Best of 2009 in the Creative Industry

As the countdown to 2010 begins to loom in our imminent future, it’s a great time to look back upon what we as a creative community shared throughout 2009. It’s been a quick ride but it’s had some amazing creativity & content that could keep us fueled through the next year. Check out some of the best and most memorable from this year.

Inspiration

Carsonified.com Redesign

On the July 9th 2009 we launched a complete redesign of Carsonified and the Think Vitamin blog. I thought it’d be fun to tell you the story of how the new site design evolved and came to life. It was an interesting journey. Read the rest of the re-design here.

The Death of the Boring Blog Post?

Barring the text and images, each one generally has the exact same layout. We see little originality from one post to the next. Of course, consistency and branding are extremely important to consider when designing a website or blog, but what about individuality? Does a blog post about kittens deserve the same layout as one about CSS hacks?

Twitter.com Redesign

The most significant change you’ll notice on the logged-in homepage (/home) is that we’ve moved the tabs that were on the top of the timeline to the right sidebar. We did this for a couple reasons. Read the full re-design here.

Envato Redesign

Our marketplaces were looking a bit tired in the visual department. After all, these are sites by a company whose middle name is ‘web design’! So we set about reinventing the wheel with a whole new look, starting from the top with new logos. The illustrations were updated by the super talented Kai Loon and we are usung the wonderful open source font MgOpen Modata…

Abduzeedo Gets a Facelift

After almost a year, we have a new design! As web designers we’re always thinking about what to change in order to make the site more friendly for those who are looking for inspiration and tutorials.

Suggested Redesign Case Studies

Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability

At the time this article was written, Craigslist was ranked as the 28th most-visited English-language website in the world by Alexa. Despite the fact that Craigslist receives such a huge amount of traffic each month, it is also criticized for its design, which seems to be at least 10 years out-of-date.

Dear AmericanAirlines

Treat this as a serious emergency across your entire company. Your shortfalls in customer experience do not stop at the website. Your company is losing money every day because customers hate the way you treat them. And it appears that you are doing nothing to fix this.

Facebook Facelift

The Facebook Facelift is a self initiated project to challenge the form and functionality of Facebook. It’s streamlined, structured and linear interface is more comprehendible, enhancing the user experience and absorbability of content.

Trends

Letterpress Type

Orman Clark

MetaLab

Cellar App

Big Eye-Catching Typography

Made by Giant

Pallian Creative

Huge Inc.

Erskine Design

Four24

iPhone App Site Design

June Cloud

Tapbots

Typography Manual

Tweetie for iPhone

Tap Tap Tap

LittleSnapper for iPhone

Ramp Champ

Ego App

Interviews

The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals

Jason Fried hates lame meetings, tech companies that don’t generate revenue, and companies that treat their employees like children. A peek inside his typical workday.

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners

Jim Coudal is a truly inspiring character. His company decided to shift from the standard model of selling their creative services to clients, to a model of creating products which they own and have full control over. And they’ve been very successful at it. Coudal Partners is proof that you can indeed create your own reality.

Luminous Art of Chuck Anderson

I think different people are born with all different kinds of strengths, obviously. As for artists, I think many people are probably born into a family of creative thinking people, therefore they grow up in a setting that encourages that kind of passion and creativity.

WANT MORE?

Chad Engle is the Editor of Fuel Your Creativity. He is a freelance designer & creative. He listens to some music and tweets. He is now hailing from the Charleston, SC area. You should follow him on twitter at @chadengle and @fuelcreativity . Don’t be afraid, he doesn’t bite.