gedblog

To say things have been a little hectic at work lately would be an understatement. For the past several months, we’ve all been working hard to get you-know-what for the iPhone in ship shape. With the impending launch of the App Store, all of us have had our hands full and then some. In the midst of this massive effort, this 4th of July weekend, David and I travel to New York City to give a talk at the ICON5 Illustration Conference at the invitation of our friend and fellow artist, Von Glitschka. I can’t remember the last time I flew on a holiday and I can only imagine the travel nightmares that await us. My iPhone will be good and charged and packed with plenty of episodes of Futurama and Deep Space Nine.

Then there’s the little matter of day-to-day work at the factory. We’ve been snowed under at the office for months with a huge project that has kept us all busy every minute of every day. Having constant work is great, but it also makes it difficult to focus on internal projects like [REDACTED] and certain freeware releases that were only supposed to go on for a month, but due to forces outside our control, inevitably stretched into the future. If we could just get the R&D lab to perfect that cloning machine they’ve been teasing us with, everything would be peachy. However, as of this writing, there’s no word yet. Those bastards.

Somehow in the middle of all this madness, the gang at the Iconfactory managed to pull off an elegant punking of our dear friend and co-worker, Craig Hockenberry. See, back at WWDC Mr. Hockenberry came away with an ADA for his incredible work on Twitterrific for the iPhone and being the gracious man he is, he let Corey bring it back to North Carolina so the rest of us could get a fleeting glimpse of the “cube” before its return to Laguna Beach. Well, we thought it would be fun to create our own DIY ADA and mail that back to him just for kicks. We documented the creation process which you can find on the Iconfactory’s Flickr page. Needless to say the prank succeeded in putting a big smile on Craig’s face while relieving some stress around the office.

The good part of all this mayhem is that it keeps life interesting. There’s always a new challenge on the horizon, be it software, freeware or paying projects. Believe it or not, client work can sometimes provide a respite every now and then from the pressures we end up imposing on ourselves. Personally, if I can just get through July, I think I’l be just fine. Serenity now! Serenity now!

It always fascinates me to see what people’s workspaces are like. I love getting an inside look at how artists, programmers and designers organize their desktops and select the tools they need to do their job. Some workspaces border on zen-like art, while others take on an air of controlled chaos. Some of us work in our homes like my friends Wolfgang Ante or Craig Hockenberry. But most of us spend the majority of our weekdays at “the office”.

And so, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring and give you a small peek at my workspace. My desk at the Iconfactory in Greensboro is where I do much of the pixel-pushing, writing, designing and illustrating that helps keep the bills paid and clients happy. Each and every day, I’m fortunate to work in a creative atmosphere surrounded by talented and dedicated people. Like many of us these days, I’ve tried working at home for extended periods, but it just doesn’t suit me. I love the bustle of the Iconfactory and the creativity our “open plan” offers the group (except when more than 3 of us are on the phone at the same time). I hope you enjoy this small behind-the-scenes look where I spend my days. Head on over to Flickr to check it out. Enjoy!

Unless you’ve been living under an online rock, then you probably know about Spore, the new game coming from Electronic Arts. Spore lets you play “god” and engineer living creatures and then release them into the wild, and eventually the stars. The game is due to be released in its entirety this fall, but Electronic Art recently published a small demo of the Creature Creator this past week.

There’s been tons of hype leading up to Spore’s release, and frankly I’ve become wary of getting my hopes up too high with so many people singing its praises. Mirroring my disappointing experience with “Iron Man” is not something I want to repeat, so I’ve been intentionally avoiding the Spore Kool-Aid. That is until tonight. Tonight I watched Mindy as she gave the Creature Creator demo a run through from start to finish, and if the full game is 1/4 as fun as the demo, EA has themselves a winner.

No doubt a large portion of the enjoyment of the demo comes from how easy it is to create something that feels “alive”. The demo lets you select body parts, adjust them, rotate them, scale them, and more to form your creature. You can then paint on colors and textures at will until you arrive at your final critter. The controls are intuitive, easy to manipulate and just plain fun. In many ways it reminds me of the old Kai’s Power Tools version of Bryce. KPT Bryce let you instantly get your “hands” dirty generating alien terrains, skys and oceans. It was immediate, tactile and absorbing. Spore’s Creature Creator demo is similar in many respects and for players with a flair for the creative, it has loads to offer.

