Unlike many other industries, the Web design community is all about sharing knowledge and experience. Each of us is very lucky to be part of such a great and useful learning environment, and it is up to us to embrace it — to embrace our learning experiences, and also to embrace our ability to share.
Not only are case studies a great way to explain the design process of an agency, but they also help designers and developers to learn from each other. Seeing how designers work, create, build and play is great, and furthermore, you can learn how to write a great case study yourself and how to use one to spice up your portfolio.
In today’s overview of useful case studies, we’ve featured studies that have recounted decisions made about particular design elements, as well as studies of full overhauls and their accompanying technical challenges. Most of them provide interesting insights into failures and successes, stories, workflows and design decisions made and rejected.
We must admit that this post is quite a long one, so we’ve decided to divide it into two parts to make it easier for you to navigate. Now you should be well prepared for a couple of late reading sessions over the next weekends!
Here is a quick list of the categories covered:
Illustration, Graphics and Logo Design
Typography
Usability
Advertising, Promotion and E-Commerce
Redesigning Elements and Features
Complete (Re)branding and (Re)design
Content and Storytelling
Technical Challenges and Solutions
Workflow and Optimization
Last Click
Illustration, Graphics And Logo Design
“Illustrator Full Spectrum Spirograph,” Veerle Pieters
Pieters talks about her experimentation process with spirographs, inspired by the work of Andy Gilmore.
“The Design Process of my Infographic About Women Cycling for Grinta!,” Veerle Pieters
Pieters shares her experience of the design process behind the infographic on women’s cycling that she produced for Grinta magazine.
“A Systematic Approach to Logo Design,” Adham Dannaway
Icon design can be time-consuming. Dannaway shows how to systematically approach a new logo design.
“(Re)building a Simplified Firefox Logo,” Sean Martell
Learn how Firefox’s logo was simplified to better fit its extended usage beyond a desktop Web browser.
“Five Details,” Jon Hicks
Jon Hicks shares the design process behind the Five Details Logo, including the design and choice of typography.
“Iconfinder Logo,” SoftFacade
SoftFacade completely reimagined Iconfinder’s existing identity and came up with a shiny and modern robot character. View the detailed design process.
“The Great Gatsby”
Like Minded Studio collaborated on the branding of “The Great Gatsby“. The aim was to develop a bespoke Deco styled logo reflective of the roaring 20s and Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. They also created a display typeface to acompany the main branding. Additionally read more about it following this link.
“Whitney Graphic Identity,” Experimental Jetset
In this case study of the Whitney Museum of Art’s logo, Experimental Jetset discusses the impact that a responsive logo can have on branding.
“My ‘Tour de France’ posters,” Veerle Pieters
Pieters created posters for the 100th edition of the Tour of France. She mainly used the French landscape which she had used for the ‘Tour de France Infographic’ as a starting point.
Typography
“Designing Type Systems,” Peter Bil’ak
To create truly useful designs, typographers need to examine not only how characters relate to each other within a style, but also how different styles relate to each other within a family. Peter Bil’ak discusses how to achieve this.
“Novel Constructions: The Making of a Typeface,” Christopher Dunst
Dunst shares the process behind the creation of the “Novel” typeface.
“The Development of the Signage Typeface Wayfinding Sans Pro,” Ralf Herrmann
Herrmann describes the development of the Wayfinding Sans Pro, a signage typeface that can be read from a long distance.
“The Making of FF Tundra,” Ludwig Übele
Übele shares the process behing making the FF Tundra typeface, which was highly inspired by nature.
“The Making of Magasin,” Laura Meseguer
Meseguer writes how she created Magasin, a typefaces inspired by fluid handwriting.
“Type Study” series, Adobe Typekit
Typekit features a whole series of case studies of typography:
“Hi-DPI Web Typography,” David Demaree
“Typographic Hierarchy,” Frank Chimero
“Pairing Typefaces,” Aura Seltzer
“Sizing the Legible Letter,” Ethan Marcotte
“Stereo-Typography,” Dan Mall
“Choosing Fallback Fonts,” Josh Brewer
“Techniques for Using Novelty Fonts,” Meagan Fisher
Usability
“Social Login Buttons Aren’t Worth It,” MailChimp
Social login buttons are used by many apps today. MailChimp shares its own experience and considerations in using social login buttons.
“Usability in Icons,” Peter Steen Høgenhaug
Icons are used to illustrate a particular function, anything from information to actions. This article explains what needs to be considered when designing them.
“iOS Icon Design: A Designer’s Exploration,”
iOS icon design is not only difficult, but requires a lot of experimentation. David Killoy shares his experience of designing the icon for his note-taking app Notorious.
“The Making of Octicons,” GitHub
Octicons is a icon font made by GitHub. Five designers collaborated on the project, and they share how they built Octicons and what they learned along the way.
“Designing Facebook Home,” Julie Zhuo
On May 8th, the designers behind Facebook Home (Justin Stahl, Francis Luu, Joey Flynn and Mac Tyler) presented a behind-the-scenes look at their work at the Bluxome Street Winery for a small crowd.
