Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life » Small Business

Are we appy with our apps?

bdclimber14 — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:33:53 +0000

Are we appy with our apps? Since the development of the iphone and the Android, apps are becoming increasingly popular. But what is it we love about these devices?

Applications, more commonly known as apps – are downloadable pieces of software, which are designed to be easier to use and more user friendly. They vary from social networking to being able to check your online shopping or phone balance. Apps are constantly being released everyday with every random idea you can imagine. There is an app for everything, even a pint of beer which disappears as you pretend to drink it.

Some networks such as www.o2.co.uk provide their own app allowing you to check their website or browse your account. Providers occasionally offer free downloads, such as music tracks, or games to your phone, depending on your contract and network.

The most popular applications at the moment seem to be Facebook, national news bulletins and the very popular game Angry Birds. With an application such as BBC news, everything is designed for easy reading and searching. Similarly, the Facebook mobile app is much more accessible compared to browsing on the official website. Your notifications appear directly at the top, followed by birthdays and under that, your most current news feed. Angry birds on the other hand is simply a fun and interactive game.

Once you have downloaded an app, it appears like an icon on your home screen. It is normally a large and colourful symbol which represents the function of the application. Facebook for example is a blue square with a large white F. This has now become universally recognised as the Facebook sign. We often see it appear on various websites, where you can link your account to what you are browsing. The social network Twitter, has tried to market their symbol in a similar way by using a dark blue square with a white bird. Twitter allows you to ‘tweet’ a status, which explains the bird. However, it has not been anywhere near as popular as Facebook.

Some apps are free to download, such as basic games or social networks. The average cost of an advanced app starts from sixty pence, up to around £50. The expensive downloads are usually things like a GPS or a full console version of a game. Some applications allow you to share with other users; the iphone for example allows you to battle against your friends in a game of Rock Band or table football. You simply connect the phones and you’re ready to play.

New apps are released everyday, so whenever you are bored, there certainly won’t be a shortage of new things to download.

Startup lessons learned: Stalk your customers and others…

bdclimber14 — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:26:22 +0000

Being founder of the consumer internet startup OrangeSlyce.com for the past 2 years, I’ve learned many lessons that I feel fortunate to be able to share with other entrepreneurs. Some have been lessons reinforced by successes, others have been learned from failures. Entrepreneurship is an area that is filled with so much noise that its difficult to distinguish the good advice from the bad. Not all advice is created equal, and we have certainly followed the wrong trail many times because of bad advice. In fact, I want to first offer a piece of advice on advice: trust your instincts. If the advice doesn’t sit well with you, don’t blindly follow it because Mr. Gray Hair with 40 years of experience says so. Chances are, his advice is for a tie period that is long gone and won’t work in today’s environment. Make sure the advice you follow is relevant and from people who are doing stuff now. Taking advice form someone with 10 years of enterprise software sales in the 90s is probably not the path you should follow as a consumer web startup in 2010.

Your first design will be ugly

All too often I find internet startups delay launching their site to “tweak the design” and improve the aesthetics. Your first design will be ugly. Several months down the road, you will be embarrassed that you even considered launching with the horrendous UI and color scheme. However, your first design shouldn’t matter. You should be solving such a huge need that users and customers will do anything to use your product to solve their needs. When your hair is on fire, the look of the firehouse doesn’t really matter. If poor usability or bland visual effects push away early adopters, then you haven’t actually solved an important problem (at which time you pivot). Early adopters will figure out your application. They will hack their way to using your service if need be. This isn’t to say to create unnecessary obstacles in your service, but delaying launching for design is never worth it.

Eat, sleep and breath your product launch

I find that most startup advice generally targets companies that have already launched but doesn’t really address entrepreneurs just trying to get an idea into fruition. If you are still at the idea-stage, everything you do should be focused around launching. I don’t have concrete data, but in my experience I see that most startups fail before they even start. Non-technical founders never find developers to build their product, and technical founders get caught up in features and miss the market opportunity after several years of development. As a pre-launch startup, you should eat, sleep and breath getting your product out. At this stage, there is no room in the company for anyone who doesn’t contribute to launching the product. Your business development person better close Excel and start testing, sketching mockups, and writing web copy. Simply launching a web product is a very difficult feat, and the whole team needs to be aligned to this single goal.

