Just as the year that saw Geocities give away comes to an end, I was pleasantly pleased with myself when I stumbled upon a site that might have as well been a 1999 Geocities site.

All the features:

• Strobe light pngs.
• A weird color filter that might as well be mistaken for a web-safe palette.
• Hideous typography that shines with some sort of glow effect.
• Animated sidebar links that look like webring links.
• A lovely shade of neon purple.
• Film reel innerpage links with all of the above.

Enough to end my year with a bang.

Awesomeee. Believe me, look at it yourself here.

And the slogan! My god. Feed your Ediction :D Giggle.

A few snapshots that I really cannot resist sharing (I tried, I swear, I know this month has been very image heavy for this blog).

And my favorite:

Fast Company has compiled a list of what they see as the decade’s 14 biggest design moments. You can check out their slide show here, but let me share my favorites from their list.

1. The iPod. Released in 2001, the iPod might as well be the decades biggest design moment. It changed the way we interact with music, think of music, and buy music. Visually, the white earphones, clickwheel, and information architecture of the software itself have had tons of impact on other products.

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2. Etsy. Taking the social web and transforming it into an online Sunday market kinda thing.

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3. We Feel Fine. The 2000′s sparked the interest in beautiful information, and a new wave of infographs has come to the world.

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4. The Wii. Nintendo takes a cue from Apple and reinvents gaming.

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5. London 2012 Olympics Logo. Yeah, yeah, no one likes this logo (it has really grown on me in the past few years), but the backlash it released is certainly worth giving it a spot.

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6. Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster.

They have it in the list because of the Associated Press case, but I think that the whole Obama campaign is worth mentioning for its design finesse.

Check out the other moments here.

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My own additions to the list:

1. Facebook’s Redesigns, which also manage to get the whole world talking.
2. The iPhone not only changed the way phones look, but also the way of softwares, icons, websites, and a whole lot of other things.

With the 2000′s nearly over, many corporations are rebranding to start the new decade afresh. 2009 certainly saw many brand refreshments, including AirFrance, AFC Champions League, Packard Bell, Quicktime, Audi, and Hertz.

As I was looking at a list of redesigned brands compiled by SmashingApps, I could not help but think DAMN, the 2000′s were a bad decade for graphic design. The tagword: Gimmicks.

What most of the 2009 redesigns have in common:

1. Death to Simplicity. Maybe I’m biased, because I’m a sucker for solid colors and basic lines, but many of this year’s changes take away the simplicity and apply a “funk-it-up” filter.

2. All Hail the Color Spectrum. With the Web 2.0 revolution and better technology, gradients have been resurrected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a “Die-Gradients-Die” kind of person like many of my friends are, I actually like gradients, but I do think they are horrible when misused, something that happened often in 2009.

3. Typography Without Life. Logotypes have become more basic, losing the little spunky details that gave them uniqueness.

A few examples:

