This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

That ARCHIVE button on Gmail hardly stands out at all to me.

It took me awhile of looking at your screen capture to see what you were actually talking about.

It’s nice that the effect is subtle, but I’d argue it’s too subtle and easy to miss as the “default.”

Did you notice that the Brian D. Armstrong’s site, College Student Tutors, is kinda ripping off 37signals design?

Especially http://www.collegestudenttutors.com/about and http://www.collegestudenttutors.com/accounts/pricing.

I still don’t understand what “archiving” does in Gmail.

Maybe I’m alone on this.

@ aaa111: Gooood call! I think I’d call that a straight rip. Heavily inspired at the least.

Wow! Seriously, what is it about college students and plagiarism? 37signals does great design, but they don’t do the ONLY design…

Hi Guys,

I fully admit I copied most of the design (even if it wasn’t outright with any copy/paste or images).

Just wanted to get something up quick that looked good. And design isn’t really my forte so I usually just try to get ideas from other people.

If I’m stepping on anyone’s toes at 37Signals just shoot me an email I’m happy to change it. Certainly didn’t want to offend anyone over there, I’ve learned a ton from you guys.

Brian Armstrong

I still don’t understand what “archiving” does in Gmail.

The key to understanding GMail’s paradigm - and it’s a completely different one - is to realize that there’s only one folder in the entire system. One folder, that’s it: it’s called “All Mail”. You can see it in your list of, well “folders”, between Drafts and Spam.

Every single other “folder” is actually a “Smart Folder”: you may be familiar with this from iTunes smart playlists or smart mailboxes in Apple Mail.app or even “tags” found on del.icio.us or Flickr. In GMail’s case, your “Inbox” is actually only a smart folder for all the mail in “All Mail” tagged with “Inbox”, your mail in “Sent” tagged with “Sent”, including Drafts, Spam and every “Label” you create (those are just smart folders, too, pulling from the same gigantic “All Mail” archive).

When you “archive” an email, that simply removes the tag “inbox”—that’s it. You either keep an email or you don’t. I use the inbox as a staging area / to-do list: every email that comes in, I decide I either want to keep it (even if the chance of needing it is remote) or delete it. The binary nature works great… if an email remains in my inbox, it means that I need to take some action. I routinely reach Inbox Zero this way…

I was wondering if it was a 37signals backed production for a while?

Excerpt from: Startbreakingfree.com

Also, my theory on make good webpages (especially when in the product launch phase here when you just want to get something done quickly and “good enough”) is to find a design you like on another page, and tailor it to your own needs. Don’t copy it outright, but pretty close is fine. No need to reinvent the wheel early on. Can you tell which site I borrowed liberally from? :)

I don’t think this is exactly what Brad was expecting when he sent a link about “interesting UI decisions”.

Interesting UI Decision: Copy someone’s interesting UI decision.

Dude, your footers are EXACTLY the same.

It’s not like they’ve discussed design rip-offs previously.

Oh wait…

design isn’t really my forte so I usually just try to get ideas from other people

Imagine getting an art homework assignment at school. When the day comes to hand it in, you say to the teacher, “sorry, art isn’t my forte, so here’s a photocopy of a Picasso.” Does that sound acceptable to you?

If design isn’t your forte, find a designer.