Google turns 12!

Today google has a birthday. It’s 12 years old to be precise. So we wish many more years to the “Oh-not-so-evil” corporation that has revolutionized search among other things and we try to remember what was before google. In case you don’t remember check out the shots below for a brief history lesson. If you do remember these it’s gonna be a trip to nostalgia-land along with snes consoles and websites with sprite-flame-gifs. Back then we even had “back arrows” on the site for navigation even though browsers had a “back” button. Oh those were the days! ;)

HotBot and Altavista ruled unquestionably in the times of the NetScape browser (now dead) and the very first iterations of Internet Explorer.

Turn that design upside down

designupsidedown

Where do you usually start when designing a website? Pasting a logo into a blank document, building a header around it? Think about this for a second : forget the logo and header. Sure they’re the eye-candy and eye-catching things, but once in a while it’s nice to do it differently. Take the content. Paste it all over a solid background. And then play with it. No menu, no logo. Just the content, columns, tables, charts, images. Put them in an order that makes them fit into each other. And after you’re done playing with it – THEN add the header and logo. You’d be surprised by how good the content looks now. Usually, with the “normal” way of doing this, you’d make an awesome header and logo, with really great graphics that you like, but often you’ll feel like something is lacking just below that great header graphics. Maybe that is the point – try and organize the substance before the form. You know, that age-old struggle of form vs substance ? Maybe it’s not so corny after all…