10 Creative Geniuses
Rich Cirillo
The spirit of creativity is alive and well in the digital economy.
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Coach has gone to lengths to provide shoppers a sensuous virtual experience. You can almost feel the calfskin and grip the detachable wrist strap of the cell case at coach.com.
Credit Coach's Web partner, Fry Multimedia. So proud is Coach of the work Fry did that it gives the Web-site builder a generous plug right on its home page.
Enterprising Web-site builders, take note: Technology integration and business-strategy consulting are vitally important to any project, but they're doomed to fail if site design, brand-building and customer experience conside
Moving forward, all e-businesses, whether B2C retail sites, B2B exchanges or supply-chain systems, will succeed or fail based on their ability to create the best online experience possible for their end users, analysts say.
To put a clearer image on the creative discipline, VARBusiness reached out to design leaders to identify the people who are shaping the way the Internet looks, feels and works. Although they come from varied backgrounds and hold an assortment of titles, these professionals are united in a common mission: fostering the best Internet experience possible.
If you want to build the ultimate online initiatives for your clients, you can't afford to ignore these 10 profiles in creativity.
Creative Genius: Thomas Noller Senior Designer, Method
Thomas Noller generally hates browsing the Web. Although that may sound strange coming from someone who makes his living as senior designer for cutting-edge Web boutique Method, Noller says he has good reason.
"I'm into simplicity. I'm kind of tired of seeing these over-designed sites that all look the same," says the German-born art student-turned-designer. "I look at links people send me, but usually only for about two seconds. Then I have to get off."
A self-described minimalist when it comes to design, Noller studied art in Germany. He received a Fulbright scholarship in 1993 and moved to New York to attend Pratt Institute's graduate program. When he finished school, he returned to Germany and worked for Berlin-based MetaDesign for two years.
Unhappy with the way things were going at MetaDesign, Noller heard about Method from friends who were working in San Francisco's design community. So he took a trip to the Bay Area and liked what he saw. He joined Method last September.
"It's not like there's a real hierarchy," he says. "That might change after awhile, since we're young and need some sense of structure. But right now, it's still pretty cool."
Noller's first project for Method was defytherules.com, an experimental Web site he built for Adobe to showcase the most cutting-edge effects and design applications available on the Internet.
"I'm proud of it because it was kind of complex, yet I'm not 100 percent happy with it because we had to use imagery from Young & Rubicam," he says. "But then, I'm never 100 percent happy with anything."
He also recently completed the brand-new iDesign site for Autodesk, which uses 3D technology.
Noller is generally impressed with sites that clearly convey their function at logon. "That doesn't mean I'm looking for dry pages," he says. "There should be some element of poetry or emotion. But it should be toned down to a point where it doesn't interfere with the interaction or the way the site functions."
"Although Method is relatively small, its diverse group of designers from various parts of Europe and the United States give the company exceptional depth," says Noller, who is currently living in the very same space at Method's New York-based office.
"I don't have to commute, so that's good, but in terms of privacy, it's kind of bad," Noller says, perhaps only half joking. "You wake up and your co-workers are already there. It's funny, but it's kind of a picture for how this whole thing functions. It's a lot to do with friendship here."
