Here’s a look. See us at a bar or a meeting and we’ll give you one. Tell us you don’t want to do business with a card that nice. We dare you.

These cards mean business

Stare into the fibrous magnificence of each rectangle. Contemplate the cool reality of each perfect grey tone. Bow to the legibility of our carefully selected typeface. Okay, maybe we’re getting a little carried away. But still…

Tagged is the 3rd largest social network on the Web. Their goal in redesigning their companies site was to achieve a new level of aesthetic and usability and to increase their potential for new hires. How did we do it? Besides in a flash, we did it using original photography and on a scale that was effective immediately but also allowed for the project’s later expansion.

Here’s to happy hour!

I saw Jason Reitman’s new movie, Up in the Air, back in January and was instantly mesmerized by the opening title sequence. Riding in a plane myself, I can stare unendingly at the stretches of land unfolding down below. I wonder about all of the towns I am flying over- blips in the landscape, and the people in them who are going about their lives.

The studio Shadowplay, who also made the awesome opening to Juno, designed the movie’s opening bringing to mind the freedom and excitement of the unknown when you’re on a plane as this was a frequent theme in the movie. They did a wonderful job capturing all of these elements and infusing a retro vibe to introduce the story.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend checking it out! See the trailers and Shadowplay’s featurette here.

• Come as late as possible. 30 minutes minimum. Designers are “cool”, time has no meaning for them.
• Wear jeans and a tight black t-shirt. Jonathan Ives is the only designer that you respect.
• Don’t bring a printed resume or any portfolio work. The interviewer has plenty of time to look that up after you dazzle them.
• You really don’t need an online portfolio. You are a famous Designer, everyone worth your time has heard of you already.
• If you have an online portfolio, make sure it’s in flash. Flash fixes everything. Clients love to spend their time clicking around your genre-busting design aesthetic marveling at your work.
• Every project you have ever done counts, even the website you made for your parole officer.
• You don’t need to know about your own style. You are capable of designing anything.
• Don’t give too many details about your design process. Mystery is part of the vibe.
• List every application known to man on your resume, including WordPerfect. Even if you don’t know them, you can learn them all pretty quick right?
• Finally, true designers have years of experience in PHP, HTML, Java, C++, Rails, .NET, MySQL, Flash, Cobol and Hypercard. Even though the position says design, you are a true renaissance developer and designer.

Because usability is at its worst a necessity and at its best a competitive advantage.

In a world where starting up a new site or online service is getting easier all the time, you cannot afford to have users annoyed with your interface. Your site can be a new paradigm of synergistic artistry or have more features than a Swiss Army Knife with an inferiority complex; but Google is more than happy to take users to your competitors with the press of a button. If it’s not usable, it’s not better.

Usability makes the product fit the users. Thinking about users keeps you from designing products for multi-child families in China; or expecting teens to use faceted search. Unless you happen to be designing a product to be used only by yourself, you have to assume that users will have different levels of knowledge and different expectations. Working with these needs and pre-established patterns of action in mind will let you make your design intuitive, and show you where to offer support when you need to try something daring.

Finally, usability best practices are most powerful when implemented early in the design cycle. Once your product is live, user feedback means either kludges or expensive redesigns (or just ignoring the problem). And the users who actually give feedback are the helpful ones. For every user who bothers to tell you about a problem, there are many more who just shrug and walk away (or tell their friends how useless your site is). Any problem that reaches this stage is an expensive one.

So design for usability while testing early and often. Your bottom line will thank you.

WHOA! Are you at the right place? This doesn’t look like the same company. You can’t even find the item that you’re interested in. You try to find the phone number on the web site so you can check it against the one in the ad, but you can’t find that either.

This happens more often than not. Some companies are inconsistent with their branding, print advertising, web site and company collateral. This not only weakens the company’s marketing, but it shows that it’s not organized. How do you know they’ll get your order right?

Being consistent will strengthen every part of the company, e.g., if you have a consistent tag line that you use. A memorable logo can go a long way. Use your advertising space wisely. Don’t forget to conspicuously place recognizable symbols to assure your readers they are looking in the right place.

All of this comes down to planning your strategy. Having a plan and staying consistent will not only make your company stronger, it will cut costs in certain areas. For an example, you can look at your company’s print collateral. If you consistently use the same colors and standardize elements it takes less time to produce something in the future.

