Not convinced of the new design? — Well, that’s not quite it… We won’t spill the beans just yet on how it’s going to work and how it’s really going to look, but following is a list of the data we’ll be using. We’d like to discuss with you what networks, websites, and trend setters should be on the Web Trend Map this year to avoid being too dictatorial. Here are some of our current suggestions for the sites and people that we think should be featured:

WEB SITES AND NETWORKS: 163.com, 1UP, 24 Gi, 2ch.net, 4chan, 4shared, 56.com , 6.cn , A List Apart, ABC, About.com, Adaptive Path, AdBrite, Adobe, AIGA, AIM, Al-Jazeera, Alexa, Alibaba, Amazon, Amazon Japan, Amazon.de, Ameblo, Ancestry.com, Android, Answers.com, AOL, Apple, Ars Technica, Ask.com, Badongo, Baidu, BBC, Bebo, Beppegrillo, Bigpoint, Blogger, Bloomberg, BoingBoing, Boxes and Arrows, Brandchannel, BuzzMachine, Cisco, CNET, CNET Downloads, CNN, COLOURlovers, Comcast, Comedy Central, Compete, Coudal Partners, Craigslist, Creative Commons, Crooks & Liars, Crunchbase, Crunchyroll, CSS Beauty, CSS Mania, Cyworld, Daily Kos, Dailymotion, Daring Fireball, DataPortability, Dave Winer, del.icio.us, Deposit Files, Der Spiegel, Design Observer, Design Shack, Designers Republic, deviantART, DevX, Die Zeit, Digg, Discuss , Disney, Doodle, Double Click, dpreview.com, Drudge Report, Drupal, DZone, Eastmoney , Easy Share, eBay, eBay Germany, eBay UK, eBuddy, eHarmony, El Mundo, El País, Engadget, ESPN, Expedia, Facebook, FactCheck, FARK, FC2, Federated Media, FeedBurner, FileFactory, Firefox, Fireworks, Flickr, Fotolog, FOX, Friendster, Frog Design, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Gawker, Getty Images, Gizmodo, Globo, Go Fug Yourself, goo, Google, Google AdSense, Google Syndication, Google Analytics, Google Image Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Reader, Google News, Google Video, Google Books, Picasa, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Earth, Google Apps, Google Finance, Google Adwords, Google Answer, Google Checkout, Google Calendar, Google Blogsearch, Picasa, AdSense, Google China, Google Espana, Google France, Google Germany, Google India, Google Indonesia, Google Italy, Google Japan, Google Mexico, Google Netherlands, Google Poland, Google Russia, Google Saudi Arabia, Google Thailand, Google Turkey, Google UK, Gutenberg, Hatena, Heise, Hi5, HowStuffWorks, Huffington Post, Hulu, ICQ, IDEO, iG, IGN, ImageShack, ImageVenue, IMDb, IMEEM, Internet Archive, isoHunt, iTunes, IXDA, Jabber, Joox, Kotaku, kottke, La Repubblica, Last.fm, Le Monde, LinkedIn, Linux, Live Messenger, Live Search, Livedoor, LiveJournal, Mail.ru, Match.com, Media Matters, MediaFire, Meebo, MegaUpload, Megavideo, Metacafe, metroFLOG, Microsoft, Migente, Miniclip, Mininova, Mixi, Monster, MOO, Mop.com, MovableType, MSN, Multiply, MyBlogLog, MySpace, MySQL, MyVideo, Naver, Netflix, Netlog, Netvibes, New York Times, Newsnetz, Newsvine, Nicovideo, Ning, NZZ, O’Reilly, Odnoklassniki, OhMyNews, Opensecrets, Opera, Orkut, Pandora, PartyPoker, PayPal, PChome.net, PDF, Peachpit, PerezHilton, Photobucket, PHP, PingMag, Plaxo, Podcast Alley, PokerStars, Python, QBN, QQ, Rakuten, RapidShare, Reddit, Rivva, Ruby, sapo, Scobleizer, Sendspace, Sina, Skype, Skyrock, Slashdot, Slate, Smashing Magazine, Snap Shots, Snarf-It, Softonic, Sohu, Something Awful, SourceForge, Starware, StatCounter, Studiverzeichnis, StumbleUpon, Subtraction, swissmiss, T-Online, Tagged, Taobao, Techcrunch, Techmeme, Technorati, Terra, The Consumerist, The Daily Show, The Economist, The Onion, The Pirate Bay, The Register, TheGuardian, ThinkGeek, TOM.COM, TorrentMatrix, TorrentReactor, Torrents, Torrentz, Tudou, Twitter, Typepad, U9, Universo Online, USA Today, UseIt, UserCash, Uwants, V Kontakte, Valleywag, Veoh, Versiontracker, Vimeo, Vnet.cn, VOX, W3C, W3Schools, Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, WebMD, Wikipedia, Wikileaks, Wired News, Wonkette, Wordpress, WRETCH, Xanga, XING, Xunlei , Yahoo!, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Japan, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yandex, Y Combinator, Youku, YourFileHost, YouTube, ZeFrank, Zeldman, zShare