AFC Champions League: The old logo is ugly, but the new logo is uglier. The mascot-like emblem with the plasticy gradients is really childish, and doesn’t portray the passion, competition, and history of the Champions League. Miss.
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France: If you showed me these two logos without me having any prior knowledge to when each was created, I would have told you that the “After” logo with the line drawing was a modernized version of a 20′s logo while the “Before” logo is a really cool 2010 redesign of it. Miss.
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Corbis: I really like the angular typography of the “Before” logo, and while the “After” logo is still quite distinctive, it really lost its edge. Miss.
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Emily Carr: Bleh. Most unimaginative redesign ever. Scribbley circles, seriously? Miss.
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Packard Bell: Perhaps the ugliest redesign on the list of 2009 redesigns. It looks like it was made by a student who just learned how to use the Extrude feature of Adobe Illustrator. It feels very amateur, as if its tied to an IT geek with minimal design aesthetics who started out a really cool initiative. Miss.
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Union Bank: How boring and cliche, I can think of a million logos with a very similar emblem and logotype treatment. Although the “Before” logo isn’t groundbreaking either, at least the alignment of the type had something interesting going. Miss.
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Quicktime: I hate the redesign of the Quicktime logo. It would have been cool five years ago, when Web 2.0 and gradients and reflections and shiny effects for icons was all the rage. Now, it feels like it’s too trendy, five years too late. It will definitely get old very quickly. The shape of the emblem is better than the old one though, what I would have done is give it a nice solid color, much more “quick” than a million shades of magenta and gray. Miss.
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Audi: I’m not sure how I feel towards this logo redesign. The logotype has much less character, and the rings are much more done-up, but it does manage to look better, somehow. Perhaps its the placement of the logotype on the left, rather than in the center, and more simple overall feel due to the extra white space. Hit.
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Playstation: This is a cool redesign, and has all the elements of becoming a recognizable icon like the Apple or Mercedes emblems. The typography also has shitloads of edgy character. Hit.
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SGI: Great idea, taking an interesting logotype and turning it into a bland, cliche, and indistinguishable pile of muck. Miss.
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My Little Pony: Definitely better. I really like the typography- it’s magical, cute, and girly. The “Y” even looks like a pony’s tail. Hit.
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Network Solutions: The typography is nice, but the emblem is the perfect example to the Web 2.0 trend taken 10 steps too far. Dude, STOP IT ALREADY WITH THE WEB 2.0 STUFF. Miss.
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New York Public Library: I really like how they managed to modernize the ancient emblem while keeping the old establishment feeling. Good job done.  Hit.
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Hertz: The typography looks great. I’m a little sad to see the ugly Hertz drop shadow go, simply because it’s very iconic, but I guess it’s a good way to move into the next decade. The bright yellow looks fantastic. Hit.
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Telecom: Barf. Miss.
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AOL: Not sure how I feel about the Aol redesign. I think they’re trying to go back to their years of grandeur with a completely new outlook on their image, and it might just work out for them. The brand might as well be a different one, much more young and lively, especially since this is one of the oldest and deadest brands of the Web. The logotype is awesome, it gives me the feel of chat-language shorthand, like “asl.” or “tyt.” It’s simple, cool, and I love the dot at the end. Not sure how I feel about the changing background though. Hit.
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Pfizer: Disappointing change. The new logotype looks weird, as if it was changed with the need to modernize without any way of knowing how to, resulting in letters that just look off.
And the gradient. My god. You guys produce PILLS, not tweets. Terrible. Miss.
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Friendster: I love this. So cute, so lively, so fresh. The cloud is a little too Skypish, but the type is nice and the smiley face is much cuter. This shade of green is also a fresh change from the brights and blues littering the logos of Web startups and companies. Hit.
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MSN: Once a blind developer, always a blind developer. The typography is bland, and the butterfly spectrum thingy is really annoying. And the colors clash. Miss.
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MyFonts: I love this. Brilliant. Hit.
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Yup, my three theories basically apply. My friend Ibra has a theory that these changes could have been heralded by Apple’s iPhone, which took the whole gradient-reflections-basic-typography to a whole new level. My very humble recommendations is that people should stick away from these three trends, because they’re exactly just that- trends. You don’t want to be redesigning your logo again in a couple of years. A logo should stay cool for decades, so it should never be tied to trends.

What do you think of 2009′s rebranding attempts? Any personal favorites that you don’t agree with me on? Or vice-versa? Let me know, I’m curious to know what you feel about this new trend.

Check out other logos (without my lovely commentary :) on Smashing Apps.

Check out the rest of predictions at Thoughtpick.com :)

These are lovely.

How to make them.

Okay. I’m getting obsessive compulsive again about vampires, and you guys have to bare with me.

But you can’t really blame me. I finished the two seasons of True Blood in the past 5 days. It’s really good. I finished the four Vampire Academy books in the week before. Twilight in the two weeks preceding that. I wouldn’t be normal if I wasn’t a little obsessed by now. After all, I’ve had a thing for vampires since I was a kid. But Anne Rice became Christian and started writing about Moses, and I had no proper way of feeding my vampire addiction until the world went into a vampire craze.

Thank you, World, for going into a vampire craze.

I’m seriously considering going to the dentist who recently molded my smile and ask him to make me tiny fangs. The sad thing is, my mouth is originally designed to have fangs. Before braces, genetically-messed-up-teeth fixing surgery, and all that shit.

I was born with two missing front teeth. That meant that my canines were a little too in the front for a regular set of teeth. It runs in the family. My orthodontist had a simple solution: build the canines to look like regular teeth, then unbuild the teeth next to the canines to look like canines. Ta da. Normal teeth. Brilliant solution, if you ask me.

Before:

After: