Sifter.
I have been fortunate enough to work with friend and designer extraordinaire, Garrett Dimon, on a number of projects now. Last time I was honored to develop a logo for Garrett’s new company, Next Update. This time? Sifter.
Sifter is Next Update’s flagship web application, a bug and issue tracker. I’ve been happily following along as the app has been developed. The very public way in which Garrett has shared the design process — openly discussing insights into problem-solving, revelations and twists and turns — has been refreshing.
There was a bit of a lull between the Next Update logo and this project, but not much. Almost immediately, a small group of Garrett’s dotcomrades began brainstorming names for the app (that was really all that was standing in the way of the app identity). We were looking for a good “theme”, not much unlike 37signals’ successful outdoor-adventure product naming theme. It was finally decided that a “tool” theme was not only appropriate given the nature of the applications but would clearly lend itself well to identity ideas. A sifter was the tool chosen to represent the bug & issue tracker, as the general purpose of the tool is to let some material sift through the mesh but catch larger material in the tray.
As usual, Garrett gave me complete creative latitude to come up with the Sifter logo, with the single constraint of making sure that the style could be applied to and maintained in the identities of web apps created down the road; a suite of apps, if you will. I started out with some sketches, but they were pretty rough since I already had in mind what I wanted to do:
I decided to tackle an OS X icon style for the logo, an ambitious goal considering I had never done such a thing. Still, I was convinced that the shape of the sifter was simple enough that I could pull it off, all the while learning the valuable skills I would need to create latter logos (Plow, Hacksaw, Belt Sander — no, I keed). So off I went:
The sifter started off with a fairly odd, non-perspective look, thanks in part to Adobe Illustrator’s not-quite-3D capabilities. For a time, I thought it would work out but it became clear that the lack of depth and perspective was just going to look weird. Adding perspective would complicate my efforts, but the complexity was what was going to make it interesting and more realistic:
It was a subtle change, but I think it made a huge difference.
There were still a number of details to work out, but my big next problem was to figure out how to visualize the material being sifted through the mesh. This was probably the hardest part of the design, and we kicked around a lot of options:
The shape of the material had to be simple so that it would not appear as a blobby mess at smaller sizes, but it had to have a certain amount of texture and detail to it to make it obvious this was a pile/stream of small material that could “sift” through the mesh.
I finally decided that a small, kind of squashed Hershey’s Kiss-shaped “mound” was going to work out best:
The shape was simple enough to be seen at smaller sizes and not muddy up the other clean lines in the logo, and actually lent itself well to the stylized look that the logo was taking on. Adding pebbles to the mound pushed the style further in this cool new direction:
With the adjustment of a few elements, some punched-up contrast in the wood grain and some details added to the pebbles, the logo was done!
The last hurdle was deciding if the logo should just sit in limbo on the page, appear to float above a surface or sit on a surface. Ultimately, we opted for the “sitting on a surface” option, which actually really helped tie the logo and the type together. Speaking of type, we’ve continued using Serifa BT as we did for the Next Update logo.
So there you have it. I’m pleased with how this logo turned out, and all the painful, tedious and valuable lessons it taught me. I look forward to seeing it plastered on koozies, mugs and t-shirts someday! :D
I Have A Fever, And The Only Prescription Is More... iPhone?
Apple products have a way of engaging me in a little game I like to call “Buy Me First And Then Let Me Deliciously Reveal, With Panache And Nuance, My Usefulness Later On Down The Road.” It kills at parties.
The way the game is played goes like this:
- Apple rolls a D6 die and unveils an incredible new product.
- I desire this new product like that little chihuahua craved Taco Bell.
- Apple’s advertising and general peer adoption make me hate myself for not owning Shiny New Gadget™.
- Back in my corner, I resist consumerist urges by telling myself, quite accurately, “I don’t need Shiny New Gadget™.” And it’s true; I don’t.
- Apple and my peers continue to throw D6 dice at my face.
- Eventually, the years of product saturation wear me down and I buy Shiny (Semi) New Gadget™.
- Apple gladly accepts my money and sells me accessories.
- I wonder how I ever lived my life without Shiny New Gadget™, as it now has a place in my everyday life.
This is the game I played over my iPod, and it went on for years. It is not a fun game, and I resent every minute of it. You see, I didn’t need an iPod and I certainly don’t need an iPhone. I generally hate cellphones. I talk on mine very little. I text a bit. I post pithy Twits about how Fake Bono is eating at my neighborhood Pei Wei. And that pretty much sums up my mobile experience.