WEB ENTREPRENEURS AND TREND SETTERS: Akash Garg, Alex Welch, Alexis Ohanian, Allen Blue, Anca-Alina Seghedi, Angelo Sotira, Arianna Huffington, Avinash Kaushik, Aza Raskin, Benjamin Bejbaum, Beppe Grillo, Bill Gates, Biz Stone, Bobby Chang, Brewster Kahle, Brian L. Roberts, Bruce D. Smith, Challis Hodge, Charles Geschke, Chris Anderson, Chris DeWolfe, Chris Hughes , Dalton Caldwell, Dan Nye, Darren Crystal, Dave Silfry, Dave Winer, David Heller, David Plotz, David Tokheim, Dmitry Shapiro, Drew Curtis, Elaine Wherry, Eric Boyd, Eric Schmidt, Evan Williams, Eyal Hertzog, Felix Miller, Gabe Rivera, Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, George Bodenheimer, Gina Bianchini, Greg Forgatch, Hiroyuki Nishino, Hosea Jan Frank, Ian Anderson, Iggy Fanlo, Jason Calacanis, Jack and Alexander Levin, Jack Dorsey, Jack Ma, Jakob Lodwick, Jakob Nielsen, Janus Friis, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Jeff "CJayC" Veasey, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Jarvis, Jeffery Zeldman, Jesse James Garrett, Jim Buckmaster, Jim Coudal, Jim Jarrett, Jim Safka, Jimmy Wales, John Amato, John Battelle, John Gruber, John T. Chambers, John Warnock, Joi Ito, Jon Stewart, Jonah Peretti, Justin LaFrance, Ken Lerer, Kenji Kasahara, Kevin Rose, Khoi Vinh, Larry Page, Larry Sanger, Loic Le Meur, Marc Andreessen, Marissa Mayer, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Markos Moulitsas, Martin Stiksel, Matt Drudge, Matt Mullenweg, Matthew Stephens, Meg Whitman, Michael Arrington, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Dell, Mitchell Baker, Mike Jones, Neil Clark Warren, Olivier Poitrey, Paul Graham, Perez Hilton, Pete Cashmore, Pete Deemer, Peter Rojas, Ramu Yalamanchi, Reed Hastings, Rick Cecil, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Robert Scoble, Robert Small, Rupert Murdoch, Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, Scott Jarkoff, Sean Parker, Sergey Brin, Seth Godin, Sheryl Sandberg, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Stewart Butterfield, Thomas Enraght-Moony, Tihan Presbie, Tim Berners-Lee, Tim Brown, Tim O’Reilly, Tim Sullivan, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Tom Anderson, Toni Schneider, Vince Broady, Vint Cerf

Please feel free to comment on the above list, or to suggest any websites or personalities you feel should be featured. Don’t ask us to feature your personal blog or your start-up project just because you think it’s cool. Criteria are: Either it has high relevancy in terms of traffic or it has the potential to grow into a top winner (or loser–you need to fly high to fall deep) in 2009.