Perhaps the only downside is that until the full game is released, players can’t fully judge their creatures or how they’ll fair in the virtual world. I suspect Spore’s universe will be a “dog eat dog” world, and so selecting frog hands for your varmint instead of claws might be a fatal choice come September. I’ll give EA the benefit of the doubt for the time being and hope old “Figmon” shown above, brings both his A-game and his looks. In the meantime, head on over and check out the Spore Creature Creator demo, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. After all, it isn’t every day you get to play god.

Today, at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco, the computer maker unveiled its plans for the next generation of iPhones as well as a sneak peek into third party applications headed our way. Due to hit public airwaves July 11th, Apple’s new iPhone/iPod Touch “App Store” as it’s being called, will allow users to purchase third party mobile applications directly over the air. I speak for all of us at the Iconfactory when I say we were just as surprised and delighted as you probably were to find our very own application, Twitterrific, featured heavily on Apple’s website.

It seems after flying high and far, sometimes to shady destinations, the little blue bird has finally gone legit. I don’t think any of us at the factory realized just how popular Twitter, and in turn Twitterrific would become in this past year. We’ve been making various software applications for a decade now, and in all that time, none of us would have expected such an unassuming little app to become our most well recognized piece of code. Twitterrific’s success speaks volumes about the fine work of the folks over at Twitter, and the hunger for today’s users to stay in touch with friends, relatives and co-workers via new media like social networks.

We’re very pleased the Mac community took to Twitterrific so well and helped make it the success it is today. We’re looking forward to bringing the application to a whole new generation of users for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and would like to extend our thanks to Apple for giving the blue bird such a fine new home. We feel both excited and privileged to be a part of the new App Store and are committed to bringing our users the best software we can offer. We look forward to these first steps on what is sure to be, a fun journey for both users and developers alike.

Just in time to help the crew of the Battlestar Galactica divine the identity of the final five cylons, comes this helpful PSA style poster from Quantum Mechanix. It reminds me a lot of the infamous Wii Safety stuff we did over at the Iconfactory a couple years back and would make a fine addition to any geek’s wall.

Some of the funnier tips include:

• Do they seem unusually strong, smart or self-assured?
• Do they say God instead of Gods?
• Do you see them hanging around secured or restricted areas?
• Do they seem to hear music that no one else can hear?
• Are they unusually adept, almost empathic, with machines?
• Does their spine glow red when they get… excited?

Be sure to also check out the über-cool retro BSG propaganda posters they’re offering. And before you ask, no, I don’t get a kickback on this stuff

When was the last time you played a game of pinball? If you’re anything like me, it’s been years since you plunked quarters into one of those classic arcade contraptions. The plight of the pinball machine is one, that in today’s modern world, has grown more and more familiar. What once captured the money and imagination of players across the country, has become relegated to collector’s garages and played by a small group of enthusiasts who look back on pinball with fond memories through neon colored glasses. The story of pinball’s origins and how one company tried to re-invent it, is being told via a new documentary written, produced and directed by my friend and designer Greg Maletic.

Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball tells the story of the Williams company and their dedicated team of designers who were tasked with nothing less than single-handedly saving the entire pinball industry. The DVD can be ordered via the Tilt homepage, and is a wonderfully produced documentary spanning the entire history of the game. Tilt takes the viewer on a light-hearted and fascinating journey from pinball’s humble beginnings as merely a game of luck, to the industry changing era of classic video games, and the creation of Pinball 2000.

The DVD’s production values are top notch and are marked by retro style graphics (all created in Adobe Illustrator and animated in After Effects), an easy to follow narrative and some of the best music I’ve ever heard written for a documentary by composer Skip Heller. Much more than just “talking heads”, Greg’s film gives special insights into the world of the penny arcade that eventually morphed into the electronic palaces of the 60’s 70’s & 80’s that so many of us spent our childhood in. Watching Tilt, it’s easy to see how much a labor of love this film has been for him. Case in point comes in a scene discussing Baby Pac Man, an unsuccessful fusion of pinball and video games. The director’s audio commentary reveals he was unable to find a functioning Baby Pac Man unit to film, so he decided to animate the entire cabinet in After Effects. An impressive feat to be sure, and one that I would never have realized had I not listened to the commentary. Tilt is full of these kinds of subtle treats which bring both eye candy and visual interest to a subject that some might consider boring.

