Jonathan Moore
I am a designer who lives in code, entrepreneur, and an idea incubator driven to make our world a better place.
I am a designer who lives in code, entrepreneur, and an idea incubator driven to make our world a better place.
Not to say that NewsBlur...
A SoundWorks Collection interview and behind-the-scenes view with Director Joe Kosinski looking at the sound and music by M83 for the new film “Oblivion”.
Check out previous posts for the videos on Inception and The Social Network.
Nishant Kothary recounts the fascinating of story of the new Microsoft.com site lead by Paravel and the brave team at Microsoft. In an attempt to modernize the 30th most visited site on the internet, the team found a way to overcome mountains of data that can easily drive safe design to “design from the gut”.
Designing from the gut is a radical concept. It is generally met with a tremendous amount of friction in most software circles that tend to rely heavily on “logic and data” for all decisions. This is not to say that there isn’t a place for telemetry or usability studies in the act of designing software. It’s simply a question of when and where.
Additionally Paravel published a great case study on their site showing off some of the finer details of the redesign.
Fi’s case studies are clearly in a league of their own to show off their client work. As a potential client you gain insight to their entire process and strategy, but as a designer the case studies are valuable tools in learning how to communicate design strategy with a client.
If you are a designer or a small design studio, this is the level of detail that you need to pour into every project to move beyond your tired hourly-based billing into the promise land of value based pricing. Charging by the hour is for chumps.
See the whole Broadway.com iPad App case study as well as Redbull TV, HTC Global, and History Channel’s Civil War 150.
I still remember getting my first Popular Science subscription in the 3rd grade, and every month I would flip to the back pages and dream of the hovercrafts, personal helicopters, and ray guys that I could build by myself with the mail-order assembly guides. When I found the Inventables site on 37signal’s Signal vs. Noise blog this morning it sparked a similar urge to tinker, experiment and invent. I have no clue what I could make with hand moldable plastic, skin conductive switches, squishy magnetic gel and glow in the dark thread, but now I’m determined to find a use.
Rather than taking the typical approach for selling scientific materials by listing the crystallisation temperature, viscosity, melt flow index, Inventables created their site to spark inspiration with great product photography, example applications and easy to read descriptions.
It’s a good lesson for anyone who’s trying to compete with bigger competitors. If you’ve got a smaller product mix, you can obsess over these details in a way that big guys can’t. Customers respond to that.
Take the time to read the article on Signal vs. Noise and browse through Inventables. Both are full of lessons that can be applied to any site, product, brand, or business.
Two months ago I ran across SoundWorks Collection’s profile on the sound and audio composition behind Inception—if you haven’t seen it yet it’s fantastic. This week SoundWorks released the profile for “The Social Network”. Although the movie isn’t full of sound in a way that you’d expect for an action movie, director David Flencher and Skyworks Studio used a wide range of ambient tracks and environmental noises to help shape and define scenes. It’s incredibly fascinating to see how even minimal sound impacts the mood of a movie.
If you have a few more minutes to spare watch the sound profile for the new game “Halo: Reach”.
Absolutely impressive sales for the first month of tap tap tap’s Camera+ iOS app. Their post on the Camera+ app sales is a great article full of advice on the importance of great design, attention to detail, fun elements, and international support.
Reblogged from Cameron Moll
New York based design and animation studio Perception was asked by Marvel Studios to work on a simple graphics package for the upcoming movie Iron Man 2. Impressed by the results, Marvel Studios continued to work with Perception over six months to develop 125 shots, UI concepts, futuristic interfaces, mock broadcast packages, and compositing work to bring it to life.
Perception recently published a detailed case study with motion tests, style boards, concepts and final composites of all their work that went into the movie. Read the entire case study.