UPDATE: We opened a room on friendfeed for the discussion

P.S. - In the upcoming days, we’ll be posting our review of 2008 and our preview of 2009. Stay tuned.

iA was asked to redesign Doodle’s interface and brand identity. We began by evaluating the previous interface with a series of usability tests. Then we designed a sequence of updates that were checked and redesigned in a tightly coordinated evolutionary process between iA’s design team and the usability lab run by e&t in Zürich. This was the first time we developed a Web application in an environment so rich with usability testing. The high-approval rate of the previous user interface made the frequency of tests absolutely necessary.

Along with a few déjà-vu and “a-HA!” moments, we experienced some rather astounding results. The most surprising of which was the total failure of the calendar-UI standard as currently employed by Google, iCal, Outlook Express, and Doodle’s competitors. We would never have though that among the various possibilities, the current iFrame-esque scrolling div box would have delivered the strongest results.

After the initial few rounds of wireframes and tests, iA defined a modular design system for the Doodle brand that reflects its straight-to-the-point, user-oriented character.

Here are a couple of screens of the process, and how it developed:

And this is how it used to look:

Live TV by Ustream

The citations in the following are not verbatim, the numbering is not entirely correct, and it’s all a little sloppily connected, but it’s all strong on substance:

What he said

1. Great brands are built when the market is down; that’s when you can take market share. The down market is the time when people build things they need. People who build companies to get rich generally don’t succeed. People who don’t have any money build better companies, because they build them on passion.

2. The market is going down, internet usage is going up, start-up costs are going down, and people’s amount of free time is going up. In short: the downmarket is a great time for start ups.

3. Trust and “curation” are the future. Lots of things in 1.0 and 2.0 are built on a very bad foundation of anonymity, marketers, and shady people. The way to go is taking existing ideas and adding trust and curation to them. Digg is a great system, but the anonymity provides opportunity for improvement. There is no wisdom in crowds. There may be trends or patterns in crowds, but not wisdom… “Wisdom in crowds” was made-up by someone in Silicon Valley to get suckers to work for free. Wisdom of the crowds does not exist.

4. Surviving is innovative. Great companies are those who are there for a couple of years. If you’re scared because of the recession: close your company, go home to your mom, and let the real entrepreneurs take over your market share.

My five cents

First of all, it’s great to hear someone speaking with so much optimism, especially someone who has been in the business for so long and experienced the associated shitload of negativity that comes with that experience.

1. Yes, brands are personalities, thus they are built on the passion of the people that incorporate them. Whether we speak about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Ford, or Jeff Bezos, the head of the company symbolizes and drives the brand. But passion alone isn’t enough. You need a massive market, a massive network and—most importantly—solid means to survive. Yes, technology has become incredibly cheap, but without adequate resources in programming, interaction design, and marketing, it is almost impossible to compete with the big shots. In order to take on the big guys you need more than passion. You need strong muscles, T3-levels of determination, and enough cash to feed the people working for you.

2. I fully agree on the second point, and I’ve said so before. Even though it’s not going to be easy, I believe that the downmarket is a great chance for tech companies: Surf the Avalanche.

3. From our experiences with comments here, on FACTS (anonymous comments), and on Das Magazin (real names only), it is painfully clear that anonymity is the poison of Web 2.0. To create trust, you need transparency. That means real names only. It’s no accident the superstars of the current generation of online services build heavily on verifiable identities. I’ve said this many times, and have taken serious beating from anonymous users for it. Here is my final word to you anonymous and pseudonymous 2.0 super heroes: grow up.

4. Jason’s fourth point is spot on. I have only to add that if you still believe that with a little money and a couple of tricks you can become rich over night without moving a finger, you’re gambling in the toughest lottery ever. All great brands—online and offline—are built on hard work, good connections, and a strong dose of luck.

GMail clearly looks and feels like an HTML-website, which aesthetically takes away some of what a regular user imagines to be an application. The new .Mac environment, MobileMe, looks more like a desktop application and feels more like an application, but doesn’t follow design guidelines for websites. So which way should you go with your online application in terms of surface design? Should you be more on the “online” or more on the “application” side?

