Creativity 50:Dustin Mierau, Chief Designer and Co-founder, Path

While it remains to be seen whether mobile social-networking service Path can gain a mass audience as the place for the Facebook-fatigued to share their online lives privately with just close friends and family, the consensus was pretty much unanimous that its November redesign is beautiful. According to chief designer and co-founder Dustin Mierau, the idea of "home" was a key design inspiration, since social networks previously had been "rather cold--stark, blue, white, winter" in their aesthetic. (Three guesses which one he's alluding to?) "Design at Path is not just a series of carefully thought-out pixels but also an extreme amount of thoughtful engineering," said Mr. Mierau.