Advertising, Promotion And E-Commerce
“How to Make Your Own App Promo Cards,” Mike Swanson
Swanson was inspired by Starbuck’s promo cards for giving away free apps and decided to make his own for an upcoming event. Learn how you can do one, too!
“The Art of Launching an App,” John Casey
You’ve made your first app! Now what? This study covers some tactics and lessons learned during one process of launching an app.
“How to Launch Anything,” Nathan Barry
Barry has launched five products in fewer than nine months. Read about the strategy that helped him generate over $200,000 in revenue from online products, starting from scratch.
“Selling My E-Book on Amazon,” Jonathan Snook
Several people predicted that 2013 would be the year of self-publishing. Snook shares insight into his eBook sales on Amazon.
“Increase Online Sales on Your Ecommerce Website,”
Headscape increased sales on Wiltshire Farmfoods’ e-commerce website by over 10,000% in only five years. What makes it even more special, the target audience is over 50 years old. Paul Boag shares his experience.
“Twitter Promoted Tweets,” MailChimp
MailChimp has made use of Twitter’s promoted tweets and shares insight into this experience.
Redesigning Elements And Features
“Visual Exploration Behind Signal vs. Noise,” Mig Reyes
37signals share the process behind making its blog special. This study is about how the company visualized noise and styled its blog categories in a unique way.
“Reinventing Our Default Profile Pictures ,” Jamie
Jamie talks about the process of finding the right default profile pictures for the 37signals website. It’s a great new approach to a very basic element.
“Login Screen Design: Behind the Scenes,” Simon Tabor
Good UX is not just about the main content, but also about little details such as log-in (and error) pages. GoSquared shares how it made its log-in experience exceptional.
“Save for Later,” Brian Groudan
All browsers support two functions: searching and revisiting. Groudan worked closely with Mozilla’s user experience researchers and designers to rethink how Firefox could better offer “saving for later” functionality in the browser.
“A Closer Look at Zoom,” FiftyThree
FiftyThree shares the design process behind the new zoom feature in its Paper app.
“Reinventing the Investment Calculator,” Alex Bendiken
Drawing from the book Money for Something, Alex Bendiken built a tool that lets users experiment and create a unique investment plan. It’s a UX study in turning a boring financial calculator into something you’d actually want to use.
“Getting Down to Business,” Teenhan+Lax
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper of record. It serves millions of readers everyday with in-depth journalism and informed comment. Learn how Teenhan+Lax helped refresh and enrich the way users experience and engage with the news today.
“Olympics: User Experience and Design,” Nick Haley
Nick Haley shares the BBC’s design process of delivering the Olympics across desktop, tablet, mobile and connected TV.
“How We Built the Responsive Olympics Site,” Matt Clark
Matt Clark writes about MSN UK’s approach to delivering the Olympics digitally, from the brief to the finished design.
“The Anatomy Of A Successful Logo Redesign,” Belinda Lanks
Lanks summarizes how Jessica Hische had freshened up the new logo for MailChimp with a slight facelift. The new logo now looks new and fresh — more refined but just as playful.
“What I Want Out of Facebook,” Keenan Cummings
Cummings explains why Facebook fails him and what he wants to get out of it that would make it useful for his personal life.
“In Praise of Lost Time,” Dan Hill
Dan Hill talks about Facebook’s Timeline as an exemplary bit of interaction design that does little to advance the timeline formally. Yet it might alter the nature of human memory itself.
Complete (Re)branding And (Re)design
“How to Approach a Responsive Design,” Tito Bottitta
This article shows the design process behind The Boston Globe’s website, one of the most famous examples of responsive designs. Read about how Upstatement approached its first responsive design.
“Responsive Design Case Study,” Matt Berridge
This case study outlines the entire process of constructing the South Tees Hospitals’ website, a large responsive design containing over a thousand pages.
“Rebuilding a University Homepage to Be Responsive. Twice. In Less Than a Year,” Erik Runyon
This slideshow discusses how and why Notre Dame University’s home page was rebuilt twice in less than a year. You will find a recording of the talk below the slides.
“Yes, You Really Can Make Complex Web Apps Responsive,” Daniel Wearne
Wearne shares his experience in creating Adioso’s Web app, a complex yet accessible project. He covers the framework, responsive mixins, tables and future challenges.
“Designing a New Playground Brand,” Ryan Bannon
This case study shows the design process of Playground’s new brand. It covers the logo, overall website and vector animation process, as well as the core values and personality of the company. The extensive study comes in three parts.
“How House Parties Helped Us Design Potluck,” Cemre Güngör
The team at Potluck describes how it took inspiration from reality to design a “house party on the Internet.”
“Colorado Identity,” Berger & Föhr
Imagine someone hiring you to define your own identity. Berger & Föhr was hired to help create the new identity and visual brand of Colorado, the place they call home. Have a look at the work and logo they came up with.
“Building the New Financial Times Web App,” Wilson Page
Page talks about building the Financial Times’ new app, a challenge that many on his team believed to be impossible. He covers device support, fixed-height layouts, truncation, modularization, reusable components, Retina support, native-like scrolling, offline support and the topic of ever-evolving apps.