The Art of Noise

MobileMe relies on icons that don’t have any obvious meaning for important navigation and interface controls on the Web. This leaves users (particularly non-Mac-users) to guess what each icon actually does. Only the first three icons of the main navigation are familiar, and the first only because of its obviousness. Without text, one is forced to rely on mouse hovers and prayers to the ALT text god.

Compare these to the top navigation of GMail:

With plain text, it’s obvious where each link takes you: “Start Page” to the start page, “Mail” to mail. There is no uncertainty or fear of clicking on the “wrong” thing.

Elements of an interface that rely upon symbols with obscure meanings require more thinking than those that rely upon a familiar language (visual or otherwise). The overly-reduced navigational elements of MobileMe are tough on the user and introduce uncertainty into elementary components of its interface; adversely affecting the usability of the site. 1:0 for Google.

Design for the Eye: (Dot)Me

The claustrophobic top bar does little in the way of providing a user with orientation within the overall site structure; it is exemplary of uninformative fanciness. Let’s take a look at another example:

We’re in Mail (probably), in the Inbox (most likely), and there’s not a whole lot of indication of what would happen were we to click a message.

Reducing uncertainty and improving understanding are critical components of good Web design. Unintuitive information can be made clear and accessible by thoughtful structuring and visual manipulation of that information, but that’s not being done here. The colors, background images, and various other graphic elements hinder the information; they don’t serve or support it:

1. The sidebar does not visually relate to what it represents.
2. The absence of dividing lines between messages visually “cleans-up” the listing, but as a result there is no clear delineation between unique messages which may otherwise be obvious.
3. The message list attracts the eye, but there is no visual trail to lead one back to an overall description of what the message list is actually a listing of.
4. The buttons are styled.
5. Form fields are manicured.
6. Hover states and cursor changes are unexpected and inconsistent.
7. Menus are MobileMe-dependent.

Design for the Brain: Gmail

Several things are immediately clear:

1. We are looking through the Inbox and there is one new message (and two old messages).
2. Our eyes carry from the message listing to the “Inbox” tab, indicating our overall location.
3. New messages are highlighted by contrasting color (white background) and font weight (bold), while old messages are dropped a hierarchical level by the same means.
4. Unique messages are delineated by lines and there’s a number of obvious options for each message (Archive, Report Spam, Delete, etc.).
5. The buttons are default form buttons.
6. Text can be selected.
7. Links have understandable hover states and cursor changes.
8. The menus are consistent with those of other sites
9. Inputting text behaves as expected.

GMail’s interface feels “safe.” There is noticeably less uncertainty. It’s clear what most things actually do. The logical ways are short and cause-and-effect is obvious. GMail maintains the look, feel, and interface of a website by using the commonly accepted interface elements of a Web browser. 2:0 for Google.

Responsiveness

The most noticeably frustrating characteristic of MobileMe is its slowness. Excessive load times, when expected, should be accounted for in an interface, and feedback should be provided for users. Web browsers, by nature, have means of handling load times by showing users a loading icon in a tab (as with Firefox). GMail relies on this functionality to inform users of long waits.

The skinning cannot be blamed for excessive load times. But not accounting for unresponsive interfaces is negligent on the part of an interface designer. MobileMe assumes the flash-site approach and forces their users to learn and adapt to an entirely new and oftentimes unintuitive interface—an application best kept off the Web and left on the desktop where it belongs. 3:0 for Google.

Conclusion

The media-appropriate approach of Google shows that the interface is not a matter of graphic design, it’s a matter of how it works. With all the glitz Apple brings to the Web in an attempt to win a beauty contest, they lose the true contest: the beauty of usability. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your Web app a manicure.

Apple’s attention to graphic detail usually leads to astonishing results. Yet what makes or breaks a Web app is not its shapes and colors: it’s the logic that drives them. And that logic is defined by the media and not by aesthetics.

