As it says on their new website I designed and was recently launced “Iceland GeoSurvey is a leading provider of scientific and technical expertise to the geothermal industry in Iceland and abroad. We offer consulting services worldwide on most aspects of geothermal exploration and development.”
Here are three layouts from the original design.
The front page layout
Your standard content page with secondary navigation
A layout with a world map showing where in the world ISOR was currently working
Taken from Hugh MacLeod‘s How To Be creative, this statement has always stuck with me ever since I first read it. I didn’t realize until I read it that it described me perfectly as a person, professionally and as a designer.
I’M NOT A MAC
I don’t use a Mac, I use a PC. Why? Because I don’t care. I’m used to working in Windows and I can’t be bothered to switch. I also don’t care if people may think it’s strange or uncool. Besides, Photoshop works just the same and nobody can tell the difference if it was made on a Mac or not.
I’m really interested in social media at the moment and I’m doing quite a bit of work in that field. However I don’t own an iPhone or any other 3G apparatus. Hell, my phone doesn’t even have a camera! This of course means I’m not hangin’ out with all the cool kids at Foursquare and frankly, I’m a bit annoyed by all the tweets and messages from people telling me were they are.
Adobe CS5 is out this week and I reckon I’ll get round to trying that by the time people are already bored with CS6. I really don’t use more than about 10% of Photoshop and it has become so bloated that I don’t really care what new cool but utterly useless feature they put in this time.
I CAN DO WITHOUT
I know this may sound like blasphemy to some of you but the point is that if you have talent, if you’re really good at what you do, you don’t need the props. And that’s what all these things I just mentioned not having or using are, props. Using a Mac does not make me a better designer and not owning a 3G phone does not hinder me in understanding the fundamentals of social media. Stefan Sagmeister is widely considered one of the best graphic designers in the world and he admits to barely knowing how to use a computer. You think he cares about the latest version of Photoshop?
I’m not saying technology isn’t good and that cool new gadgets aren’t fun. All I’m saying is that they shouldn’t define you or control you professionally or influence the quality of your work. That would be like being so hooked on social media that you couldn’t interact with other people unless you tweeted them or commented on their Facebook status.
Your thought? Ideas?
Here we have two different designs I did for Orkan, a low-cost oil company. I thought it would be fun to include the first layout proposal to give you a glimpse of where the project might have headed had it not been for the compromise reached by the famous “design by committee” method of design. Some would argue however that the end result wasn’t all that bad.
What do you think?
First layout proposal
Second layout proposal (the compromise).
I’ve designed the last two websites for VR, the Icelandic commercial workers union. What we’ve got here are the original layouts I did for the current site. It’s a grid based design with soft creamy color scheme that has a hint of brown in it. “Warm and inviting” they said and I duly delivered.
Front page view with tabbed feature content
Content page view
Content page view
I’ve always had a soft spot for creating grunge style artwork. It’s a style that gives you maximum creative freedom an allows you to bend and break all rules of both typography and composition. Plus, it just looks so damn cool!
Don’t ya think?
These are the original layouts I did for the Reykjavík University a while back with my good friend Hrafn Áki. The university wanted content heavy pages both for the front page and each department page. Each department page also had it’s own color scheme. I think we did OK.
Front page view
Department page view
I worked for Eskill as lead webdesigner for close to four years. One of the most challenging and fun projects I worked on while there was the company website. As any designer knows, creating your own or your companies website is one of the hardest challenges one faces. Add to that the overwhelming red color of the site and you have a lethal combination. Thankfully, I managed to pull it off and created what I consider one of the most interesting corporate websites any web design firm has had in Iceland…ever!
Front page view
Project gallery view
Staff detail view
Single blog post view with comments and sidebar
DataMarket is a data aggregator, helping companies to fulfill their data needs. I designed their logo and website some months back. The logo may just have been the toughest one I’ve had to design to date. My brief was to design a logo that showed “blocks of information falling into a data grid”. How ’bout them apples?
I think I did a pretty good job of it. What do you think?
Datamarket logo and basic branding guidelines
Front page layout
Content page layout
These are the original design layouts I did for Borgun, a company that provides services to merchants and processing services to issuers of credit and debet cards on the Icelandic market. My mission for this project was to create a detailed rich interface based on a simple grid. The outcome resulted in one of the juiciest website designs I’ve done, methinks.
Front page layout
Content page layout with secondary navigation
Content page layout with price tables
Here’s the original layouts I did for ÍMARK (The Association of Icelandic Marketers) last year. This is a grid based design with neatly defined call to action features on the front page and a content heavy footer. I was pleased with the outcome and especially the use of typography and warm and inviting color scheme.
Please note that Seth Godin has nothing to do with ÍMARK or any events held by the association.
Frontpage view
Single news page view
Single event page view