I like to follow the thoughts and ideas of people who are hundreds of times more creative than I am. Sometimes I have no choice but to track these people via whatever they publish. Other times, I’m lucky to know the people in real life – like Lil Miss Lulu of Everybody is Ugly – so that I can attest that YES, they [she] walks the walk.

Lulu’s fabulous. She’s a smart girl, a witty writer, and in a world of fashion blog fluff, she actually has something significant to say. I always worry about standing next to her because I feel my style is never up to snuff. It’s kind of like if you were a platypus competing against a lion for World’s Noblest Animal. I know I can’t beat her, so I will resolve myself to admire her from a distance. (And, OMG, who wouldn’t want to inspire French fan art?)

Just a few months ago, Lulu & Friends launched a social network devoted to sharing style called Chictopia. Chictopia’s a fantastic concept and absolutely worth joining. Countless fashion social networks have launched, only to crash and burn. What Chictopia has done differently, though, is embedded the most community-fostering features into their site from the very get-go. Whereas innovative thinkers have started “style on the street” sites before, they have often only gone as far as making yet another photo blog of fashion. Zero interactive tools. Zero stickiness. You cannot expect a site with a goal of showcasing the world’s style to last if there are merely intentions to expose a worldwide collection of images, and no reason for total strangers to engage each other in actually collecting these visualizations.

Chictopia’s smartest move, though, was really employing someone who knew what the Hell she is talking about. Lulu’s promotional blog spread quickly via word of mouth. Her network of “social capital” was always strong, but she also simply has a blog of quality.

Now that I feel I have buttered up Chictopia as much as I can, I have to say Chictopia has absolutely failed in the icon department. I’ve been very vocal about this and Lulu knows I don’t approve. They’ve gone through a couple of iterations of square boxes, and I don’t like any of them. Every icon is ugly. (I’m Carrie Bradshaw! Puns!) Unfortunately I didn’t capture their original commenting icon. It was a thought bubble that looked more like a topographical view of the U.S.A. I complained about it when the site was in beta, and about a week later, the image changed. Not to much better, though. Observe:

Seriously, that pen looks like it has balls. Would you like to join the PEN15 Club? The thought bubble is either cauliflower or white broccoli. The whole series just looks like a clip art explosion up in there.

Now, Chictopia has these black and white icons that look like they were made on Microsoft Paint:

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I may use a lot of hyperboles in my writing, but that MS Paint remark is no exaggeration. Again, Chictopia as an overall site has great content, and attracts surprisingly polished user generated content. The look and feel of it is very print layout, probably due to Lulu’s creative design experience in magazine editorial. But all of that falls away when these black and white squares pop up alongside Chictopia’s version of the Facebook Mini-Feed. (Which, by the way, I would like to collapse, Mr. Zuckerberg…) They take me back to the junior high days when we were all discovering Geocities and uploading rotating GIFs of peace signs and flashing rainbow site counters. True, on Chictopia, the snapshots of outfits should take the stage, but especially on a page of the site that is meant to spawn discovery and click-throughs to other content, the showcasing of those icons butts up amateur visual stamps that nearly trump the recent activity listed against simple text that loses its significance. Need I also point out that this is a fashion-focused social network where it’s all about sharing your style, and in effect, just a bit of design awareness?

I’m not a graphic designer, but I am very picky about the things I look at, especially in how well they merge the two worlds of form and function – if at all. One of the reasons I love reading designers’ blogs is because you learn a lot about how the human mind responds to aesthetics. They often teach you about how the flow of the eye triggers reactions and associations in the brain, and it’s a really interesting form of psychology.

Icons, people! They should be like the headlines of visual thought. They should communicate clearly, triggering as much of a universal understanding as possible. They should follow a flow and be consistent throughout an organization’s branding. Icons are not just doodles. The limited amount of pixel space you have ought to be even more efficient and well thought-through than your oversized billboard. Icons are as much a part of the user interface as the structural layout of your page. It’s very easy to suddenly come off as amateur in iconography efforts.

People become “fashion icons” because their clothes somehow scream their personalities. Even with 50 x 50 squares, the same goal needs to be achieved. I say leave it to the pros…

I have a Tumblr account that’s become my breadcrumb trail of interesting snippets from the Web. Through Tumblr, I came across Implodr’s “tumblelog.” (“Tumblelog?” That’s so awkward to say! Sometimes branding makes my head hurt.) Implodr is a visual designer, and most recently, he worked on the icons for Apple’s MobileMe. Implodr also created the icons for Tumblr, which are definitely nice and simplistic – exactly what icons should be.

They also literally “fit” with one another, which is really nerdy cool.

The logo for MobileMe has gotten a bit of flack, though. (I don’t know if Implodr was involved in the logo design.) Rod Townsend predicts it “Is probably something White People like.” Gawker, inspired by Townsend, made their own list of Mac MobileMe one-liners, and thinks the MobileMe logo “Is being chased by Bubble Boy.”

I’m a bit of a Mac enthusiast and I’m absolutely stoked for the synchronization that MobileMe promises, but the logo does strike me as kind of odd. Nowhere in Apple’s branding is there any use of handwritten fonts or cloud-like shapes. Of course, they’re trying to introduce the idea of a “cloud” of your information pushing your updates to all your electronic devices, but still. Other Apple icons are usually more purposeful and obvious, it seems. Then again, what does a “pod” have to do with music, right? But I like Mac. I’ll let it grow on me.