You never know what you'll find on Craigslist

As I usually do, I was looking at the computer gigs section of craigslist this morning - I'm always in search of that little tiny gig that will pay an ungodly amount of money for something I already know how to do, or have already done and saved to my flash drive, and stumbled across a couple of links that got my attention design-wise. I'll preface this by saying that these sites are not revolutionary, but they are interesting to me from a design/programming perspective (some heavier on the design, some heavier on the programming).

First up: Group 94 (http://www.group94.com/)
Group 94 has been around for a while, but the latest version of their site represents a pretty cool use of video and text to convey information (pop-up television meets Belgian designers). Also, don't miss their old site which is somewhat dated from flash design standards, but has a nice navigation intro and clean layout (albeit a little disjointed. a little.). While in the old site, Check their projects link - nice simple layout to display site design projects, although I could use a better alternative to a scroll bar than one-at-a-time arrows (although it has a cool flash-esque bounce effect when you scroll, but its kind of straight-out-of-the-box feeling). And true to the classic Flash weakness, I can't give you a link to the project page because its Flash...So you'll have to figger it out.

From there, look at the work Group 94 is doing for Lindbergh (http://www.livinglindbergh.com/). Again, nothing hugely revolutionary (Mondrian is rolling in his grave over the pallet choice, but I like it and I think he secretly does too, even in his deadness), but its a nice change to see someone using the full browser space rather than a more common box in the middle (which I am of course proudly guilty of doing in the past).

I'm also kinda' digging their work for Annie Lennox (http://www.annielennox.co.uk/). Really like the way her image moves back and forth to correspond to the layers of navigation. I could live without the automatic music (even if her site is about her music), but that's just me. I've found that default music on a site is often something that a lot of junky site building companies (and folks who call themselves designers, and then broadcast that self-proclaimed title on the internet) use to make up for lack of solid information design or meaningful content. Its great for a myspace page, but leave it out of your company's "real" site. Anyways, very simple way to get information across, which is good in my view.

Next: For some reason, I can't seem to put this site down: Colette (http://www.colette.fr/) I don't know if its the iconic little tv-head guys, or the sense that I'm tapping into Paris pop culture with the continual change in music, but I keep coming back (funny that the music thing doesn't seem to bother me on this site). I can't tell you why exactly, although I like the flash intro to choose a language. doorbells and speech rather than plain old text links are pretty chic.

And lastly for today, check Carl de Keyzer's photography site (http://www.carldekeyzer.com/). Again, a Group 94 design. Couple of things I like about this basic photography site - first, the content is good. Although its a little harder to find in my opinion (a few too many clicks to drill down to the subject matter). The photographs are worth checking out. Some very compelling stuff. Secondly, I like his photo stories section, the colors, the navigation, and so forth. Definitely an effective way to display photography.

The funny thing about the craigslist ad is the person wants a design like the Group 94 folks, but is advertising on craigslist to find the right designer, which usually means looking for an economical (read: cheap) solution. Aren't we all.