Here’s what Jonh Cleese has to say about creativity, I’d listen, this is good stuff.

Sorry if this causing a bummer for you, wish it wont

My talk was called “Hönnun er hjartans mál” in icelandic or “Design is a matter of the heart” I believe in english. It was mainly about how I started freelancing and how things progressed from there. What we think is beautiful, what inspires us, how design is emotional, and where we are today with web design. All of this is of course seen from the limited perspective of me.

My thanks to all the people @Skýrr who went ahead and made this thing happen, must have taken some effort.

I’m experiencing this quite a bit these days, being the co-owner of a mega deck web design studio and what not, kidding. But when we set out I and my co-owner Kristján had loads of beautiful ideas on how to do things differently and it’s just hard to hold on to them when the ship starts gaining momentum. That’s why it’s great seeing videos like this John Jay guy, never seen him before but saw the video on CreateMake and found it very inspiring and though provoking.

Please have a look at it and share your thoughts if you have any on this subject.

Quality of design: Thoughtfulness and processes that lead to user delight, that make it likely that someone will seek out a product, pay extra for it or tell a friend.

Found it while reading an article by Zen Master Seth Godin, make sure you read the whole thing.

I believe the term comes from the print world which makes it all the more bizarre. I don’t intend to post all my thoughts on this matter right now but feel compelled to share with you an email I got from a fellow designer Haraldur Þorleifsson. This is what he had to say:

1. First of, what is the fold?

- around 20% of users on a desktop computer in the US have 1024×768 which is normally defined as the lowest resolution designed for.

- on a 1024x768px display the fold for a full screen browser is 578px. Many people see this as the fold.

2. What is your target audience?

- the around 20% of the users that have 1024×768 displays are by definition not likely to be high spending individuals – so even though the website should definitely be usable on that resolution it is questionable if those users should be a high priority.

- Around 4 in 5 of your users will have larger displays. And those individuals are much more likely to be big spenders.

3. What other people are doing:

- Almost no website has nothing below the fold (google.com is probably the only real example)

- Based on this, people are not just used to scrolling down for their content, you could argue that they expect it.

Apple.com (probably the most widely cited example of a well designed website):
- every product overview page is basically the same (see iphone.com as example). It has a menubar, logo, CTA button and a large image/text area. With the image, this takes up around 750px, which means about 170px higher than the fold cited for 1024x768px.
- This area is purely marketing, almost purely look-n-feel.
- The reason for the large image area is not that nobody has seen their products, on the contrary, their products are almost ubiquitous . The reason (in my opinion) is that when it comes to actually buying something (or signing up) a strong visual message is key for that final kick over the line. That visual message will be much more effective than not having to scroll down.

-If you add in the first few lines of the boxes below this area you can add about 150px giving it a total of around 900px high. All “real information” is below this area and the complete site can be up to a few thousand pixels high if the content demands it.

4. Questions?
- If you still want to aim for the fold, what px height should you go for? Should it be the 578px? Should it be the Apple 750-900 px high line?
- and once that px height has been set, what information should necessarily be in that area? Should it be a visual message or hardcore data?
- These are not minute details. The answer to these questions will probably significantly improve the impact of your website.

Iceland
www.stjornlagarad.is

Working on a site like this is something I always want to do, this is something that can really change things for the better I hope.

Stjórnlagaráð was appointed to make changes to the Icelandic Constitution, something that can really make the infrastructure of our country better for us humans living here.

The crafty and cunning Finnur Magnússon or Gommit is technical director for this and is doing an amazing job.

We (Kosmos & Kaos) only designed one template that Finnur took and executed throughout the site. I also polished some of the css around the site.

Kosmos & Kaos, our new web agency, has a client in the Bay Area that needs a new website and consulting on business development. This is one of our strong suits, design and business development.

The whole trip has been a joy, work went great, the client loved our proposal and now we are heading back to Iceland to finish the design and do programming. Stjáni has had more meetings than me on business development and has of course done a great job. We’ve met with old friends and made some new ones. Seen the City, the hills and ate some great food. We’ve also hooked up with our good friends from Clara, soon to be Birdcore as they’ve just opened offices here in SF, we will also be doing a new site for their Birdcore project, more on that later.

So I loved San Francisco especially China Town cause of all the tea in China but I cant wait to get back home to my beloved wife and kids, give them all loads of hugs and kisses. See you when I get there.

Namaste
g

PS, I leave you with some fantastic shots done by my good friend and San Francisco guide Gúndi the photographer

I’ve long thought about growing my business and last October I took a big step in that direction by forming Kosmos & Kaos with a good friend of mine Kristján Gunnarsson. I’d been using the name Kosmos & Kaos for the company I was running but not actively using it as a front so to speak.

We’ve been growing very fast these last few months and have started working with some great new clients. Seems the moment we decided to have an agency bigger clients started knocking at our door, you could say the decision was a Kosmik event.

Stay tuned for more stuff, and hopefuly we’ll get a chance to work on the site for Kosmos & Kaos too, you know what they say, the cobblers kid’s never have shoes.