Friday Roundup

Welcome to the Friday roundup, as always here are couple of outstanding sites we’ve seen around the web this week.

Red Bull Project X

http://www.shaunwhite.com/projectx/?fbid=tMLRI5AR53b#/lifestyle

First up is Red Bull Project X, and their new site for Shaun White which successfully fuses classic design techniques with some leading edge web techniques. The large background site is perfect for showcasing the scale of “the secret halfpipe” and uses nice pop-up messages to explain in further detail what it’s all about. This is complemented nicely by some different but intuitive menu buttons, complete with large typography. With the site mostly created in Flash the designers have used the technology well with subtle movement on each page making the images seem even larger and more dramatic.

Pampaneo

http://pampaneo.es/

As a contrast Pampaneo is an altogether more traditional layout. This is no bad thing though, with some thoughtful illustrations throughout the site giving a playful and childish feel. As with Project X the site uses some minimal but effective flash in the header illustrations, including a charming spaceship complete with alien. Unfortunately we can’t comment too much about the content as our Spanish is not so great in the Jelly office!

Here’s another selection of great websites we’ve picked up on from around the web over the last week or so. A few of the sites here do one thing and one thing only. The excellent Tori’s Eye is a Twitter visualisation site with some fetching paper Twitter birds carrying tweets across a landscape background. Maybe all tweets should look like this!  Likewise Fixoutlook is a brilliant example of mashup API’s resulting in a visual petition asking Microsoft to “fix Outlook” with nice large typography to boot.

Elsewhere, Blik’s site is a refreshing design using subtle textures and pastel colours; and not a gradient in sight!  Finally the Design By Humans site is a great example of how simplicity and clarity can make buying their fancy T-shirts easy.

Tori’s Eye
http://toriseye.quodis.com/

Fixoutlook
http://www.fixoutlook.org

Blik
http://www.whatisblik.com/

Design By Humans
http://www.designbyhumans.com

Here’s just a few of the websites we’re liking this week, both inspiring and effective.

Manchester City Football club
http://www.mcfc.co.uk/

With a focus on outstanding imagery and large type, Manchester City’s. The large attraction area adds an innovative spin on the traditional flash, giving almost a news archive type feel.

The use of social networking in particular Twitter and Flickr serves well to involves fans. Providing a key link with the club, and adding a sense of approachability, a fantastic tactic to engage with fans. Definitely one of the best Football club sites, the information is presented clearly, and the homepage doesn’t bombard the user.

What we like
Good typography
Bold imagery

Virgin
http://www.virgin.com/

With Richard Branson’s ever expanding business empire, stretching out into the reaches of space (literally). You can always expect Sir Richard to produce something special, and Virgin.com proves that corporate portals don’t necessarily have to boring. Unusually for such a corporate site, the Twitter feed takes prominence.

Delve deeper and you’ll access a wealth of brands, my only criticism would be that when clicked in the Flash banner doesn’t link directly to their respective websites.

What we like
Innovative Flash navigation
Prominent Twitter feed and community focus