360angles

Every single (even moderately successful) web browser’s logo has been round… Why?

The  most obvious explanation is that Internet Explorer had a round logo and, considering it enjoyed a 95% market share in 2002, everyone else fell in line (Netscape switched to their round logo after IE had already made massive gains). Secondly, with the importance of putting forth a world wide web vibe it seems logical that you would end up with a bunch of globes.

But what about Internet Explorer itself? Why are the IE and NCSA Mosaic logos round? Was it on a designer’s whim? Considering these products were mostly if not entirely the work of engineers; it’s a bit more practical than that.

When NCSA Mosaic came out in the 90′s it was the first graphical web browser. With an accessible UI design, and killer features like icons, bookmarks and pictures, it’s what really kick-started the online information revolution. It had a status indicator which was the logo itself. This indicator had to display indefinite progress, so it was basically an elaborate spinner. (e.g. the current Mac OS X beach ball or Windows spinning hourglass.) Spinners are circular in concept and dynamics, otherwise, they would be a progress bar or something else non-cyclical used to indicate definite progress.

Netscape and Microsoft followed suit with their graphical browsers. They implemented logo-based spinners in the upper-right corner of their browser interfaces to indicate page loading progress while we were staring at blank screens hooked to dial-up connections. That way you knew something was happening. The logo-as-spinner element has taken a backseat since then, but it seems like the marketing vocabulary for the web browser was set.

It’s interesting to note that Opera, with the widest departure from the globular design trend (the only one with no blue, as well) is also the least successful of all the browsers here, despite recent gains on current fringe platforms like Nintendo Wii and mobile devices. A similar observation can be made about Mozilla’s browser: eking along in obscurity for years, until finally releasing it’s rounded-logo browser version. With it’s new globular look, it quickly became the only serious challenge to Microsoft’s dominance of this space. (Obviously these are cases of correlation, not causation. However, looking at the list with a designer’s eye, it’s hard to miss.)

It will be interesting to see what the first major web browser without a globular logo design will be, bu if the current slew of upstart browsers are an indication, we’re in for quite a wait…

Oh, and apparently blue is just as worldly as the globular shape. ALL the logos in this post, except for Opera, contain blue/green of some sort. In fact, it’s by far the dominant color in nearly all of them. Is this more IE worship? Probably: subconscious or blatant, imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery.

After all, what company wouldn’t like to replicate IE’s 2002 95% market dominance of the browser-space?

Links to the Browsers listed in this article:

• NCSA Mosaic
• Netscape Navigator
• Internet Explorer
• Opera
• Safari
• Firefox
• Chrome
• Flock
• Konqueror
• xB Browser
• Maxthon
• Camino

Here is your Graphic Design “history lesson” for the day…

Up until the early 90s, before digital design software exploded amongst creatives, artists used to cut up these prints in various shapes, layers. They then layered, glued and rubbed on type and logos to create mock-ups and compositions for various print pieces.

That was then, this is now, here’s a bit of history to collect. With the digital design software of today, these posters have become a thing of the past. Today, these out-of-print PANTONE by Letraset posters can now be purchased! Frame them to showcase not only the beauty of their pure colors but to preserve the graphic design history they carry from the old cut-and-paste days.

Find a color that speaks to you, and custom frame it in your creative space or take yourself back in time for a fun print workshop using any kind of art media you desire. Don’t forget to check the helpful grid guide on the back of each print!

We should totally get Pantone 166C for the office! That’s our signature Voltage Orange, for those of you who are wondering.

Do you recognize this logo? You’ve probably seen it before. Almost everyone in the world has. It’s the logo for Major League Baseball. It’s striking, simple and full of symbolism. And no one is quite sure where it came from…

Full Size Image ( 237KB GIF – 5000×800 )

No other color in modern history has carried such gravitas when it comes to associations with masculinity, femininity and politics. The color pink is a vessel for weighty subject material, indeed. Especially when you consider the fact that it has only been around in its proper form for less than 500 years. Who knows what the future for this light shade of red will hold, but this info graphic covers the last hundred years of politics and pop culture in all things pink.

This image is published by Voltage Creative under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License.

The Chronicle Review is running a fascinating deconstruction of the infamous 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles’s War of The Worlds radio broadcast that should be required reading for anyone interested in word of mouth or viral marketing. The widely reported hysteria was pretty tame in reality, but it was spun into something greater by a self-important media in love with a story about the power it possessed.

So what accounts for the legend? First — and perhaps most important — the news media loved the story, and Welles loved the news media. The panic became a global story literally overnight. Even the Nazis could not resist commenting, noting the credulity of the American public. Americans certainly appeared gullible, but they were not alone. The news media, handed a sensational story of national scope, reported every detail (including fictional ones) about Welles, the program, and the reaction.

