A nice designed site that shares what people are eating.

Contestants of Miss Viet Nam 2008.

Simple and beautiful design for an online shoe store.

NPR profiles Nat Adderley:

Trumpeter, composer and bandleader Nat Adderley redefined the idea of “brotherly love” in a musical context. He devoted most of his creative energies to the band fronted by his saxophone-playing brother, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, in which Nat played cornet, composed, managed the band’s money and generally looked after his older brother. Together, the brothers drove the Cannonball Adderley Quintet to great heights, in the process developing one of jazz’s greatest sibling success stories.

Wu Tang’s GZA returns with a superb record that reinforces his street literary. Pro Tools, GZA’s fifth solo album, showcases his signature style: delivering moody and mysterious rhymes over stark beats. “Path of Destruction” glorifies the dark side of street struggles. “Short Race” narrates a life of a kid who is a victim of abuse. “Paper Plate” takes shots at 50 Cent: “One verse will shatter your spine and crush your spirit / No matter what, you still window-shop for lyrics.” With solid track to track, Pro Tools marks a strong comeback from the lyrical Genius.

The folks at Vassar has launched Dean of the Faculty web site. Clean, well-organized and elegant use of typeface.

“10 People with Unbelievable Medical Conditions” includes a woman who has 200 orgasms a day, a man who can’t get fat, and a woman who is allergic to modern technology.

Commentary from Jack Cafferty:

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. “It means I’m saved and forgiven.” Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we’ve all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

Cafferty also pointed out that McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Matt allows you to tweet with multiple Twitter accounts without having to switch log in. Matt’s web site looks pretty sweet too.

I was given an opportunity to redesign tledc.com, Theresa Le’s jewelry designs. Theresa is a good friend who I have met over several bun mam occasions and she gave me complete freedom to rework her site. The only instruction she gave me was to keep it simple and sleek.

After browsing through her extensive gallery, I decided to incorporate her jewelry works into the layout. On the homepage, I wanted to let her artwork speak for itself, and it does so clear and bold against black background. On the secondary pages, I wanted to switch the layout to white for readability and accessibility. I revamped the entire gallery and made it much simpler to navigate. Customers don’t have to click through pages and pages to browse the collection. Everything in on one page and if you want to see the larger photo, you can do so without leaving the page. As of now, Theresa has not added e-commerce feature to her site and she still prefers the good old mailing payment. I have pushed her to go with PayPal, so hopefully we will see that in the near future.

The entire site is structured in XHML and styled in CSS. I kept the markup clean and simple so that Theresa could update the site herself. I also gave her logo a new, refreshing look. The type is set in lowercase with various colors.

So go ahead and take a tour at tledc.com and buy some jewelry before they are gone. As you see, she has sold quite a bit of them. Make sure you read the about page too. I love the way she describes her design process:

I don’t always know the name of the stones. I identify them by their beauty and character. Each stone is unique in its own way, and each is a piece of art. I take my time feeling them with my fingers, my mind filled with images of where they’ve been and how their paths and adventures had brought them into my hands. Sometimes I stare at a rock for hours seeing designs and possibilities. It takes a long time for me to work through each piece, savoring that wonderful feeling of creating something unique. I’m really just bringing out their natural beauty and I make a point to keep my pieces simple and elegant.

Isn’t that beautiful? Thanks Theresa for allowing me to redesign tledc.com. It was quite a pleasure project to work on.