Very probably so. But that’s not my point for now. What I’m talking about is this: whether you’re nice, smart, wise, silly, a guy, a girl, a dude, a chick, a man, a woman, a lady, or a gentleman, writing is not a social act. It is an embarrassingly pathetic narcissistic monkey business. Especially if you earn your living on it. Really wise people, like Socrates for example, never wrote a line. Online publishers like me, you, and Scobleizer are the most narcissistic smoothies we can imagine, very much like people that hire detectives to watch themselves, or rappers (Rap is as dead as blogging, by the way).

The claim that you write only for the sake of writing, or that traffic doesn’t matter, or that you do it because you’re such a good person, or that your writing will save the world is nothing but sorry-ass, self-betrayal techniques. Writing is as vain as it gets. And if you don’t publish your stuff, it doesn’t mean that you’re wise—it means that your writing isn’t good enough to fool yourself.

To lower “publishing insecurity” we now have Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and Co. that gladly exponentiate our bombastic naught. Repeating and re-Tweeting the same meaningless word ornaments on Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed, we have entered the Age of Digital Baroque.

By publishing your random gags on Twitter, you can easily grab a hundred followers. Ones that will follow everything you do; no matter how banal. How you drink coffee. How you get on a plane. How you report on a round cloud in the sky. How you get off a plane and have another boring cup of boring coffee… Why think and write and struggle in elaboration and defense of an argument when you can easily satisfy your vanity by hacking out 140 ornamented strokes of boredom?

I read months ago that blogs are dying. A big American journalist said so. He said he used to like blogs, but he stopped reading them because the good bloggers had said everything they had to say, and he didn’t like to listen to people that just repeat themselves. Just a journalist, I thought. Checking my mailing list subscribers, I see that he has unsubscribed. Just a journalist?

It was not easy to photograph them. Many are skipping work and don’t want to be caught. But the Japanese and international media is all over the place, interviewing these “iPhone otakus.” So, chances are, they’ll have some explaining to do to their bosses come Monday morning.

I Like Anything with a Battery

“T.S.,” who spoke on condition of anonymity, arrived the day before yesterday. As he explained, he loves Apple and loves “anything with a battery.” He wants to be the first with an iPhone because, he says, “that’s who I am.” He describes himself as a “gajyetto ga suki na hito” (a person who likes gadgets), and he already owns a “Jailbroken” iPhone (but unfortunately he can’t make calls with it). I asked him if he thinks the iPhone will be successful in Japan.

T.S. feels the iPhone lacks two important features that will hinder its success in the Japanese market. First, the iPhone does not have emoji—special, cute little icons (like hearts, tear drops, and “peace” signs) that the Japanese use to spice-up their messages. Second, the iPhone lacks denwa-saifu (ability to be used as an electronic credit card). Regardless, T.S. expects it to be successful among older generations, as “compared to ordinary Japanese cellphones, the iPhone is really easy to use because it only has one button.” His grandmother, an otaku like himself, already said she’d like to test it.

A Cellphone for Superstars

Butch is an actor and he came here yesterday morning. He thinks the iPhone is for “superstars,” and he believes he’ll be one one day.

Butch doesn’t believe the iPhone is going to be a huge success. Compared to other Japanese phones, it is relatively expensive. He’ll miss the credit card, TV, and copy-paste functions of his current phone.

Mac or PC?

Yuki, who works as a system engineer, arrived this morning. He got here early to ensure they would still have his desired model in stock. The main thing he’ll miss is the TV function. His friends Yuki, Juichi, and Takahiro all nodded when he mentioned watching TV on his long train rides to work. “If it had a TV, it’d definitely be more successful,” Yuki explained.

Junichi and Takahiro use both Macs and PCs, while one of the two Yuki’s is a PC user. The second Yuki wants an iPhone because he already owns an iPod, and would like to combine the iPod experience with his cellphone.

Out of the fifteen people I interviewed, all of them cited ease of use and interface as the main reasons why they want an iPhone. Seven were Mac users, four were PC users, and four use both. It’s a given that most of the individuals in line were Mac users, yet the iPod UI seems to have opened the door to PC users as well.

