly I think they’ve destroyed the visual brand.

Old design Rating:
Copy/Paste Rating:
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A year ago, I was the proud user of Netvibes services. I had a custom page with different RSS feeds and interesting information at that time. Well, after several months, I was already bored with those services. And instead of using Netvibes, I was visiting all the information I needed individually. Up until I’ve discovered Feedly.

So what is Feedly?
Feedly is described on their site as: a more social and magazine-like start page for Firefox! And Yes, that is exactly what it is. A good interface with interactive features, presenting you custom information. It has a starting wizard that will populate your start page with feeds from your area of interest. You can add custom feeds, your feeds. But the main feature of this wizard is that it can learn from your existing preferences like My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Netvibes, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Friendfeed - and apply them to your feedly.

It has a clean design with no additional graphic elements. It is simply usable and provides the user with a great user experience. Also the social part is great. You can clip certain information and share it with your friends. Also it has a built in feature that attaches your Twiteer account to Feedly.
You can recommend a post or remove subscription to any website. Also, Feedly is well integrated with Google Reader, so it means that once you added a subscription to Feedly, it is automatically added to Google Reader.

The only drawback that I see at this moment, is that Feedly is restricted to Firefox. But on the other hand it could be an advantage. I don’t know. We will see how the users will embrace this product.

Conclusion
Overall, this product is brilliant. Two thumbs up for the idea and implementation.

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“Expression Design is a tool for creative professionals and developers who want to build graphics for application user interfaces, the web, or any other medium. Expression Design offers powerful features to help you express your creativity.” - this is how Microsoft is describing Expression Design 2.

Expression Design is an attempt from Microsoft to fight on the design software market against Adobe. It is not clear what product is the target, because Expression Design 2 has both vector and bitmap features. But for comparison and because there are many vector tools and features, I will say Adobe Illustrator.

The first thing that is shocking to user’s eyes is the user interface (UI). We don’t have the same old Word look. This time Microsoft made a clean dark fluid interface. I would say that it is the best interface from Microsoft so far. On the UI are displayed only the main tools and the color and layers panel. This is a big win for Expression Design compared to the not so friendly Adobe Illustrator. Also you can dock, float, minimize or hide your panels in order to be more productive.

Another big win is that Microsoft’s application comes with a good pack of templates and effects. At least the stroke presets are numerous and with various style. You can select from several categories the fill type that is suitable for your project. Compared to other applications (Photoshop), I was impressed by the time used to apply a filter. In Photoshop you wait and wait, but in Expression Design is very fast.

The work with layers is a little bit unproductive but, the application is responding well when dealing with documents composed of many layers. You should not expect the variety of tools and options from Illustrator. This is, for now, a lighter software which happens to make the vector creation activity more pleasant and less complicated.

I salute Microsoft’s initiative and I wish Expression Design to be more competitive and productive.
Kudos for the development team and keep up the good work.

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Diablo, Diablo … Diablo. This is not a game.  Really … this is much like history now. Every Blizzard Entertainment game is doomed to become a classic. Seriously, I think there isn’t a company out there with games as good as Starcrat, Warcraft or Diablo.

Anyway, the topic for this post is obviously Diablo 3, the upcoming version from the Diablo franchise. As you know every time a sequel from Blizzard is announced, the WEB is on fire. And it is a normal state due to the quality and acceptance of Blizzard’s titles. This time it wasn’t an exception, because the graphics from the Diablo 3 and the user experience are awesome.

In order to tease us, a new site was developed for this game. And what better choice to place on the first page, than a nice rendered and light animated Tyrael. For those of you that are not familiar with Tyrael, I have an advice - RESEARCH. I will not tell you details, just that you should really look into that website in order to view a brand new cinematic, game screenshots and other stuff.

One thing is sure, do not expect soon this game, seriously.

Design Rating:
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All active internet users know about Techcrunch. But for those of you who are not aware, Techcrunch is the best start-ups and hot IT news website. It has a growing addictive community. I don’t have specific data, but I could say that techcrunchers are the most loyal users around the web.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article on my other blog Gongea.com, about The Importance of User Experience. In that post I made an example regarding bad placement of important features, and my example was Techcrunch.com. I will reproduce the exact paragraph:

For example, when you have many articles (pay attention Techcrunch) – a key factor is the posibility to access every article with less effort. So – the first thing to do is to place a search feature on the interface. Keep in mind also the user behavior: what are the most used application with a search feature? Where is the search placed? These are simple questions, but with the right answers they will give you better understanding of your user interface and they will provide you a solid base for your user experience. Gongea.com

At that time Techrunch had the search box component placed in the middle of the page, on the sidebar. So in order to search for an article, first you had to search for the search box. I hope I’m not too confusing. Anyway, that issue was resolved with the introduction of a new toolbar. This toolbar is placed in the top side of the website having 2 components: search box and a dropdown that contains Techcrunch Network sites. It is good to see that this site that is focused on bringing fresh new information, is also taking care of the user interface issues.