Stalk Your Customers

Rule #1 of any startup is to build a product that solves your own needs. The most successful consumer web startups are founded by people who personally experienced the problems they are trying to solve. 37Signals, Twitter, and even Facebook are a few examples of companies that developed a product that solved their own problems. Basecamp and Twitter actually started as internal company applications to solve contextual challenges. The 2 startups eventually realized that they could offer their solutions to the world. However, startups need to take this a step further because eventually you will probably evolve from being your own target customer. As a startup, you need to stalk your customers. You need to know what their passions are, what they do for fun, typical hangout places, their sleep schedules… You need to know your customers better than you know yourselves so you can always answer the question: What Would Customer Do?

Form vs. Function: An Epic Battle in Design

Ross — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:06:46 +0000

There is an old saying that “form follows function”. The basic principle arises out of industrial design and architecture from the 20th century and states that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose. As we no longer live in that century, or millenium for that matter, this should now be open to greater debate. Which is more important? Does the function of an object overrule all matters in shape? Or can we now take objects, regardless of their functions, and reshape them into inspiring works of art? And will that sell?

Lets take a history lesson. We give credit to our earliest ancestors for their use of stone tools to beginning our evolutionary leap. Simple stone tools like the scientifically named “sharp rock”, were form and function wrapped into one. They needed tools that pounded, sliced and scraped. I doubt much thought went into shaping the tools at first. More likely it was a search for the right rock, a rock with just the right form to get the job done.

Ancient Swiss Army Knife

But as time goes on, form and function begin to deviate. Take a simple object like a chair. It provides for only one function-toilets being the exception. However, for having only one function, Google struggles to give me only one type of chair. In fact, there are thousands of chairs out there.

But which one is the right one?

It turns out, for some objects form and function just don’t agree with each other. There must be some inside joke in the interior design industry that all chairs ever made are terrible and that work must carry on to get it right.

George Clooney explains another great object whose form contrasts from its function.

There are also objects whose entire purpose is to have its function and form completely separate. Pinhole cameras in jackets are meant to be concealed. Safes that look like coffee or soda cans are meant to blend in without drawing attention. Camouflage like this is everywhere in nature, and when we see it in man-made objects, we are for some reason astonished or impressed.

Most of us work in an economy of ideas now. This brings our design principle into scary new territory now. What should a weapon of mass communication look like? What should an employment database look like? What should a music player look like? I hold it to be true that any object manufactured from now on could have an MP3 player slapped in it. These would be objects where the form did not matter at all.

Yes I CAN play MP3's! But I can do other stuff as well.

If a Martian, or a time traveler, or a time travelling Martian saw a spoon he might be able to figure out what it does just by looking at it. Give him an iPad and he’d be clueless. I’m guessing Martians would also easily confuse gym equipment for elaborate sex contraptions.

Form and function have dueled for thousands of years. Neither has really emerged victorious. Vegas doesn’t offer a bet either way. One thing I’m sure you can bet on is that finding the right form and function ratio is tricky business.

Personal Portfolios Are Here!

Ed — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:21:08 +0000

We spent some time last week hyping our new feature but we’d be remiss if we didn’t let you know that the feature has officially launched. We seriously could not be happier about how the student portfolio feature turned out. Actually that’s a lie–we’d be even happier about it if you logged into your profile and gave the new feature a spin. If there’s anything you hate about it, please tell us–we want to make sure this feature gives designers everything they want in a personal site!

Shameless self-promotion aside, we can’t stress enough the need for young designers to develop their own websites to display their creative talents. If you don’t like ours for some reason, you’d do well for yourself to make sure that you can be found somewhere on the internet. If not, you’re living in the past. And, in spite of what that 34 year old guy who hangs out in the middle school parking lot tells you, that’s a terrible place to be.

Is Your Personal Website A Dinosaur?

Ed — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 01:22:33 +0000

Big News! We’re going to be unveiling a new feature next week: free porfolios for all of our wonderful designers. The rest of this post deals with the “why” and “how” but we wanted to make sure those of you too busy to read more than two sentences still knew.

