In this edition of Design Deconstructed (DD) I am going to be highlighting and discussing some of the design issues of internet/information magnate, Google (http://www.google.com/).

Ever since it’s early days Google has been aiming high, in 1998 they had circa 25,000,000 million pages that were searchable. That was pretty huge. The site read, ‘Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)‘, there weren’t wrong either; 10 years later they broke 1 trillion. This number is growing at an alarming rate so the information they need to display must be displayed clearly. The idea is that you can find exactly what you are looking for, and easily. I can imainge reading this at some point in the future and these figures being irrelevant.

Something interesting to note:

‘So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don’t know; we don’t have time to look at them all! :-) Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite — for example, web calendars may have a “next day” link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a “new” page. We’re not doing that, obviously, since there would be little benefit to you. But this example shows that the size of the web really depends on your definition of what’s a useful page, and there is no exact answer.’

Ok, onto the visuals of Google. There are many variations of google, depending on country etc. I am going to use www.google.com as the example.

The main content (search field, buttons, advanced search link etc) are center aligned. There are links at the very top, linking to different areas within google. Areas such as Images, Video, Maps, Gmail, iGoogle, etc. Upon searching you are prompted with search suggestions, this can be a very handy way to search for related content. It can also be a bit of a ‘feeder’, telling you what to search for. Sometimes distracting, sometimes helpful.

The current official Google logo was designed by Ruth Kedar, and is a logotype based on the Catull typeface. For me, it seems like an unorthodox choice of typeface, but google has become so easily recognizable it works. I’m not sure a sans-serif would be able to replace it. However I could see google changing their logo in time, it could do with a make-over. I feel, the bevel/drop shadow is very “Look what I can do in photoshop”, but in reality, it works as Google is a service that does it’s job excellently, it’s service speaks for itself. It’s not relying on tidy kerning and a slick colour palette. The logo works because the technology works. In saying that it has become something very distinctive. These colours are bold and are now strongly associated with Google.

Search results are displayed clearly, with enough emphasis on what are Paid Ads and what are Indexed Pages. It’s important that these are separated, for a couple of reasons, most importantly from a users point of view; it allows people to choose whether or not they are clicking on an Advert, it also means that adverts get their own place, they’ll stand out and thus that is the privilege you get by paying for listings. Something that irritates me are integrated advertisements. Links that are styled to fit the page, where you believe that the links are actually part of the site but they turn out to be AdSense/AdWord links. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this, after a while you can spot them, and learn to avoid them. Perhaps styling adverts too much like page content is a bad idea, google seems to do that well on their search pages.

I found it hard to identify a grid, but there’s more a logical arrangement rather than a strict grid, it seems to work. All indexed results appear on the left with a line-width of about 545px. This is the same on all resolutions. The AdWords take up just under a 3rd of the screen to the right. So you could basically say it’s 2 thirds indexed listings, 1 thrid ads. Roughly.

The typeface/font choices are pretty simple:

.h{
font-family:arial,sans-serif
}

The colour palette doesn’t really exist apart from the logo. Links appear blue and turn red for the duration of time you hold down on them.

Another small obvious feature I like is the result information bar that appears on the right, above the adverts. It has a link to the definition of the word you’re searching for. There are many other handy codes you can put into your search as a prefix or suffix to tweek what google searches for.

There are other user features to Google, but these are the main ones that I feel you have to deal with 90% of the time. It’s a simple interface thats easy to use, tried and tested daily by millions of people. For the moment, Google’s layout works, and it is small on-going changes that will improve it. A drastic change couldn’t really happen, people are to used to it. It may not be slick or sylish, but overall, it’s a great layout, with a solid backend, and for it’s purpose it’s working perfectly. Ok, so I hope you found this useful. What do you think?

Is Google user-friendly?
What do you like/dislike?
Anything you would change? Suggestions?
Perhaps you might just be onto something.

By the way, if you like you can follow me on twitter, I’l be posting links to blogs and other cool things, along with my own thoughts and questions. If you’re into it, follow me!

http://twitter.com/YoussefSarhan

In this edition of Design Deconstructed (DD) I am going to be observing our own website, WHITEINK (www.whiteinkblog.com).

