Phil Gyford

I’ve been meaning to point at this for a while. Some time ago I did a bit of IA/design work on evnt and the results became visible a month ago.

evnt is a kind of collaborative social calendaring thingy, in development by Matt Webb and co. The site had been evolving gradually and, as often happens, things start getting a bit clunky and confusing as new features and ideas are added. For example, I’ve been meaning to revisit the look of Pepys’ Diary for a couple of years now, since the initial speedy feature creep died down; it’s become a bit messy.

A fresh pair of eyes usually helps at this point, and I was pleased that mine were getting involved. I tried to simplify the organisation a little and make any potentially confusing aspects clearer. Then I used the existing design, and some other ideas they’d had, to create a few HTML/CSS templates. Put like that, it sounds wonderfully easy.

It was speedy work, but I’m very pleased with the result — I would say it’s my favourite thing I’ve designed, but the all-important colours and basic structure weren’t mine so that would be a bit cheeky. Still, whatever the origins of it all, I’m pleased with the collaborative result.

Read more about evnt on its wiki and blog.