It was a long road for this search box to be accessible, but now it is in the right place. Some users will say that this was a minor issue, but it was quite a big drawback due to the fact that Techcrunch is dealing with information and data that many users want to access quickly.
Good job Techcrunch.

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You all know MySpace. Yes, … it is that awful looking social networking site. And I’m sure most of the designers share my opinion.

The main reason for writing this post was due to the big coverage that this process caused. And most of the time the reviews were positive. From this point of view I don’t agree.
Let’s face it, everyone knows that Facebook has the looks and MySpace has the marketing. MySpace knew that aspect and wanted to change the overall look in order to have a better acceptance from designers point of view. And, after several years of visual disaster … it seems that more will come.

It is normal that the designers involved in this make-up process had to keep the overall look and feel of the site. On this part I agree. But having this as an excuse, they designed just several gradients and boring colors. The spacing is still a mess, same old icons and the secondary pages have the same age as the Internet. Oh, and not to forget the fact that they could run for the “Next2 Zero Typography” Award. For the biggest social site this is really low.

In the end I think that regarding the redesign, it is better than previous and less than expected.

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Tell us about yourself. Who is Gale Franey?

I live in Vancouver, on Canada’s west coast. I worked for many years as Hotel Manager of the YMCA until it closed to rebuild at the end of 2006. At that time I was doing graphics and digital art as a hobby, but when the YMCA closed in order to build a new facility, I decided to take a one-year course in New Media and Web Development at the British Columbia Technical Institute. Courses covered Illustrator, Flash, Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, After Effects, Motion, Dreamweaver, XHTML, CSS, ASP, MY SQL, PHP, javascript, etc.

When did you decided to embrace the graphic design area and why?

I’ve always appreciated art and anything visual or esthetically beautiful. In 2001 I bought my first digital camera and a beginner’s book about digital photography techniques. The book came with a CD that had a photo editing program that I installed on my computer. This allowed me to learn begin changing elements within a photograph. Then I discovered the full version of Photoshop and there was no turning back. I bought many books, but did most of my technical learning through DVD
training videos. This gave me a solid foundation in the basic tools and interface, but did not cover the creative aspect of digital art. The creative aspect came through long hours of experimentation, trial and error, and practice.

A lot of people heard and know about graphic design. But what you do, is a little bit different. Can you explain your style and techniques?

My style is influenced by old masters oil paintings from previous centuries and there is also some influence from Asian art. I spent more than 4 years in India and was deeply impressed by their style of art and sculpture. Some of my favorite artists are Bouguereau, John Waterhouse, Alphonse Mucha, Pieter Bruegal, and Michael Sowa.

I acquired my technique through my own experimentation. I combine aspects of my digital photography with blending modes, masking, digital painting and manipulation to
achieve the ideas that I envision.

Your portfolio is quite known because of Flickr, but mainly for your vision and creativity. So for us there are all great designs. But what is your favorite artwork?

Among my own art I do not have a particular favorite. Each piece represents a story that is different from one another. If I had to choose one, I might pick the one that I did of my daughter, Priya, called Forget The Past That Sleeps

Now that a lot of people have seen your creations and work, how do you see the upcoming period of time?

I am currently working on a children’s book, a fantasy story that takes place under the sea. The digital images have been commissioned by a company based in California, USA. I have done contract work for them and may continue to do some projects for them in the future. I am also continuing to learn Flash Actionscript 3 and would like to be able to do some projects that combine digital art and
animation. I built my main website, www.thegraphicgroove.com in Flash, combining animated elements with my art.

Name 3 visual elements that you like from the graphic point of view: website, movie and graphic artist.

Website:www.goober.nu is one of my favorite Flash websites. I also love the work of Esao Andrews: www.esao.net/. These are just a few among so many great visual influences.
Movie:There are so many great movies, but one of the ones that I found so amazing visually is Les Triplets Of Belleville, a beautiful animation.
Graphic Artist:There is not one particular graphic artist whose work has influenced me. I admire different aspects of so many people’s work. Of an earlier era, the work of Alphonse Mucha, which is really more of graphic art style than art, I greatly admire the amazing color palette’s he used and the beautiful design elements.
Most Recent Inspiration:I just went to see a performance of Cirque du Soleil, which is like art in motion. It was so inspiring and I am certain it will have an influence on my future art.

Thank you for your time.
Cheers!

PS: Gale Franey Flickr Account

So, it’s been almost 7 weeks since Iron Man hit the screens. With a very good start, this robot based movie was getting good reviews. My first idea was that the movie is good, but compared to Transformers … no. So I did a comparison chart and I said that at the end of its running time Iron Man will gain less than Transformers.

Update:

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Transformers: $707 mil
Iron Man: $540 mil

I’m still putting my money on Transformers. Iron Man I think will end up under $650 mil. Still there are several weeks to go. Iron Man fans can hope