As of writing, there are about 120 people waiting outside the flagship store of SoftBank. Japanese people love to queue-up, so I expect the line to gradually extend by tomorrow. I’ll check back an hour before opening to see how things develop.

Just to be clear: Fred is no Elvis. Fred is the most annoying little nag I have ever seen. I had to force myself through one of his painful videos this morning, and I can still feel the agony. Yet I am fascinated by the mathematical possibility of his success.

45 Million users! In our business basically this means you’ve made it into Nirvana. 45 Million spectators is more than any blogger could possibly dream of. Fred beats the New York Times.

Scoble’s in a Huff

Robert Scoble is always the first to run after any new web hype; but not this time; instead of trying to understand what makes that kid so successful he tries to play it down:

“This is what happens when you try to simply be entertaining. If traffic is your goal, here’s the formula. Do something really stupid that’ll make people laugh.”

Dear Robert, how can you possibly claim that the 45 Million kid is “just” acting stupid? Pretty much 99.9% of all YouTube-users are “just” acting stupid but they don’t get any attention whatsoever.

“Me? I’ll stick with having a few thousand people passionate about learning more from innovative technologists and other leaders. Why not get into the traffic race? Because I’d rather be in the race for a smart, focused audience. That’s where the real action is.”

And, dear Scoble, no disrespect, but tech bloggers talk a lot of shit as well, and a big part of our dear tech blog readers belong to the most obnoxious smart ass audience there is. Really, we have no reason to be to strike a pose.

The question is not whether you’re more important, smarter or cooler than Fred. The question is: How does Fred do it? Why does a teenage boy acting like a hysterical girl get this much attention? 45 Million, Robert. Forty-five surreal Million.

Seth Godin’s Take

Seth Godin who is never short of good insight into the secrets of someone’s success doesn’t explain it either. Actually, Seth teams up with Robert:

“since you realize that ‘how many’ is not nearly as valuable as ‘who’, why not put that into practice? Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s important.”

If mere exposure were really that irrelevant, then what about Fox News and the Millions of morons watching it? The media business is all about exposure, and whoever gets 50 Million fans just can’t be wrong or random. But I give you that: If you can’t monetize a targeted audience of 50 Million, then you are stupid.

Fred has a very attractive targeted audience: teenagers (they buy lots of expensive goods). For Fred it’s just a matter of monetizing (he already has a contract with ZipIt!). If Fred does the right thing, he can become rich over night.

The Trick

So, seriously, why is this kid so successful? I don’t know either. But here is what I think: He is doing the contrary of what teenage boys usually aim at. He’s ridiculously girlish, straight out dumb, clueless, embarrassing himself to the point where it becomes an actual torture to watch him. And that’s the point. He is not just stupid, he is consciously embarrassing himself to a point where he appears ruthless. In other words: He does the opposite. Here is how “The Opposite” works:

Watch more YouTube videos on AOL Video

“The Opposite” is a strategy that annihilates fear by walking right into it. Fred lives and reenacts the worst fear of a teenager and helps them laughing their own fears off. Grown ups cannot relate to Fred—as we have hopefully lost those fears after we left high school—, but kids are said to be rolling on the floor with laughter when watching Fred.

If you have a better explanation, especially if you belong to Fred’s fan base, I can’t wait to hear it.

UPDATE: I thought ZipIt was the compression software ZipIt, but it turns out it’s not. Nevertheless, Fred was a phenomenon before they started the campaign:

“As it turns out, Fred—whose real name is Lucas Cruikshank—has been making amateur videos for some time, many of them with his two cousins. Cruikshank was scouted by an L.A.-based ad firm looking for the next tween thing to anchor the launch of the Zipit product. “Fred’s huge online following among teens and tweens, and their passion for the character, was just the magic bullet we were looking for in creating a new campaign for Zipit,” said David Abehsera, the President of WOO Agency, in a statement.”