But I’m smart. I get it. I’m not living the ‘iPhone Life.’ I don’t need an iPhone because I don’t know what I’m missing. It’s a lot like what Christopher Fahey wrote about recently regarding the paradigms that we box ourselves into (I’m taking some liberties in extrapolating what he actually said). Like a fish that has no concept of “dry,” I have little concept of life with an iPhone.
Owning an iPod has changed the way I experience music, and even helped re-energize my love of music at a time that it was sort of languishing in the doldrums. The convenience and portability it offers is a luxury, to be sure, but it masquerades well as a need. I now cannot imagine not having dozens of albums at my fingertips, anywhere, anytime.
So I imagine it will be the same with the iPhone (yes, I said will). But if I buy an iPhone, will I adapt to the device because it answers unconscious, pre-existing needs, or will I formulate new needs and behaviors because of the iPhone? Did my iPod fulfill an unconscious need, or did I create needs to fulfill the iPod? Hooray for chicken-and-egg conundrums.
I know, it may be a bit much to pour this kind of thought into a mobile phone. But that’s what happens when someone throws D6 dice in my face.
Ecosystems of Failure.
A brief conversation in the car ride down to SXSW brought to my mind a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while now. We were discussing the lucrative opportunities and pay offered to individuals who are experienced in simply installing and configuring a certain piece of behemoth enterprise software. It was proposed that if this software was designed better, the jobs of these “configurers” might be much less valuable.
Which led me to recount to my captive audience a scene in the movie The Fifth Element. Simply put — for those unfamiliar with the movie — Corbin Dallas Cornelius (Ian Holm) is a good guy and Zorg (the wonderfully slimy Gary Oldman) is a bad guy. Cornelius finds himself in Zorg’s office, and Zorg is attempting to explain to him what it is that he does for a living (short answer: he sells weapons). He gestures around his office, pointing out how still and boring it is. Then he knocks a glass of water off his desk, triggering a small army of droids who scurry out to clean up the mess. Zorg explains to Cornelius that by creating a little destruction, he has given purpose and work to all the little droids. Aw, what a swell guy.
Sometimes I look around at the state of software, and systems in general, and wonder if they are run by Zorgs. Or perhaps the chaos began by human fallibility, but now the mess is willfully maintained in order to feed this ecosystem that thrives on the system failure. Do companies actually put overly complex, mildy destructive products out into the market, intentionally giving rise to and continuing to feed an ecosystem of other companies that thrive on repairing the damage? Are some systems designed to be so irritating and complex that whole industries must be erected to make sense of it (*cough* taxes)? Is broken the preferred state for the makers of some products and systems we interact with every day? And does the ecosystem have the power to perpetuate the failure, supplanting the creator’s will to rectify the problems?
Just some thoughs.
O Hai, I'm Back from SXSWi. And I Learned Something.
Another pilgrimage to Austin, Texas has passed and with it another great year at SXSWi. After last year’s sort of dismal vibe, I considered not going again. But as the time drew near, I found myself growing more optimistic about this conference. Hope floats. And so do cheesy lines from Sandra Bullock movies, apparently.
While there were a couple of panels that certainly didn’t live up to their potential, I was pleased overall with the quality of my experience. And it was nice to meet some new people/talk more with those I’ve meet briefly before (Mr. Hicks, Ms. Bolton, Mr. Askins, and on and on) even if the length of our introductions were a bit short due to timing, hurried schedules and the need to traverse long distances in short amounts of time (Ballroom B to Room 18, anyone? Wow.) There were so many people that I probably walked by many I might recognize without even realizing it, or only ever saw them from a distance. I can has next year?
Some of my highlights from this year were:
Design is in the Details.
I was looking forward to this panel by the eminent Naz Hamid. Though he essentially presented what he had written for A List Apart, it was a nice way to kick off my first full day. To sum up Naz’s main points:
- Experiment. Start 3 or 4 PSD files at the same time and switch between them constantly to get several distinct design directions.
- Make Choices. Decide what works, implement it and stick with it. Don’t waffle.
- Stay Consistent. Don’t give clients inconsistencies to pick at. Keep structures and patterns intact from start to finish.
- Completeness. Be 100% finished with whatever you present. Make it pixel-perfect.
- Step In, Step Out, Step Back: Balance. Don’t soldier through the pain. Step away from the work to gain perspective if you need to. Exercise. Do something else. Whatever clears your head.
- Be Your Own Critic. Check your ego at the door and be honest with yourself about what you’ve made. Strive to be objective about your work.
