No doubt many of you are familiar with the concept of "design debt" made popular by 37signals. The gist is that occasionally we make design decisions that are necessary due to time, monetary, or other restrictions that allow us to move forward with a project, even though in the long run those decisions might not be the best. Those design decisions, while necessary, become debt that we incur.
Nearly two years ago, we redesigned IconBuffet, our royalty-free stock icon site. At the time, we had three products, and we wanted the checkout process to be as simple as possible. We decided to use a simple, one-column layout that garnered a lot of attention from the design community, and honestly worked quite well for the promotion and sales of our products.
But now, two years later, we have 12 products for sale and the one-column layout is breaking down. In fact, we have 12 additional products completed and ready for sale that we have not added to the store because it would clutter the current site too much. That's pretty sad. The time has come for us to pay off the design debt we incurred with this layout.
Later this week we'll launch the new IconBuffet, with a much improved layout and flow. And with a dozen new products. It feels good to pay off the debt, and we're excited to show you what we've done.
On a side note, our SOHO icon collection has been "on sale" for $5 for the last couple of months. When the new site launches, it will return to its regular price of $19. You might want to pick it up today if you'd like to take advantage of the sale price. Enjoy.
angelday true says
You're right with everything. I even purchased this $5 set gracefully.
(off) It's a pain to read almost white text on a black background. (/off)
Jeff Wheeler says
Later this week? Looks like right now?
Josh Williams says
The screenshot above is the site design, circa 2004. As of this post, that design has less than 72 hours of life left.
angelday -- we knew the black with white text would throw some people. I'll post later this week on why we made that call.
Jeff Wheeler says
Sorry to be evil, but um, it seems something went wrong, as I caught this screen-shot earlier:
http://img346.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot40ct.png
(Hosted for a forum post, and therefore on the dreadful image-shack.)
Josh Williams says
Wow. That's truly impressive. We haven't publicly posted any links to the new design, but oh well. It'll be prime time soon enough. Hilarious.
JT says
Speaking of IconBuffet...
I wanted to let you guys know that there is a broken link to IconBuffet on the top-right thumbnail on the fwd pages. There's is a space where there shouldn't be:
http://www. iconbuffet.com
Cheers.
Jeff Wheeler says
Not sure if you realized this, but I took that screen-shot by simply browsing at IconBuffet. I didn't find it.
angelday true says
Jeff, here is my theory: Mr. Williams and his team must have developed the new version on the old site cloaked under, say, an "index_new.php" template. Somebody accidentally renamed the template when you surfed there.
This means one thing: the stuff is there, we just need to figure out the developer version name of the index file!
I have much better things to do, actually. Like font encoding problems. Like so many things you guys wouldn't believe. I need to roll out not even but two sites tomorrow. For one which we're having FONT ENCODING PROBLEMS.
*sigh*
I hate the IT sector and would want to migrate into FMCG. lol
Anonymous says
I think we can give the "Web Jargon Post Award" to angelday true. Congrats.
angelday true says
This is just the beginning.
Coming January 2006.
The world will change.
Blogs will change.
(There won't be such things as "you and I". Or 2.0 for that matter.)
Brace yourselves.
PS: Mr. Williams, the new iconbuffet site is ah-mazing. I would like to work with you, sir.
John allen says
Great Nice site