Welles’s greatest performance that evening wasn’t in the studio; it was in a hallway, at the improvised news conference, when he feigned a stunned, apologetic demeanor. In reality, as Paul Heyer notes in The Medium and the Magician, Welles carefully concealed his satisfaction with the hysteria while expressing concern over the rumors of deaths attributed to the program.

The only firsthand study of the event with any scientific credibility actually disproved then-present-day perceptions of mass-media’s role in human psyche as some sort of great controller… It showed that people are not easily manipulated, at least not with predictable results.

The hypodermic model of media effects, which prevailed at the time, posited that the media injected ideas, more or less directly, into the consciousness of the audience. The book’s data seriously undermined that model, demonstrating empirically that each member of the mass audience filters the media’s messages through a matrix of personal variables (education, critical ability, class, etc.). Those data complicated media theory tremendously and intensified the research focus on the complexities of audience reception.

Lazarsfeld surprised many by concluding in The People’s Choice, his classic study of the 1940 election, that the media’s effects are, in general, much more selective and limited than we assume. Other forms of communication, from those in the education system to religious communication to interpersonal communication, were apparently more powerful. The mass media were but one part of a larger web of influence, and as one factor, their actual influence was mediated by several other variables. Thus, the media’s ability to control us was far less pronounced than assumed.

That is the ultimate irony behind “The War of the Worlds.” The discovery that the media are not all-powerful, that they cannot dominate our political consciousness or even our consumer behavior as much as we suppose, was an important one. It may seem like a counter intuitive discovery (especially considering its provenance), but ask yourself this: If we really know how to control people through the media, then why isn’t every advertising campaign a success? Why do advertisements sometimes backfire? If persuasive technique can be scientifically devised, then why do political campaigns pursue different strategies? Why does the candidate with the most media access sometimes lose?

The answer is that humans are not automatons. We might scare easily, we might, at different times and in different places, be susceptible to persuasion, but our behavior remains structured by a complex and dynamic series of interacting factors.

Something to keep in mind next time you have big plans for your market.

The Hyped Panic Over ‘War of the Worlds’ – The Chronicle Review.

[Illustration by Doug Savage]

Don’t miss this ~5 minute doc on the art of Letterpress.

“It will die. Eventually. Because people will forget how to do it.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“It’s OK, I’m only responsible for my watch.”

The Linotype machine is mesmerizing. The 3rd dimension that Letterpress adds to typography can’t be beat.

1. English-to-Pirate Translator. Ye best be learnin’ t’ be talkin’ like a buccaneer.
2. A guide for picking up wenches in a manner not unlike Blackbeard himself. May the one you catch keep the wind in your sail.
3. Download some free Pirate Fonts. The pen is mightier than the sword.
4. Learn about the most successful pirate of all time. The scurvy dog controlled a fleet of 1,500 ships and upwards of 80,000 men. And she did it all without any color of beard…
5. Find out your pirate name. I’m Black Dagger Dan.
6. A treasure trove of recipes fer even the biggest sea dog appetites.
7. Know thine enemy. A beast to be feared.
8. Pick up some Pirate flags, authentic and otherwise, and show your true colors.
9. Peruse a listing of every single pirate movie ever made. With synopsis and star rating!
10. Learn about the tradition’s noble racquetball roots.

These modern video-gaming classics re-imagined in Atari 2600 packaging is a weird walk down a memory lane that wasn’t. Very clever.

Before the over the top, logo heavy madness of today’s next-gen masterpieces became the visual norm for video game cover art, there was the basic beauty of the Atari 2600’s approach to package design. Clean composition and vague descriptive text came together to create something that was just so…intangibly fresh and mesmerizing. But what if the biggest games of now fell into the hands of a 2600-era artist? We’d have Atari Modern Classics, a vintage look at our new favorites through the pixelated beer goggles of an era where simplicity was king.

Check out the full gallery at The-MinusWorld.com.

Having a graphic designer look at this website is kind of like asking a chef to snort wasabi: RAINBOWDIVIDERS.COM (NOT an Epileptic-safe link.)

Viewing Tips:

1. Make sure you hit refresh a couple of times to get the full effect.
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom to check out the pixelated CSS and HTML compliant badges.
3. Even their page title is obnoxiously dynamic, don’t miss it.

Question: wither is their animated favicon? (Me: dissapointed)

“It’s the hat.”
A power play of optical and emotional manipulation. This print ad for Hut Weber Hats by Serviceplan is a perfect example of the Gestalt Principles of closure and proximity nicely applied.

[DFCKR via Ads of the World]