“Google Treasure Maps,” Alex Griendling
Griendling writes about the design process behind Google Maps’ treasure mode.
“Find Your Way to Oz,” HTML5 Rocks
This very detailed case study looks at the “Find Your Way to Oz” demo, a Google Chrome experiment by Disney. It covers sprite sheets, Retina support, 3-D content and more.
“The Making of the Moscow Metro Map 2.0,” Art Lebedev Studio
This study is about the design process behind the Moscow Metro map, a complex project that needed to meet the requirements of both Web and print.
“Skinny Ties and Responsive eCommerce,” Brendan Falkowski
Read and learn how GravDept redesigned Skinny Ties’ creative and technical direction to propel shopping on every device.
“The Design Thinking Behind the New Disney.com,” Bobby Solomon
Solomon shares the process of creating a Disney website that is flexible enough to showcase the widest range of offerings imaginable — in other words, a website that can do everything.
“Say Hello to the New ISO,” Andy Clarke
Clarke and David Roessli redesigned the website of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and share their experience.
“A Responsive Design Case Study,” David Bushell
The redesign of Passenger Focus takes advantage of the Web as an unique medium.
“BBC News: Responsive Web Design and Mustard,” Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent
These slides address the core principles and the “cutting the mustard” technique behind the BBC News’ responsive website.
“The Trello Tech Stack,” Brett Kiefer
Read the process behind the Trello app, from initial mockup to a solid server and maintainable client.
“Responsibly Responsive: Developing the Greenbelt Website,” Rachel Andrew
Andrew writes about her front-end design decisions in rebuilding the Greenbelt Festival’s website.
“The Digital-Physical: On Building Flipboard for iPhone and Finding the Edges of Our Digital Narratives,” Craig Mod
Mod walks through the process of building the Flipboard app for iPhone and of finding the edges of its digital narratives.
“Page-Flip Effect From 20 Things I Learned,” Hakim El Hattab
This study shows how this team found the best way to achieve the feeling of a real-world book, while leveraging the benefits of the digital realm in areas such as navigation.
“Six Key Lessons From a Design Legend,” Kapil Kale
The GiftRocket team eventually recruited Mike Kus as a designer. This article shows why that decision took their website to the next level.
“Breaking The Rules: A UX Case Study,” Laura Klein
Klein shows how she broke all rules to create the great UX for Outright.
“7 UX Considerations When Designing Lens Hawk,” Christian Holst
Lens Hawk is a massive DSLR lens database. This article shares seven UX considerations that were made in its design process.
“The Story of the New Microsoft.com,” Nishant Kothary
Kothary shares his insight into making Microsoft’s new website. Also, check out Trent Walton’s perspective on the redesign.
“Behind the Scenes of the New Kippt,” Gannon Burgett
This interview about the work behind the new Kippt app covers the redesign process, the design principles and problems that the team faced, insights into the new era of Web app design, and where Kippt will head in the future.
“Crayola: Free the ‘What If’,” Daniel Mall
Dan Mall has put together a case study of the creation of the new Crayola application for kids.
“Campus Quad iPhone App,” Soft Facade
Soft Facade covers every aspects of the design process behind its Campus Quad app.
“How to Make a Vesper: Design,” Vesper
Learn how the Vesper app was designed and made.
“Betting on a Fully Responsive Web Application,” 14islands
Read about how 14islands took the Web app for Kambi, a sports-betting service, to the next level.
“AMMO Rack App Design Critique,” Alexander Komarov
An interesting study of the feedback process that improved the AMMO Rack app.
“Walking Through the Design Process,” Ian Storm Taylor
Taylor walks you through the design process of Segment.io, including the progression of mockups in Photoshop.
“Music Video ‘Lights’: The Latest WebGL Sensation,” Carlos Ulloa
Interactive studio HelloEnjoy built a mind-blowing 3-D music video for Ellie Goulding’s song “Lights.” Creative director Carlos Ulloa explains why the team chose WebGL and how it created various immersive graphic effects.
“Designing for Designers,” Kyle Meyer
Designing for other designers is different than working for regular clients. Kyle Meyer shares his experience.
“Adapting to a Responsive Design,” Matt Gibson
Cyber-Duck abandoned its separate mobile website and created a new responsive design.
“Grids, Flexibility and Responsiveness,” Laura Kalbag
Kalbag shares her thoughts on the redesign of her own website, including her choice of typefaces.
“Making of Typespiration,” Rafal Tomal
Rafal Tomal built Typespiration as a side project. Learn about the process from initial idea to finished WordPress website.
“Case Studies,” Fi
Design firm Fi has integrated case studies into its portfolio. The studies are very interactive and beautifully designed. Here are four of them:
“Is This The Future of The Airline Website?”
“The Story of Ramayana: Brought to Life by Google Chrome”
“Sony: Connected World”
“USAToday.com: Redesigning One of America’s Most Popular News Sites”
More Case Studies!
Perhaps you are more interested in case-studies on copywriting, content and storytelling, technical challenges, or just workflow and optimization tips? Well, off we go to the second part of the overview. Now you should be well prepared for a couple of late reading sessions over the next weekends!
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© Melanie Lang for Smashing Magazine, 2013.