The Holoscene: A Delicate Movement

My friends Ashley + Calvin just wed at The Holoscene on Saturday and, true to their world-class design style, they chose a venue whose design is well carried throughout their physical and virtual space. The physical-- well, creative, but let's check out the virtual.

When you first open the Holoscene site --it sounds like opening a present, and that's what a website should be-- it should be a well-tailored gift-- you're greeted with this 8-bit scene in the middle of the page, surrounded by white space.



What's cool about this is the delicate movement of the bird as it flies through the abundant space, making the space become real and active. Also, the "glittering"? of the colored lights in the skyscraper window. This also creates a sense of life, which is rarely seen in a website. The various levels of earth are a great way to incorporate a menu within the design itself. In fact, all it is is menu, which is awesome. The delicacy of the labels make it look modern and fresh, which takes over the 8-bit feeling, making that seem like a choice, not a limitation.

Now here's the true crown-- hit "menu" and look at those flowers. They move and change as though they're listening to some invisible music. It's a great incorporation of movement without taking over the scene. In fact, the delicacy does take over the scene, but it's so open that it keeps its boundary, leaving the viewer without feeling overwhelmed. What's lacking in this simplicity is a back button (OK, you can use your browser's) or another menu to explore the various pages in the site.



There's some nice animation near the bird in the "links" page, as well. It's powerful in speed, but extremely delicate. This delicacy and action brings in a definite feeling of life.

My favorite part, though, is the implied music through the flowers. They seem as though they're moving to music but, fortunately, there's no music involved. It's like, the site knows that we can't open it at work with sound, and not everyone has the same taste, so why appeal to universal appreciation of sound? Give it the implied sense of dance and let the user fill in the rest. Well done.

The Creative Invoice

Why not take something that's ASSUMED boring and bring it to life?


While researching how to create an invoice, I came across Holdsnowater's invoice on Flickr. The design is so great-- it's an invoice within an invoice, it's well labeled, and nothing gets in the way of the theme-- the whole thing screams Invoice, and yet the whole thing screams Well Designed.

It makes me wonder if creatives should have different invoices for different types of work. Like, for me, one Design Invoice, one Photography Invoice, and one Writing Invoice, each one with accompanying visual styles and elements to compliment the theme... Perhaps have a template, and switch the colors and graphics for each one accordingly, but have all other visual elements remain the same.

For a "quick" (not so quick) template that I had to give to my dad for some logo work, I created this one below. It's not as tight and assembled as Hodsnowater's, for sure, and it's not my clear theme delineation proposal, but I like it. Do you?

Do you have any links for other creative twists to boring financial documents?

There's no standard for how to do financial documentation, as long as it's clear. American Apparel, apparently, has a really well designed receipt. Check it out! It's always nice to come across some stellar design.