Which proves that his success is not random or just calculated corporate YouTube manipulation. Teens and tweens do really think he’s awesome. More details on LATimes.com

It works by having a single, central online CMS process massive amounts of high-quality news that is fed to a conglomerate of large newspaper sites. These major sites in turn distribute specific local news throughout the entire network of which they are a part. It can be thought of as a star-shaped news machine where major Swiss newspapers such as Tagesanzeiger, Basler Anzeiger, and the Berner Zeitung join forces to their mutual advantage.

Secret Preparation

The project began about a year ago when we posted our popular article, Washington Post Redesign as a Wiki, in which we, unbeknown to our primarily information-designer audience, covertly solicited a multitude of high-quality comments from the likes of Jeff Croft, Khoi Vihn, and Cameron Moll about our newspaper design. On the left appears our design for The Washington Post, on the right, our design for Tagesanzeiger.

Phase 1

The project was visually kick-started into high gear by an extensive preliminary conceptual phase where iA delivered a set of initial mock-ups:

Phase 2

Following this, iA won a tough final pitch in March to design the user interfaces for Tagesanzeiger and Basler Zeitung, as well as to establish blueprints for all other identities under Newsnetz.

Our solution is focused on the realization of a strong, consistent user experience that is aimed at closing the gap between print and online in order to consolidate the brand as a single, consistent sphere of news experience. This is based on a very simple concept: online = offline.

Throughout April, iA developed the essential design elements and created scores of design sketches:

Phase 3

From amidst hundreds of these sketches, we determined a working solution and began to refine it. We established a functional layout of the essential structural components and defined a solid baseline grid:

Phase 4

With the design, layout, and baseline grid constructed, we proceeded to HTML mockups. Shown is the new design alongside the newspaper. Mouse over the image to see the old website:

Final Phase

During a two-week workshop at the Tamedia head office in Zürich, iA worked in close cooperation with Matthias Saner, creative director of Newsnetz, as well as with Peter Waelty, the head of the project. Working directly in the client’s environment proved to be a powerful time-saving strategy and an exciting experience for all parties involved that further solidified iA’s ties with the Swiss media house.

Since then, the designs have been continuously refined and significantly improved from the above. As such, you’ll have to wait until the early-August launch date to experience the final product. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to further cooperation with Peter Waelty’s amazing team of journalists, tech professionals, and Web professionals as we continue to grow and improve our two other mandates, FACTS 2.0 and Das Magazin. Here is another sneak peek of Tages-Anzeiger and BaslerZeitung:

1. iA Redesigns a Series of Swiss Newspapers

What it is:
“Newsnetz” is probably Switzerland’s most ambitious online news project to date. It can be thought of as a star-shaped news machine where major Swiss newspapers and a series of local papers join forces. The combined strengths of Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung, and the Berner Zeitung promise to catapult the Swiss News Network to the number one news domain in terms of reach, traffic, editorial size, and production.

What we did:
Following an extensive preliminary conceptual phase where we delivered a set of initial mock-ups to visually kick-start the project into high gear, iA won a tough final pitch in March to redesign a series of websites for leading Swiss newspapers. Here is a sneak peek of Tages-Anzeiger and BaslerZeitung:

Future:
Newsnetz is the third project produced for Tamedia by iA, and bears the fruits of the preceding projects that were, to a certain degree, testing grounds for Newsnetz. Learn more about the design process (with 30 screen shots).

2. iA Launches Second Office in Zürich

Our small but efficient team of four people will soon be joined by two professional marketing specialists. Beginning July 1st, Cyrill Treptow, a former online marketing manager of Tamedia, and Chris Luescher, Tamedia’s Internet evangelist, will manage iA’s Swiss office. The fact that both members of iA Switzerland are former Tamedia people speaks volumes about the extraordinary relationship we have developed with the Swiss media house in the past year and a half, and solidifies the excellent relationship iA and Tamedia have established.

While Chris and Cyrill will contribute a wealth of media, publishing, marketing, and managerial know-how, iA’s core mission will remain unchanged: iA develops Internet business strategies and creates interfaces that match. iA Zürich is charged with a very Swiss mission: making websites financially successful. On the other hand, iA Tokyo will continue to provide what Japan represents best: creating first-class customer experience through a focus on interactive branding. Visit the web site of iA Switzerland (German-only).

