DANIEL ARSENAULT | www.scrattsurf.com
The Scratt Surf website looks a bit like an oldschool zine, and there’s good reason for the resemblance: Daniel Arsenault made the site’s collage elements largely by hand. “I spend a lot of time at Kinko’s,” he says. “It’s like doing a high school yearbook when they cut and paste things in the back with people’s faces.” While he makes his living as an advertising photographer, Arsenault considers himself an artist first, and for the past three or four years he’s been applying his collage work to custom surfboards. This site promotes that side business, so it’s only natural for the site’s design to mirror the look and feel of the products.

To create his collages, Arsenault starts with hard copies of his photographs and drawings. He takes these items to a copy machine to manipulate sizes as he begins combining these and other elements with low-tech tools ranging from scissors to tape. Once he’s satisfied with a creation, Arsenault photographs the collage and brings it back into the computer. Here he’ll replace those low-quality images—the ones ran through the copier—with high-quality versions, and perhaps lay real type into the collage. This unusual process produced the site’s engaging and authentic graphics. But at this point, you might be wondering about the project’s name. It turns out that a scratt is a cross between a squirrel and a rat—as well as a nickname Arsenault earned for sleeping in his clothes for days on end.
Michelle Taute

HELLO DESIGN | www.eatbetteramerica.com
Having taken notice of recent studies indicating an increasing interest in nutrition on the part of baby boomers, General Mills sought to create an online health platform to reach this audience and anyone else wanting to improve their well-being. Although conceived for those entering the second half of life, Eatbetteramerica. com is an easy-to-use resource for all who desire to eat and live better.

“We know that, too often, nutritional information is boring, confusing or just plain difficult to follow,” says Hello Design creative director David Lai. “As one of the leading food companies in the world, General Mills saw the need for a simple, straightforward website that makes eating better easier and more fun.”

Divided into four sections—food, recipes, fitness and community—the site allows users to dig into a topic, with useful information presented in a clean graphic style. This is a site that appears uncomplicated, yet has significant breadth and depth of content on the subject of living a healthy lifestyle. In developing the information presented on the site, General Mills partnered with health media giants Rodale and Lluminari to tap into their expertise, as well as to collect articles, advice and tips that anyone can benefit from.
Terry Lee Stone

HELLO DESIGN | www.huntingtonconservatory.org
The Huntington Library designed and built the conservatory, an interactive science center for children and families, to aid its outreach in botanical education. Combining the diversity and beauty of a conservatory with the learning experience of a science museum, the new facility is designed to encourage children to learn and build skills using real plants.

This website is a complementary element to the new conservatory. It is targeted at kids 9-12 (along with their families and classrooms) to encourage them to explore and learn about plants through the conservatory’s three distinct environments: Tropical Rain Forest, Cloud Forest and Temperate Bog. Site visitors can learn about plants through a dynamic database or search for plants by their location or interactions with other living things. The site was actually designed to take its cues from plants. For example, the navigation is an organic vine that comes down and grows as users mouse over it. Features boxes have rounded edges like leaves. “One of our favorite areas is the footer, which we call the digital garden,” says Hello Design creative director David Lai. “It allows visitors to plant their own digital plants on the site and leave a little information about who they are and where they come from. It was a fun idea to connect plant lovers around the world.”
Terry Lee Stone

IAMALWAYSHUNGRY | www.iamalwayshungry.com
The website for Nessim Higson’s creative studio, iamalwayshungry, is structured around the idea of dynamic abstraction. Algorithms were used in its design, enabling various aspects of the site to change on each visit. The goal is to create a truly unique experience from visit to visit and from person to person.

The website houses a variety of the studio’s work and doubles as an archival system for anyone who visits. “To avoid redesigning it every year or two, and out of sheer laziness, we made the structure of the site flexible and dynamic for easy updates,” explains Higson. “Another consideration that kept us up at night was accessibility. We made sure anyone could view it no matter what, with arrow keys, image activation or the main menu.” Just as important as its structure is the use of motion in the site. Special attention was given to how pieces transition on and off the screen, creating a certain innate rhythm with the ebb and flow of the content. Using the advantages of the latest Flash technology, imagery was given specific properties and allowed to adjust according to surrounding colors and elements, filling the screen. “As people begin to work on larger monitors with higher resolution,” says Higson, “imagery can and should begin to take on a higher importance.”
Terry Lee Stone

IAMALWAYSHUNGRY | www.leecrum.com
The continually evolving website for photographer Lee Crum was intended to be uniquely engaging in order to grab people’s attention. It’s a flexible site designed to allow multiple uses for Crum and for viewers. “We were wanting to create something that felt both like a personal showcase and a gallery space—which, in a way, become one and the same,” says Nessim Higson, creative director of iamalwayshungry, the site’s designer/developer.

The virtual space of the website feels very similar to the photographer’s New Orleans gallery space. Crum has an extensive collection of very ornate picture frames in his studio that he also wanted to showcase on his site. By using them as a graphic metaphor to set off Crum’s stark black-and-white imagery, the website effectively captures a true sense of personality and aesthetic focus. Minimalist graphics make the photographer’s work the focus. Navigation can be done manually or simply left on autoplay. It uses x, y and z axes so users feel as though they can closely investigate the photographs. “We have continually approached the composition and grouping of the photographs with a great deal of consideration. It can be intriguing to see the groupings of work change from a different gallery view,” notes Higson.
Terry Lee Stone