Mint Digital

A few months back, I read Visual Decision Making. It's all about the role of visual aesthetics in web design. The author, Patrick Lynch, talks about how "classical aesthetics stress orderliness and clarity in design", and "expressive aesthetics emphasise originality, creativity, and visual richness".

I'm a huge advocate of the classical aesthetic. In fact, I believe it's the best aesthetic model to adopt when designing a social website. Here are four reasons why.

Last Thursday, I presented at 2-screen.

The presentation was broken down into 3 parts:

1. About Flow
2. Flow as a framework for design
3. TV programme patterns

This post discusses parts 1 and 2. Part 3 will arrive in a separate post.

Play Football3s to any one of four matches this weekend. Tim & Kejia are playing along to all of them. I'll be there on Sunday.

Go to Football3s to see when the next game is on.

STOP PRESS: the first review of Football3s. Phew, it is favourable!

On Monday night, the Mint pub hosted a Friends & Family launch of Football3s.

It was a great night. People loved Football3s. And Spurs beat Hull 2-1. There are some photos on Flickr. Some are featured in this post.

Mint is looking for a passionate web designer to work in the London office.

See the full job advert on Krop.

We've been asked to join forces with some clever people to create the Landshare website.

The Great British Sandwich is now a day old. It contains well over a 1,000 layers. Right now, it's as tall as a Routemaster bus. Another 3,000 layers and it will be as tall as The Angel of the North.

Tom Phillips at Metro says, "This is basically what Tim Berners-Lee was thinking of when he created the web."

Good work Phil, tech lead, and Utku, chief sandwich spreader.

I'm not sure what to make of all the silliness. Billy at Cowfish points out:

The fillings vary from the vaguely intelligent (the white text on white backgrounded Air especially appealing to my website abusing nature) to the predictable (Only one Pork Sword but more Marmites than Vegemites) to the slightly surreal (featuring Fire and a Meta-Sandwich).

We had expected the sandwich to be filled with food. Saying that, I love the way people do unexpected things on the web.

Add your layer. Or follow gbsandwich on Twitter

(Thanks to John Pollock for inadvertently suggesting the headline.)

Mint is working on a new project. It's about wisdom. I can't say much more than that right now.

Today, I stumbled across a new book. Wisdom. It is "inspired by the idea that wisdom is the greatest gift one generation can give to another."

Andrew Zuckerman, the author, says:

"My whole life I've looked up to older people. It just seemed logical to me that these are the people that have done it. They've got all the secrets. Why wouldn't you ask them?"

Thanks Andrew. You've created a wonderful piece of work. Mint is inspired.

On Monday, we launched the unsignedAct website, part of a cross-media campaign to find the best unsigned musical talent in the UK.

The project is BIG. It spans web, WAP, print, TV and live music events. It is sponsored by Orange, broadcast by Channel 4 and enabled by Sony Ericsson. Universal Music provides the prize (a record deal).

IRIS, Princess, Airmotion and Mint are turning the whole thing into a reality. IRIS have done a splendid job on the branding and visual identity (the logo has been built from custom-made flight cases). Princess is producing the TV show. Airmotion is making the WAP site. And Mint? Well, our handsome team refined the site concept, designed the user experience and built a rock-solid piece of software.

Acts enter the competition by making a demo CD. Each demo CD can be customised with artwork and contains up to three tracks. It's intended to be a little gem, showcasing the best of each band's creativity.

Fans add their favourite tracks to a personal mixtape. Mixtapes can be customised and shared with friends (check my selection, below).

It's been 48 hours since launch. Over 1,000 bands and solo artists have entered. Princess were hoping for 3,000 acts to enter in three weeks, so it is a promising start.

Have a look at unsignedAct for yourself. Dive straight into the demo CDs or browse the mixtapes.

Have fun!

The last two days were demanding. On Thursday each team worked on the presentation of their idea.

Friday was pitching day. It ended on a high. The BBC commissioned Different and Mint to develop the "Doctor Who: In Parallel" idea.

We've just launched the Lonely Planet Desktop Countdown.

It's a neat little app that counts down to your holiday. Every day it offers you a local tip and tells you the weather in the place that you are travelling to.

The app is part of the promotional campaign for the Lonely Planet Encounter city guides. Over the next few weeks, the Desktop Countdown will be promoted on coffee sleeves at 14 locations in London, banners on Yahoo! Weather and on London Underground posters. The total reach of the marketing campaign will be to over 3.6 million people. We snapped this Lonely Planet Desktop Countdown poster at Vauxhall tube, round the corner from our office.

From a technology point of view it is pretty cool. It is the first time Mint has used Adobe AIR. AIR is Adobe’s platform for creating desktop apps. It brings the web closer to our desktop. It blurs the boundary between online and offline. In short, it opens up a bunch of new possibilities.

Have a read of 6 Adobe AIR Apps to check out to see what other uses people have been making of AIR.

I'm at the BBC Innovation Labs in Yorkshire this week.

The Labs are made up of 10 teams, five mentors and one Development Producer from BBC Research & Innovation. Five BBC commissioners arrived today.

Thomas and I popped along to the FOWD conference last week.

3 highlights from the day.

1. Denise Wilton from Moo spoke about how to add character to your web app. She asked the question, "how do you want people to *feel* when using your web app?". This is a great question. We talk about users a lot. We sometimes forget that they are people, with feelings and emotions. Denise encouraged the audience to think about language and typography. Just look at the Moo sign in page. Chatty language and friendly type makes me feel welcome here.

2. William Rosen works for Leo Burnett, the company behind the 'Verb Yellowball campaign'. The idea: 500,000 yellow balls were dropped across the US in an attempt to get children moving. Each ball gave kids three simple instructions. (1) Play with them. (2) Blog your stories. (3) Pass them on. I loved this idea. No fancy technology required. No fancy UI required. Just a great idea. Only made possible by the connective power of the web.

3. Andy Clarke, Creative Director at Stuff and Nonsense showed everyone his cool wall. He took the piss out of Dropsend and claimed it was uncool. For Mr Clarke, Google and Flickr were the only two sites that deserved to have the tag 'sub-zero'. That's cooler than cool!

......................................

See FOWD photos on Flickr

Ordering business cards is difficult. There are so many options.

These dudes make it look easy: http://printpromotion.com/products/businesscard

Another great web service somehow related to the prolific 37 signals.

www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html

Does your site make one of these mistakes?

Who wants a pair of trainers from Art Force One (without switching to English)?

I do!

Great photos on this site: Seb Janiak

Is the design helping?

I think so.