- Complexity in Simplicity: Less is More. “Less” means “essential.” This applies to both graphic design and technology (do you really need to use JavaScript there?).
- Obsession is Healthy. It pays to make it perfect. Work extra hours if you need to. Demand excellence from yourself.
Everyone’s a Design Critic.
I always like hearing Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert speak, especially when they do so together. There’s a really great mix of professionalism and humor in their personal styles, and it’s even more professional and humorous when they pair up. Some of my notes:
- Present yourself as the authority on design up front in how you dress, speak & act (but don’t be a high-falootin’ jerk, a la “What art school did you go to?”).
- Keep design critiques small. Mo’ people, mo’ problems.
- Never reveal comps before the critique. People’s first gut reactions are usually pretty on-target, and you want to capture that firsthand.
- Make the critique ‘formal.’ Have an agenda and planned presentation. Make it official, not informal.
- Make sure your comps are pixel-perfect. People are naturally drawn to inconsistencies and incompleteness. We want to fix things. Errors in comps can derail a good conversation.
- Use real content. Fake content makes the design less credible and more like a “shell” or collection of swappable pieces.
- Before the comp ‘reveal,’ sum up how you got to this point: review research, dialogue, goals and steps it took to produce the design(s).
- Present comps as solutions to pre-identified problems. Explain how each comp solves the client’s problems, as they explained them to you.
- Lead conversations away from “solutioneering,” or finding solutions on the spot. You will be sorry if you commit to hasty fixes or comprimises.
- Take constructive feedback, which is comments about how design did not solve a problem. DO NOT entertain solutions; that is for you to work on later. Gather problems.
- If “I don’t like that blue” comments come up, help that person to articulate the design reason why not; e.g. to define the problem not solved with “that blue.” This helps educate clients in how to critique and helps them understand that personal opinions are not valid criticisms.
- Discourage “frankencomping” (or Frankendog) by explaining that designs are “holistic solutions” that are not meant to have their parts interchanged.
- Document feedback and send it to everyone in the meeting.
- Wash, Rinse & Repeat.
Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts.
I just cannot take notes when Michael Lopp speaks. He’s too engaging. Most of what he talked about was the grueling design process at Apple, where there are sometimes ten (or more) comps made for single pieces of an interface and everyone has an opinion on what is best. Greatest takeaway phrase of SXSWi 2008: “I want a pony.” This phrase embodies every cockamamie thing any client or stakeholder has ever asked for in a design critique. I plan on making hearty use of it.
I’d never seen John Gruber speak, but his part of the presentation was well-done, if not a tad… idealistic? Both he and Lopp advocated saying “No” more often — to weird design requests et all — but John went a but further into rebel designer territory by pointing out that more great designers are/were sort of [jerks]. Paul Rand and Stanley Kubrick were cited as examples. Maybe Steve Jobs was thrown in there, too — I don’t recall, but he fits the bill. I mean, I get it; innovation doesn’t come from playing nice with everyone. No one likes radical change, and that’s what innovation and great design are. I thought this was a nice motivational presentation, I just don’t think many people are in a position to pull off the jerk-designer role. Maybe that’s bad news for our industry; I don’t know. Overall, I really did enjoy this one. It was a refreshing kick in the pants, even if most of us can’t follow through. :)
Core Conversations.
I think this was a brand new format this year. A pre-selected person led a round table discussion about their selected topic. I attended one with Dan Saffer and one with Joshua Lane. I thought both conversations were excellent and they made me think of my job in a different way. The one bad thing about the format was that there were 4 groups in the room, and even taking into account the relative small size of the groups, hearing people talk over the noise was a big issue. Hopefully that’ll be remedied next year.
Fin.
The conference seems to have grown quite a bit with every year. This time it seemed to have grown in a big way, with tons more people and many new rooms opened up to accommodate the panels. Still, SXSWi is like the biggest RSS feed in the world, all crammed into 5 days of topics. I look forward to next year!
Why, Yes -- I Am Going to South By Southwest.
Thanks for asking!
As numerous other designy-types have announced, I too announce that I will be attending this year’s famously nerdy SXSWi conference. This will be my third year of attendance, and yet there are many people I have “met” online that I have not met in person. Please print the actual photo of me on this page for reference if you wish, and come say “Hi” of you see me. Do not count on the bowtie as a positive identifier. For those of you lodging at the Hampton, I will be the freakishly tall fellow making a mess of the waffle maker or otherwise spilling or dropping something. It’s a curse.