Over 2 and a half years in the making, Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball, not only serves up an interesting slice of history, but also provides insight into problems that designers face every single day. How do you make something old and familiar, new and fresh? How do talented individuals leverage their skills to create a unique new experience even in the face of tremendous industry pressure? All of these questions, and many more are tackled in Tilt. It’s a fun journey for pinball fans and lay people alike that I highly recommend. Check out the trailer available on the Tilt homepage or via YouTube.

Let me just say up front that the engineers, programmers and developers I work with are some of the most talented people in the industry. They manage to write software and code few others have the skill to create, and I am often in awe of their abilities. That being said, I’ve recently been reminded of an inequity between designers and programmers which I have to get off my chest.

Last week I watched the excellent video from the C4 developer’s conference with my friend Cabel Sasser of Panic fame called Coda Confidential. Something he said in his presentation struck home. At the 22 minute mark Cabel starts talking about Coda’s “Toolbar of Doom” and the implications the toolbar had on his developers. If you’re not familiar with the story, you can listen to the description of the problem from the C4 video, or check out Cabel’s blog post on the subject. The short version is that Cabel designed Coda’s toolbar to appear a certain way, the way he knew it looked best. But it turned out that designing it this way was hard. Very hard. After trying to bend the Cocoa toolbar implementation to their will, they decided instead to throw in the towel. And when Cabel says “throw in the towel” he means write their own toolbar code. From scratch.

Despite their impressive ability to solve the toolbar design problem, Cabel makes the point that he’s constantly “choosing his battles” between himself and the programmers at Panic. They don’t always have the luxury of writing code from the ground up to solve a particular design problem. They are constantly asking themselves is this particular design decision worth the time and effort it will take to implement? As I know from personal experience, sometimes the answer to that question is unfortunately, “No”. As a co-owner of my company, like Cabel, I’m constantly looking at the “big picture” to determine if a difficult design is worth the time and money required to implement it.

But from a creative point of view, purely as a designer, I still find it frustrating that the ideas and creations I come up don’t always get implemented. Some are considered “too difficult” or “too time consuming” to put into practice and therefore must be abandoned. I consider this to be a double-standard in our industry between designers and developers. As a designer, I’ve almost never told a developer I’m working with that a particular icon, user interface or web design is “too difficult” to implement. In my entire career, I think I’ve said “no” a grand total of 2 or 3 times. And that only happened because someone asked for something physically impossible, like making a 5 letter word legible at 16×16 pixels. I realize the programmers reading this will probably say “that’s because coding is more difficult than designing”. This may or may not be true, but that’s a whole other topic for discussion.

I know that even programmers themselves can’t always create the software or features they dream up, but it seems like they often have “outs” that simply don’t exist for us designers. We’re always expected to push through and solve the problem, while for them, something is either technically not feasible, would take too long to implement, or is simply a bad idea due to poor user behavior. Just once, I’d love to be able to tell a developer who’s asked me to solve a design problem “Nope, it’s too hard. Not gonna happen.”

I know that given enough time and money, pretty much anything is possible, and unfortunately most small software companies are not made of gold. We must therefore attempt to balance our desires as designers with what is best for the success of the product. I also know that the balance between a talented designer and a skilled programmer can transform mediocre titles into outstanding apps. I just wish I had the ability to even the score every now and then. I take solace in the fact that often as designers, we’re usually only limited by our imaginations rather than API’s or function calls. Our relationship may indeed be a one way street, but for developers, it’s often littered with road blocks.

This week I was confronted by no less than two glaring examples of poor or lazy design that I just had to share with you. I think they really illustrate how important our job is as communicators and how easily information can be miss-conveyed when designers don’t do their jobs well.

The first comes in the form of the DVD box art for the Oscar winning film, No Country for Old Men. I rushed out this week to snap up my copy of this fabulous tale starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, only to find a glaring design error. Although not all of us are schooled in design principals like the Gestalt Law of Proximity, we can still determine when things aren’t “quite right”.

