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nwjsmith

The work they do over at http://metalab.com/ is some of the best I've seen.

Edit: Oops! He's right, http://metalabdesign.com/

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You probably mean http://www.metalabdesign.com

They are quite good.

Similar look to hoptoadapp, which I've always been impressed by. Really clean "application-ey" look.

"Designers are not highly paid cake decorators." -- Spencer Murrel

"When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance." -- PG

http://www.metalabdesign.com/about-us/ is full of "cake decoration". Other than that it is nice work.

Other than that it is nice work.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Sure, average people think design is purely decorative, but that does not mean that decoration is not a part of design.

What about their site do you find to be poorly designed?

http://www.metalabdesign.com/blog/

Look at all of the unnecessary lines framing everything on the page. Instead of adding complexity that potentially confuses the user, they should have used whitespace to group elements.

They also use too many colors. Their use of color is distracting -- it does not add value.

FWIW, A lot of their color comes from images within a post, not the blog itself (which is quite consistent with its blues).

But when their blog design is built to emphasize images rather than text, that turns having those images distract into a design issue with the theme.

I agree. My eyes hit the page and have no idea where I'm supposed to be looking. The white-on-black text that's interspersed with the images is also painful to read.

There are a lot of good and interesting ideas there. The problem, I think is that there are too many, and that leaves the page cluttered and distracting.

We have been incredibly impressed with the work Metalab has done for us - http://urbanairship.com/ and our admin interface at https://go.urbanairship.com/ . Couldn't recommend them highly enough.

Also, totally love Refresh Media - http://refreshmedia.com/ - they did http://bacn.com/ for us.

I visit Urban Airship and my first instinct is to hate how little padding there is between your iPhone image and the image right below it, which strikes me as overlarge.

Thanks for the feedback! that's actually something we did after our contract with them, so it's no surprise that we didn't do that well :)

I like some of Metalab's work, but it seems like most of their designs are just copies of existing ones. http://go.urbanairship.com/ is almost identical to Metalab's marketing site except a few colors have been changed

The Metalab people were involved in a dispute with one of the Tumblr designers on IRC the one time I entered the Tumblr IRC, so I've got a bias that comes from that designer ranting at them for an underhanded design, but I find that I really dislike the Metalab style. It's too undiscriminatingly open, and it wastes a lot of space doing/saying simple things. I prefer people who're capable of packing a lot of information into a small space and keep it looking good.

It's certainly "consistent."

http://metalab.com/ is essentially blank; any links to work they've done?

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