3. iA Continues to Expand Japanese Operations

Our office here in Tokyo is currently involved as a consultant in a Japanese news project, in many ways comparable to the Swiss News Network project. We recently hired new native staff to face this challenge, and our website is being translated bit-by-bit into Japanese. See iA in Japanese

4. iA Book

In the time I have left, I have invested all my energy into writing our upcoming book. The current goal is to finish by early August, resulting in a publication date of around October or November. It breaks my heart to see the iA blog suffering a dry spell, but the good news is our new Swiss Internet business gurus are excellent writers. Expect the revival of the iA Notebook very soon!

Good Internet Revolution

1. We read and write more today than we used to.
2. The public opening of digital publication technology (AKA “blogs”) has provided a free speech transport with rocket engines.
3. News has become more accessible and more transparent.
4. The Internet is the taser against the shit bags that try to manipulate, embellish, and block information that is inconvenient to them.
5. We can now literally X-ray politicians before we vote for them.

And best of all: it all comes free of charge. Okay, but…

Bad Internet Revolution

1. But now we have more junk data and less free time.
2. We have more tasks in our inbox and less concentration to complete them.
3. We are bombarded with even more idiotic advertisement (spam)
4. We write (short notices), and read (bee-beep-bee-beep) even more fast-food data.
5. The corporations have become even more shrewd (via viral campaigns, paid comments, and “Social Media Consultants”).
6. We outperform each other blogging, twittering, tumblering, and Facebooking.
7. We mindlessly link our friends to the dumb-ass websites where spammers and stalkers, grudgers and psychos, and old, finally-forgotten nags – dressed and masked as virtual vampires – wait behind some wonderwall.

To be clear: We are not free. “Fast-food data junkies,” that’s what we are. How did we get into this mess?

Just a Little Bit of History Repeating

Revolutions are vicious circles. Remember, after the French got rid of their sleepy King Louis XVI, they installed the radical Robespierre, followed by the brutal tyrant Napoleon Bonaparte I. Now what happened to us exactly?

Ironically, people still believe that the Internet belongs to them, some journalists behind the times even complain about “the mob reigning the web.”

Truth is, the World Wide Web is in the hands of a few Emperors – namely Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft – that split the territory amongst themselves quite some time ago. Nowadays, building up a web service and making money outside the Territory of the Three Web Caesars is considerably more difficult than just starting a “real” shop.

Start Up Fata Morgana

If you look at the success story of startups that made it (like Youtube for instance), you’ll realize that the dream of the cool website, that simply offers good information while finding users and making money, is a Fata Morgana that drives thousands of young enthusiasts into death of thirst. You need connections and loads of money to make it in the world of the three titans.

Well, as bad comes to worse, Steve Ballmer now wants to conquer Yahoo! and reduce the number of titans to two. And actually, he might get by with a little help from his friends. And of course he will be off to his invasion of digital Russia to destroy Emperor Page and Brin…

We know one thing for sure. The Revolution is over; the people have nothing to say in the Napoleonic era of the web. So what did the Revolution bring us in the end?

Royal Irony

Romantics don’t like to hear it but it’s true: the real reason behind the French Revolution was a lack of bread. Ironically the rise of the world-famous French Cuisine (born in the Palace of Louis XV and brought to perfection by Louis XVI) goes back to the fact that after Louis XVI was beheaded, thousands of cuisine personal from the Royal Palace were without work. To survive, they opened gourmet restaurants for the Bourgeois all over Paris.

And behold! We the people now have the option to become data connessieurs (we didn’t have that before the IT revolution!). The offer of delicious information nowadays is huge indeed. All one must do is choose. And that means reduce: trim your E-mail accounts down to one. Chop the Facebook annoyance. Peel your Linked-in account. Fry your Twitter profile. Freeze your cellphone. Bon appétit!

The German version of this article appeared in the Swiss advertisement magazine “Werbewoche,” where I recently started writing a regular column on new media—previous articles here and here (both in German).