Apple’s Latest Design Award

Apple wins a ton of design awards.  I’m including this one on the blog for two reasons.

– It is an especially prestigious award

– It was a project I produced

I.D. magazine has recognized the best in design in its Annual Design Review since 1954.  This year’s awards were announced, and the redesign of apple.com was recognized with distinction in the interactive category.  This was my first project at Apple, and I had the pleasure of working with an amazing team.  This is what I.D. had to say:

There was some initial grumbling about bestowing yet another design honor on Apple, but in the end, the jurors had no choice: “It’s like the U.S. team at the Olympics,” Vinh said. “You can’t fault them for doing everything right.” Apple’s redesign of its worldwide consumer sites last year may not have gotten as much press as the iPhone or the Macbook Air, but the makeover is just as emblematic of the computing giant’s relentless focus on improving the end-user experience. Gone are the oft-imitated aqua navigation tabs; in their place is a metallic bar that better reflects the company’s current product offerings. The new nav floats over a wider page layout, making the site feel uncluttered. Search functionality has also improved, returning listings for products, downloads, movie trailers, iTunes songs, and more, all in a well-organized results menu similar to Spotlight on a Mac desktop. The site has also benefited from its use of Ajax, improving performance and allowing for nifty features like the collapsible secondary navigation panels, which Wickens called “really clever.” “It’s one of my favorite sites,” Pitaru remarked, “even though I don’t own one of their machines.”

Thanks I.D. magazine!  Thanks team!

I’ve often thought about the commonalities between Danish design ethos and what we do at Apple.  Perhaps I’ll write more about that at a later date.