Masthead, Set in Helvetica Neue

Kerning of the name, WHITEINK, more info on the development of the logo in this post, Welcome, The WHITEINK Story.

Typeface choice, this was used for all the type on the site. Almost everything you’re reading is set in Helvetica. Due to it’s popularity and clarity it was selected as the primary typeface, followed by arial, arial is installed on nearly every computer and would be a similar alternative to helvetica.

Body Text: 13pt Helvetica
Post Title: 18pt Helvetica Bold

See Wilsion Miner’s post on Relative Readability for a comprehensive insight into web type sizing. Personally I think 16pt might be a little on the large size, it could be because the column is quite narrow on his website. But I like the thought behind it.

Photo credit to Wilson Miner.

These are the colour which appear on the site. The only use of the gradient is as the background, the background plays a part in the logo. As the gradient fades out it causes the logo to fade out aswell.

“Tim and I were chatting about something or another; we were talking about the cost of printing. The place we get stuff printed charges based on ink coverage. Tim was wondering how much it’d cost to get a white pdf printed on white paper. Took a second to realise that made no sense, and from that the name ‘WHITEINK’ was born. It was simple and easy to remember. So we went with it …

… we went with a clean uppercaps ‘WHITEINK’. Deciding to make it white on a light grey gradient was to pickup on the story behind it. Demonstrating how as the gradient fades out, white-on-white doesn’t really make much sense.”

Black [#000000]
The primary colour of the text.

Grey [#999999]
Used for other smaller piece of text such as the colophon at in the footer, the 7px boarder around images and hairline horizontal rules.

Red [#990000]
Used for link rollovers, except for in the navigation bar.

Final Homepage Layout

Homepage with highlighted grid. (Click to view at 100%) There maybe a a few tiny little things off, but I think over all, we did well with sticking to the grid and making sure it was tested over and over. I’d suggest clicking the image to check it out.

That covers the majority of elements in the site. The masthead, typeface, colours and grid. I hope this gives you a better insight into the reasons behind the decisions made when designing this website.

If you have a suggestion for a website or design you would like to see deconstructed, leave a comment. Let me know what you think of this post, leave a comment and get involved. I’ll do my best to respond.

Last august, in the peak of Irelands wintery summer, Tim & I were talking about setting up a website. Maybe a joint portfolio or something along those lines; but we soon realised there wouldn’t be a whole lot to gain from it. It wouldn’t be much of a learning experience. So after a few months, I suggested a blog, somewhere for us to express our thoughts, to write post on things we like, work and people that truly inspire us. So we agreed. It was set in motion.

Thinking of a name was the first thing. We went through pages and pages of names, it wasn’t getting anywhere, it was bit forced; so we took a break. Then sometime after Tim and I were chatting about something or another; we were talking about the cost of printing. The place we get stuff printed charges based on ink coverage. Tim was wondering how much it’d cost to get a white pdf printed on white paper. Took a second to realise that made no sense, and from that the name ‘WhiteInk’ was born. It was simple and easy to remember. So we went with it.

Here is a very skimmed taste of the amount of sketches and doodles that went into how we’d present the site’s logo. In the end we realised we weren’t creating a brand so we went with a clean uppercaps ‘WHITEINK’. Deciding to make it white on a light grey gradient was to pickup on the story behind it. Demonstrating how as the gradient fades out, white-on-white doesn’t really make much sense.

They were just a few screenshots/photos of some ideas we had. Some were the result of pages of sketches others were just one off doodles. We went with a type-only title, sort of like a masthead. Here are a few images of the blog design progression.

As this is the first post, I don’t want to overload you with info; however in my next post (Design Deconstructed) I will break down and give rationale to the elements of our blog design, such as the grid, typeface(weight/size), colours, going into some detail on the css and layout. I hope to make ‘Design Deconstructed’ a regular feature, where I try to deconstruct the designs of some of my favorite websites.

I hope this gave you a little bit of an insight into how we designed this website, the steps and progress. From start(august) to finish(january) it took about 6 months, with the interaction of our visitors it’ll keep growing. If you’ve got hope for the blog, please subscribe on the sidebar to the right.

Thank you for reading.