BrainFuel

An fully-animated video showing some of the cool things you can do these days with video animation.

Hat tip: Josh Pigford.

I was checking out the Engadget blog and liked some of the ways they have the site designed. I’ve included a few screen captures below, of the areas I liked the most.

Interesting way of showing which posts are the most popular.

When you click “Submit Tip” this panel pops up with the giant headline “Boss of the year entry form,” and right under that in small type it says “Now that we’ve thrown ‘em off the trail.” — cool idea!

I liked the search input field design for the way they graphically made it feel important.

Sections are separated with this fantastic divider which shows the number of comments, and lets the user share or get a link.

The calendar showing the number of posts by day, which I find is often useless, looks awesome on this page layout. When you hover over a specific day you get a pop out that shows the number of posts.

So that’s just a few of the things I liked about the current Engadget site design.

I like the Fitbit web site. The home page does a nice job explaining what the product does, and gives examples of the data you’ll be able to access when you use the product.

This is an awesome design illustration from N.Design Studio I just had to post. Love the colors and the style!

Here’s a sweet pencil-sketch design from the RichPurple blog. It’s simple, elegant and grabs your attention.

This year marks the 4th annual Ketchup Week! Originally launched here on BrainFuel, the idea came to me a few days before Christmas, in 2005. For the first two years, it was very simple and didn’t gain much publicity. Now, tools like Twitter and Facebook make it easier to get the word out about Ketchup Week.

What is Ketchup Week? It’s one week where you can “catch up” on all of the projects you’ve been putting aside. It’s the one week when all of your customers are on vacation, and when the phone rarely rings. It is the one week when the office is quiet and distraction free.

So take the mantle, er, the ketchup and get to work on those personal dreams. Start a new business, or make a craft, or just spend time away from the mundane. Have a great Ketchup Week, everyone!

You can follow Ketchup Week on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook.

I found the program guide for the TED 2010 conference really interesting. They’ve managed to keep it all on one page and allow sorting by photo.

One of my favorite coffee shops in Phoenix is Press Coffee. It’s about 12 minutes from my house (but I still don’t get there often enough). Earlier this year they asked Tornado to redesign their web site and gave us virtually complete design freedom.

We chose to go with a dark background so that the photos would really pop (we also took most of the photos). We then used some of the orange color tones in our design that the store is using in their other branding, and in the store design.

Press Coffee home page.

The food menu layout.