A tool that is used for staying consistent is a Brand Guidelines Manual or Style Guide. Within this guide, depending on how detailed it is or who put it together, it will contain all of the standard company information so that it can be cross-referenced at any time. This manual could have sample layouts of your ads showing measurements and positions for logos, photography that is appropriate and copy ideas. It will also contain printed samples, color swatches and much more.

This may sound like a lot of work to set up. It may take a little time in the beginning just like anything else, but in the long run it’ll be well worth it. You won’t have to explain the standards every time they are needed. When something needs to get done, it’ll all be right there ready to be used and cross-referenced. Consistency is the key, stick to it. It can only benefit you.

- Tim Parsons, Designer

That is the “what” in the iPad story. But what about the “how”? Few people if any are talking about the experience and many have been right to wait on that since you can’t use one yet. I think Apple has advanced the touch screen experience again, similar to how before the iPhone, did any one of you use a touch screen on a daily basis? The form factor leads to a couch/bed/plane experience that hasn’t been done well yet. I hate scrunching my head over my iPhone for long passages of text. Yet my MacBook sucks for reading in bed. HP’s TouchSmart computers are useless to me because I am not going to sit down and hold my hand out and fondle my computer all day. The work I do on my main machine (design/programming) requires much more finesse than a touch screen experience can provide.

Apple has been thinking about the fundamental computing experience, interaction design at the root level. I don’t want to think about files and folders. I could care less about my “desktop” (actually I am super anal about keeping it organized) but all the time wasted on maintaining the traditional “windowed” UI has not furthered humanity. Or gotten me paying work. It removes the time I could be enjoying content.

The iPhone has been the only significant challenge to “desktop” metaphor in the last 20 years! Think about that, we have processors which I am sure are faster than anything I can imagine, but yet we still have the same computing experience from 1984? I know most of you would laugh just seeing a photo of yourselves from the eighties. Well take a picture of your desktop, and compare it to the first Mac. Sure it’s looks much better now but it’s basically the same. I think with the iPad we are seeing an evolution of that experience towards consuming content in an enjoyable manner. Removing the fluff that frankly doesn’t make a difference and focusing on the meat. Human computer interaction has a long way to go before things are truly usable for the majority of people. Not the geeks (me included) who have the energy and time to organize their computers or care about processor, screen or other stats. But there are 3 tests for any UI that I think are crucial. The Mom Test, the 10 year old test and the ESL test. Have your mom use the iPad you will buy eventually. Does she get it? Can she email/browse/read/whatever moms do on computers with minimal help? Then get a kid to use one. You know he or she will be zipping around on it charging up your iTunes account. Finally try someone who doesn’t speak or read English well. I have a hunch they will be able to pick up on the iPad experience very fast.

I think there is a direct correlation between how much people read and the current reading experience on the web. Since most of us get our news from the web and that experiences blows (even Google reader which my daughter will attest I am addicted to, is crap), it’s no wonder people don’t read any more. I can’t even imagine reading for pleasure with a laptop or iPhone. One of my favorite experiences is a lazy Sunday where I can take whatever books and magazines and sprawl out on my bed and just read. I can see myself doing that with an iPad. And don’t get me started on the jokes for NSFW material on the iPad.

There are some valid arguments people have been making about Apple’s “closed” policies. People are saying you don’t own the experience on your iPhone and the iPad will be the same. Well get out your previous generation cell phone. How personalized was it? Could you install any of 100k plus apps on it? Could you change the screen to show the functions you cared about easily? Apple’s walled garden can be painful at times but people are forgetting what we had before. Linux is supposed to be the most open environment of all and how successful has Linux been in a consumer environment?

I would love it if I could make an app for myself and friends and install it without Apple’s blessing. I would love it if I could make my own book in the ePub format without a publisher and have it viewed beautifully on the iPad. There is a dangerous road ahead but ultimately it’s up to us customers to decide what experience they want. Some people might trade freedom for simplicity, most people don’t even care. If it works, why bother?

Apple might shoot itself in the foot if it’s difficult for small developers (and children) to develop for the platforms. App Store policies suck in many ways and one the best things about the Mac is the passion of indie Mac developers. I hope Apple doesn’t piss them off too much (Sorry Wil Shipley!) in its march towards changing the computing landscape. But I see the iPad as another game changer and you know kidBombay and team will be developing apps for it as fast as we can.

Since their plan is to lower energy consumption via management and metering we gave them a logo that is symbolic of energy reduction and professionalism. Welcome to the future.

Our system art, animation, sound design and memorable characters make people want to throw hot dogs. Try it – you will too.