In contrast to past years, this will be the first year that I haven’t had to lodge in some faraway hotel and commute into downtown Austin, so that’ll be nice. I look forward to not engaging in the following activities:
- waking up really early to make it into town on time
- lugging around a
laptopanything I think I might need, because I might possibly need it at some point during the day - listening to the highway serenade me to sleep thru a paper-thin door
- enduring morning traffic
Things I am looking forward to:
- hearing some great panels and learning something new
- hitting up Toy Joy
- hitting up Amy’s Ice Cream.
- hitting up Waterloo Records.
- hitting up anyplace with good live music
- eating good food
So leave those laptops in the hotel room, put your tray table up, refrain from flash photography and enjoy the conference the way it was meant to be experienced: in Texas. Which is to say: relax.
Navelgazing 2: The Reckoning.
I don’t want to dwell on the redesign too much, but I do want to touch on a few of points. So here we go.
Did You Know That I Have A Links Feed?
It’s true, and it’s here. I don’t want to say it’s the best link feed on the internet, but in 5 years of publishing, I’ve retained a whole 215-ish subscribers. Just sayin’. Its a pretty exclusive club. Get in on the ground floor.
Previous to 1 a.m. this morning, my linklist was being pulled in from del.icio.us. Adding a “pluggedin” tag to any bookmark I wanted to share and having it automatically blown out in a feed was certainly convenient, but there were always weird characters popping up once the items were pulled into Textpattern. Additionally, I’m just getting tired of the extra bulk that gets added to my del.icio.us account every time I want to share a funny LOLcats picture. Bringing links back into Textpattern gives me more control over both the formatting of the links themselves and my own “lol i have to link this!1” impulses.
Love Is Dead.
Well, “Loving…” is, at least. Some of you may remember that section of the site as my brief flirtation with sharing music via (pseudo) podcasting. I got some positive feedback for it, and it was fun to do, but ultimately the process became a hassle. And the free file hosting service I had been using became, um, un-free. All those entries are still in the Archives, but future “Loving…” articles most likely won’t have anything attached to make iTunes kick into download mode. Just links and the occasional embedded music player. Hope you’re not too disappointed.
Contrasting Views.
For the longest time I swore I would never do a “light on dark” design. There is a pretty fine line that these designs tread, balancing proper contrast with accessibility. When the meme was first gaining momentum, most of the designs literally hurt my eyes; they were far too high-contrast. But I relaxed my opinions over time, seeing well-executed and eyeball-friendly sites like Daring Fireball find that successful sweet spot. I spent a lot of time developing a pleasing contrast between text and background, so hopefully a similar sweet spot has been found here as well. Enjoy!
Loving: The Duke Spirit - Neptune
The last time I heard anything by The Duke Spirit, I recall thinking, “Hey, some of this scrappy garage rock is pretty good” before bookmarking their site and forgetting about them. In the last week, I haven’t been able to stop listening to the new material.
Neptune rides a watery, seafaring meme that is soaked in everything from watery 60’s grooves to churning guitar rock. I imagine that if you’re a disciple of 90’s alt rock like me, you’ll be all over this album like seaweed on a California Roll. The band was streaming the new album in its entirety for a few days, but now you’ll have to make due with a few select tracks. Though the album isn’t being “released” until April in the United States (read: lame) you can buy it on iTunes right now. I know. Go figure.
Enjoy those streaming tracks. And here’s a pretty neat video for “The Step and The Walk.” And sorry for all the water-related verbs and adjectives. Couldn’t resist.
- Buy Neptune on iTunes.
This Is Where I Write The "Hey Internets, I Redesigned Teh Site" Post and You All Pretend To Be Excited.
Hard-refresh those browsers, kids. Version 15 of Jaredigital.com (snappy codename forthcoming) is alive and kicking. Somebody cue up The Breakfast Club soundtrack.
Dude, Why?
See, I’ve actually wanted to redesign for a couple of years, but both the time and the design “spark” eluded me as life continued to speed up. In classic ‘designer designs for himself’ form, everything I came up with was total garbage. To add another layer of self-imposed pressure, I became more and more fearful as time went on as to what kind of coding horror I might unleash upon the web, since I have not written a single line of code in roughly 2.5 years.
Something needed to be done, though. As much as I enjoyed my time with Trapper Keeper, my lengthening redesign cycles meant that if I somehow managed to design something that didn’t make me dry heave, I would have to reasonably expect that it would have to get a lot of things right. I wouldn’t get another chance anytime soon, if history was any indication. And with freelance work picking up a bit, there was extra incentive to present a more competent image.
