A Special Guest...
Friday, June 30, 2006
Hello-
I've been horrible at finding the time to keep our blog current so I've recruited some guest bloggers to fill in for the next few posts. Today I've asked one of our impressive designers to take the floor with the topic of his choice (yes, I know that could be dangerous!). So please let me introduce Cian Walsh. Cian runs Afterglow Design http://www.afterglow.ie/ out of Ireland and is one of the most talented designers I've ever worked with. The guy just gets it. Cian created the look and feel of our upcoming product, Montage and, in his guest posting, he gives you the 30,000 foot view about the creative process he took while brainstorming our design (he ever-so-politely left out what a pain in the arse it is working with me :-) Ladies and gentleman, Cian Walsh.
Paintball and Pixels
1. People are impatient.
2. People rarely read instruction manuals.
3. People are busy.
These are the three assumptions you can safely make before designing an Application icon. The goal or expectation to this process is to see the Icon as being a signpost to the program’s function rather than just a piece of artwork or a branding exercise.
So it was with the Montage app.
Starting to build the icon, there’s many ideas you churn through while deciding what needs to be featured. Imagine painting your kitchen with a paintball gun. Every conceivable idea is fired at the wall in the first stage to see what sticks. Churning through every aspect helps you sort the wheat from the chaff but also to see where ideas could be used in other aspects of the UI. The overriding theme that came out of these session was the creation aspect of Montage. It’s concerned with the art of writing.
The first drafts from the paintball sessions were in the screenplay mode, but the standard for screenplays is a blank page, save for the title. Not very visually interesting even if it is faithful. So begins the process of finding something which is a recognizable metaphor but wih enough visual character to be easily spotted in the Dock or Finder. The pen/tool and document convention can be seen as being somewhat common but, it is a recognizable way of representing content creation and gives the user an instant idea about the program.
Another idea used a typing theme but Montage is knee deep in modern Cocoa goodness and it looked like we were retyping Casablanca.
So while we decided to concentrate on a document & tool convention. But it needed a stronger overall colour to work well in the Dock. The colour that comes to mind for me is a rich red when I think of a movie, TV premiere or theatre experiences. The star as a symbol of the acting profession was also a useful feature as opposed to a text title. Again, stereotypes can be useful in icons if small elements are used. Good metaphors are more important than creativity in this scenario.
The colour was changed slightly to make it a little less like Chairman Mao’s little Red Book. This colour then became the Montage signature colour and was featured in other aspects of the UI where appropriate.
The final touch was to alter the perspective slightly and to change the pen to something more sleek and befitting someone gunning for an Oscar.
-------------------------------
Cian
afterglow design
I've been horrible at finding the time to keep our blog current so I've recruited some guest bloggers to fill in for the next few posts. Today I've asked one of our impressive designers to take the floor with the topic of his choice (yes, I know that could be dangerous!). So please let me introduce Cian Walsh. Cian runs Afterglow Design http://www.afterglow.ie/ out of Ireland and is one of the most talented designers I've ever worked with. The guy just gets it. Cian created the look and feel of our upcoming product, Montage and, in his guest posting, he gives you the 30,000 foot view about the creative process he took while brainstorming our design (he ever-so-politely left out what a pain in the arse it is working with me :-) Ladies and gentleman, Cian Walsh.
Paintball and Pixels
1. People are impatient.
2. People rarely read instruction manuals.
3. People are busy.
These are the three assumptions you can safely make before designing an Application icon. The goal or expectation to this process is to see the Icon as being a signpost to the program’s function rather than just a piece of artwork or a branding exercise.
So it was with the Montage app.
Starting to build the icon, there’s many ideas you churn through while deciding what needs to be featured. Imagine painting your kitchen with a paintball gun. Every conceivable idea is fired at the wall in the first stage to see what sticks. Churning through every aspect helps you sort the wheat from the chaff but also to see where ideas could be used in other aspects of the UI. The overriding theme that came out of these session was the creation aspect of Montage. It’s concerned with the art of writing.
The first drafts from the paintball sessions were in the screenplay mode, but the standard for screenplays is a blank page, save for the title. Not very visually interesting even if it is faithful. So begins the process of finding something which is a recognizable metaphor but wih enough visual character to be easily spotted in the Dock or Finder. The pen/tool and document convention can be seen as being somewhat common but, it is a recognizable way of representing content creation and gives the user an instant idea about the program.
Another idea used a typing theme but Montage is knee deep in modern Cocoa goodness and it looked like we were retyping Casablanca.
So while we decided to concentrate on a document & tool convention. But it needed a stronger overall colour to work well in the Dock. The colour that comes to mind for me is a rich red when I think of a movie, TV premiere or theatre experiences. The star as a symbol of the acting profession was also a useful feature as opposed to a text title. Again, stereotypes can be useful in icons if small elements are used. Good metaphors are more important than creativity in this scenario.
The colour was changed slightly to make it a little less like Chairman Mao’s little Red Book. This colour then became the Montage signature colour and was featured in other aspects of the UI where appropriate.
The final touch was to alter the perspective slightly and to change the pen to something more sleek and befitting someone gunning for an Oscar.
-------------------------------
Cian
afterglow design
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posted by
Michael Wray
at
4:15 PM
