Pseudo 3D

There’s a new design meme that’s making the rounds. Websites that have some dimensionality to them. I first really noticed it on Jonathan Snook’s Snook.ca, but recently SlashFilm added some of this, and my new favourite site Mail Chimp has some too.

It adds much needed depth to the web, and is neat because it’s a whole new design trend which appears to have sprung up out of nowhere.

I’ve always loved Jonathan Snook’s designs, and this latest one seems right at home with his new gig at SquareSpace, it looks “squarespacey”.  Jonathan manages to simutaneously have a clean design style and intricate little hooks.  You look at his stuff and at first glance say “That looks nice.”, but on closer inspection say “Wow, that’s cool.”.  That’s why I love his stuff.

The new SlashFilm site is a marked departure from the old kind of bare bones site.  It’s slick, and most importantly easy on the eyes.  What they really need to do though is figure some way to let their ads load faster, or simply later.  I’ve been on their site several times where the whole thing takes 30 seconds to render one page, and it’s stuck on an ad server for 28 of those seconds.

Mail Chimp (my new crush object du jour) makes subltle use of this trend in a couple of places on their site.  It’s not overwhelming, but that’s one of the features of this design trend, people aren’t over doing it (yet).  They use it to add prominence to certain areas of their site, but not to distract.