Form Trends is celebrating its 7th anniversary this year, so I found it right to launch an entirely redesigned website to better deliver stories, photo galleries, videos and all the other content I’m actively creating.
Design is as much about aesthetic beauty as it is functionality. There’s no point in doing something if you’re not going to pour your heart into it and make it the best that it can possibly be. It’s something I learned from my father at a young age and it’s stuck with me to this day.
This permeates through everything that I do, in my professional life as well as in my everyday life with my family. I strive to write the best story, take the best pictures and shoot the best videos. So when I decided to launch the original Form Trends website I dove in with both feet at the deep end. Sink or swim…
Building the original Form Trends website proved to be a formidable stepping-stone for the future. It was a crash course in creating something I’d previously outsourced and managed during my time running Car Design News. I was forced to learn how to develop the site myself and implement changes.
Nearly every article I publish has a photo gallery or a video element, so be sure to check the lead image. If you see an arrow like this one (below), click it to watch the video.
The rest of the site design is pretty intuitive, and if you’re on a tablet or mobile, you can now slide through the image galleries with your fingertip.
I’ve learned a lot since I launched the first Form Trends site back in 2012. It’s something that will remain with me forever. But trying to bring it up to contemporary standard proved to be a massive challenge and it was time for a change. In 2015, I launched the second generation of the website which was better suited to serving design related content, and now Form Trends is again all-new.
With Form Trends 3.0 I’ve set the bar even higher. I’ve gone over every element of the site to ensure I could provide the best user experience, set it up so that users can easily navigate through the wealth of content and, of course, made it as visually appealing as possible.
Following the advice of a design director friend – for whom I have a great deal of respect – I’ve decided to change course slightly. This directional shift will become self-evident in the coming weeks and months. But rest assured, the standard of the articles, photographs and videos that you’ve seen on the website will be upheld, and then some!
Of course, I never pretend to have all the answers. Life is a learning experience and building an entity that is consulted and respected is as well. I’m always open to suggestions on how it can be improved upon. So if you have any feedback — positive or negative — please drop me a line at the email address below.
Thanks, and happy surfing!
Eric Gallina
Editor-in-Chief
Form Trends
eric[at]formtrends.com
