In the early days, Twitter was famous for its dead simple design: a box, some text, a button. But over the years, it’s gotten busier with the hashtags and the @ mentions and the retweets. Some might say say too busy. So why not just start over and rebuild this thing from the ground up? That’s exactly what Australian designer Fred Nerby had in mind when he reimagined the entire site.
Almost paradoxically, he manages to simplify the look and feel of Twitter while actually adding functionality. In Nerby’s conceptualiSed version, the photos are screen-sized, the UI elements flat and clean.
People are organised into groups based on who’s talking to whom and looking at someone’s timeline is like looking at an actual timeline, one that’s organised in chronological order with easy-to-read dates. There’s also the instant gratification infographic for displaying anything from retweets and mentions to trending topics.
The overall experience feels like the user experience is holding your hand and leading you deeper and deeper into Twitter, where all the goodies are. Of course this prototype is a total pipe dream, and it’s unlikely Twitter would ever adopt it. It’s hard to argue against the new features, though, which put a heavy emphasis on celebrities and brands which are Twitter’s bread and butter. In addition to Rihanna’s reimagined Twitter page, Nerby shows us what a Marvel-branded page for Thor star Chris Hemsworth. Marvel would pay mad money for a look like that!
Regardless of what Twitter thinks of the new design, Nerby seems satisfied just giving away inspiration for free. Earlier this year, he redesigned Facebook (all of it) for the fun of it. It, too, looked pretty swell, and it, too, was completely ignored by the actual designers at the actual company. [Behance via The Next Web]