Apparently the designer accidently or intentionally miss-matched Tommy Lee Jones’ and Josh Brolin’s portraits with their names. Because it seems to be such an obvious mistake, some might try and argue that it can only be intentional. As I learned from our experience with the official War of the World’s icon set a few years back, movie studios have many rules about who’s name can appear first, second, and so on. Given that, plus the fact that Javier Bardem’s face is associated correctly with his name directly below, why not match Tommy Lee and Josh as well? There’s simply no good reason for it and I’m forced to conclude that the juxtaposition of Jones’ and Brolin’s images are a mistake. Apparently design accidents happen, even on multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.

The second example comes from the world of television, and if I didn’t know better, seems anything but accidental. The season 4 premiere of Bravo’s hit show, Top Chef, featured a typical audience poll via text message. Season 4 features a pair of female chefs that are not only competing against each other, but are also a couple. They’ve been together for 3 years and the question to viewers was “Do Zoi and Jen have an advantage in the show because they’re a couple?”. After several commercial breaks the results were displayed as you see in this screen capture. The graphic was not accompanied by any informational voice over of any kind and so you are left to determine the results in a fleeting glimpse of 10-15 seconds of actual screen time.

At first glance, the majority of viewers seem to think, yes, the couple does have an advantage since that result is circled and highlighted. But upon closer inspection, poll results reveal that a full 78% of viewers in fact think, no, Zoi and Jen do not have an advantage. For some reason, the graphic strangely highlights the minority opinion. Why would Top Chef want to highlight the losing segment? Could we be looking at yet another error (perhaps generated automatically by faulty poll software)? I think it’s far more likely that the show’s producers wanted to drum up controversy by highlighting the most dramatic result, no matter how small. If I was a guy who wore tin-foil hats, I’d say there could be other reasons for what they did, but I’ll just leave that to your imagination instead.

Although these issues don’t amount to the proverbial “hill of beans” in most people’s world, they do illustrate the kinds of problems that designers face all the time. As a wise man once said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Remember that as you use your design powers for good and not evil… like making scores of fans think Tommy Lee Jones is really Josh Brolin.

UPDATE: This week’s cell phone poll on Top Chef correctly highlighted the viewer choice with the most votes. As suspected the example I posted here is an error of some kind.

This funky watch has to be the coolest thing to come out of Korea since Kalbi. A company named Funshop has released this wonderful, retro accessory much to the delight of pixel geeks everywhere. I especially love how the face is true to form and forgoes any numbers which would only detract from the pixelish illusion. Not sure if you can order it yet, but even if you could, you’d have to be a huge nerd to actually wear it in public. Something tells me this would be better off on a shelf as a great conversation piece, at least until they come out with the inevitable Marble of Doom inspired pocket watch.

Hat tip to: NOTCOT.

They say you never forget your first true loves. I think that’s one of the reasons why I’ve recently gravitated to the pixel-click world of Arcade Daze once again. When I released the first Arcade Daze set back in August of 2006, it managed to combine two of my favorite things: video games and icons. I’m not talking about the photo-illustrative, super real creations that pass for icons today. I’m talking about good old fashion 16×16 and 32×32 pixel-clicked pieces of hand crafted art. Back before some of you who are reading this used a computer, icons were limited in the number of pixels AND colors they could contain. Placing each dot in the canvas was critical to the success of the final icon and something I thoroughly enjoyed doing.

Over the holiday break I started working on a new system replacement icon set for CandyBar based on Arcade Daze and I have to say it’s been a blast. I still have a way to go until it is completed, but I can already tell it will be one of my favorite sets. Every item in the collection is based off a 14×15 pixel click icon that then gets super-scaled up by various factors to flesh out all the sizes up to Leopard’s 512×512s. With Anthony’s help, I managed to create a series of Photoshop actions that take a lot of the grunt work out of creating Arcade Daze System. Thanks to these actions I’ll be able to include more icons in this collection than I’ve ever done before.

So stay tuned to the Iconfactory and in the meantime, head on over to my Flickr page for a sneak peek at what the pixelated future holds. This is gonna be fun!