Let’s Do Some Serious Navelgazing.
Trapper Keeper was pretty out there, and I got a lot of positive feedback about it over the years. It really represented a time in my life when I was learning and growing a whole lot, and really looking for a place to bust out of some of the professional constraints I was under.
This design, I think, is pretty representative of myself at present. It’s decidedly more classic and “grown up” looking. The Home page puts featured portfolio work front & center. Weblog content is more visually designed instead of just dumped out in a list. Stylistically, it represents how my current personal style has changed in 3 years. It eschews the “web 2.0 look”; no gradients, no dropshadows, no bubbly fonts, no comment count indicators, no cruft. It attempts to be classic and simple without being boring.
Code { Feeling: Good; }
One of my goals for the new year has been to get back — and as uncomfortably close — to front-end coding as I possibly can, even if that means doing so on my own time. It was nice to get back into the swing of things, and hopefully I haven’t committed any grievous code sins. There are plenty of things to clean up still (IE6, you are at the bottom of my to-do list), but it feels pretty clean overall. No validation checks, plz.
Fin
I expect this design will be around for a good while, and I’m pretty satisfied with that idea. Thanks for indulging me.
Next Update
More than any other kind of work that I do, logo and identity design is what feels most like sorcery. Oh sure — there are plenty of well-grounded bits of research to draw from, such as the answers to questions like “If you were a car, what kind would you be and why?” and “Warm or cool?” But at the end of the day, it’s really just me and my brain, working through lots of truly ghastly and clichéd ideas until something interesting shows up. Like magic, to point.
Working patiently to strike that spark of magic is unnerving, at least to me. There’s excitement in the exploration, but also dread in the realization that after a few hours of work I have achieved complete obviousness and mediocrity. It’s a little more unnerving when you’re doing this kind of work for a friend.
Such is the nervousness I felt upon accepting the request of friend and former BrightCornerGeniantEMC compadre Garrett Dimon to produce a logo to crown his brave foray into the world of full-time application development, Next Update. Luckily, Garrett and I have always seemed to share similar design sensibilities and a galvanizing love of the color pink. Once I got through Garrett’s 200-page RFP (lolz jk), I had a pretty good idea as to what the “spirit” of the logo would be, if not the actual mark.
And so The Sketching began. I got to present several colossal duds of ideas before Garrett and I both locked onto a simple but entertaining observation: that rotating a lowercase “n” yielded a lowercase “u.” There were attempts made to connect, interlock and otherwise conjoin the two letterforms, but the spark that interested us both the most was treating the “u” as a shadow cast by the “n.” This Escher-esque treatment still felt fresh after a couple of days, and so the other ideas were left by the side of the road with a knapsack and a cardboard sign that read “Logos down on their luck. Will work on sacks of dog food, lite beer or LogoMaid.com.” Zing!
I’m happy to say that, within a relatively short amount of time, I was able to produce a logo that embodies Garrett’s “summery, fun, and laid-back” vision of his very own company. Most importantly, he likes it. The three-dimensionality of the mark gives it some sense of stability (important in business, no?) and the typeface (Serifa BT for the typographically curious) brings a sort of monospace/coding vibe into the mix, appropriately representing the digital nature of the company’s products.
‘Twas an honor to be able to do this work. Completely non-solicited plug: be sure to subscribe to the Next Update feed to keep up to date on Garrett’s progress.
How To Architect a Critical Software Update.
- Don’t update your customers on how the update is going on your Home page. This is called “creating hype and mystique.”
- Maintain radio silence on your blog for 3 weeks after your initial “we are working on an update” post. This builds buzz and sizzle.
- Don’t update the product page with information on when your customers might expect the update. No one would look there anyways, right?
- Keep all discussion about the update confined to a poorly-constructed message board thread. And by “thread” I mean thread with lame navigation.
- Be very cryptic when responding to questions on the poorly-constructed message board thread. Everyone loves a mystery!
Side Notes
Find older writing in the Archives »
Recent Writing
- Sifter.
- I Have A Fever, And The Only Prescription Is More... iPhone?
- Ecosystems of Failure.
- O Hai, I'm Back from SXSWi. And I Learned Something.
- Why, Yes -- I Am Going to South By Southwest.
- Navelgazing 2: The Reckoning.
- Loving: The Duke Spirit - Neptune
- This Is Where I Write The "Hey Internets, I Redesigned Teh Site" Post and You All Pretend To Be Excited.
- Next Update
- Loving: Minipop - A New Hope