We love young designers. We want to see talented young designers find work, we want to see talented young designers succeed, and we want to see talented young designers become part of the design community. So, when there’s something that makes it hard for designers to do these things, it’s sort of our job to help out.

Like how this cat is helping you remember dead memes.

Which brings us to the subject of personal websites. If you’re looking to do anything in design, you should have one. We could write an entire post on the “why” of that, but here’s a basic rundown: you need a place where you can display your work to the world, and it would also be nice if other people could check that work out and give you feedback and maybe even contact you if they like what they see.

The problem is that setting up a good, attractive website is hard. There are some popular sites, but these sites, unfortunately, use Flash. Flash, as you might have heard, doesn’t work on iPhones. Or iPads. So if you set your site up to display your portfolio using flash, a good chunk of the people who you tell to check it out are going to see a big ol’ blank page. Because of this, Flash is also a dying technology; and building your site around it would only be slightly more cutting-edge than loading your page with flying toaster gifs.

"Have you seen my Flash website? I linked it on my Friendster page"

The solution would be to set up your site using HTML, but–unless you’re both a good designer and a l33t programmer–this isn’t really practical. And even if you do have the programming skills, coding your own personal site would take a lot of time that you shouldn’t have to waste. Creative design talent should spend their time creating great designs, not coding.

Fortunately, you can trust us to handle all the boring nerd work. On Monday, October 25h (that’s a week from today) we will be launching a new feature on our website: free personal web pages. These pages will combine the aesthetic strengths of some of those Flash sites while still using HTML. In about two minutes, you’ll be able to do what would normally take a skilled programmer hours to accomplish: setting up an elegant portfolio site that lets you display your work, receive feedback, and connect with other designers without relying on an outdated technology.

Please feel free to share any criticisms, praise, hopes or fears about this roll-out in the comments. We love you all; keep being the creative geniuses we know you are!

The Gap Logo Scandal

Ross — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:23:45 +0000

Ok. Scandal might be a stretch, but there is some real internet hating going on and its directed at the new Gap logo. Here’s what all the fuss is about:

Gone is the classic Spire typeface on a navy black box, and in its place, Helvetica with a floating box (is that supposed to represent faded jeans?) New? Yes. Original? Yeah, right. But maybe originality isn’t the goal. More on that in a bit.

Gap premiered the logo Monday morning, and a day went by with hardly any excitement. Then the hate spewed. The Consumerist questions if this will be the next Tropicana flop. Ad Age likens the logo to “something a child created using a clip-art gallery“. There are now fake Twitter accounts for both the new logo and the old logo. There’s now a Crap Logo Generator out there so you can create your own crap logo. I made my own Helvetica/Hipster logo in about 5 seconds!

Speaking of hipster, the CEO of Helvetica power-user American Apparel, recently declared the hipster trend dead. By switching typefaces, is Gap headed into a dead space of old fashion trends? Time will tell. Gap may actually be on to something here.

Gap is the world’s 84th most powerful brand, yet sales have stagnated despite the classic look and brand recognition. This new look could be the saving grace they need. A whole new market of consumers who did not grow up with the brand, and are always looking for something new, could be tapped into. This is a market that might not mind a generic logo, and in fact would welcome it, instead of chasing brands all around fashion. Gap could let their product and customer service be what they are known for…but then they screwed up big time.

Gap, being the forward thinking company they are, use many different social media platforms to speak with their customers. This was posted to their Facebook wall yesterday:

Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.

And now we have a scandal. Buzz? They must still believe that any publicity is good publicity. Passionate debate is a pretty lame way to say everyone hates it. Crowd sourcing works great for things like Wikipedia and Captcha to digitize books, but designing logos? Now they are pandering to, what will now be an ever-growing, internet hate mob. The message I get from this is “Okay, since you’re complaining so much, let’s see if you can do any better.”

When you read crowd sourcing in their statement, you should think spec work. Spec work is an insult to professional graphic designers. Instead, they should have hired a talented designer and let them do what they do best.

The logo was not THAT bad. It was generic and a complete departure from their original logo. They could be forgiven for this but instead are now a joke. They should have had the confidence to stick with their decision instead of turning around and begging their followers for their forgiveness in the form of pandering. After all, if you’re doing something right you’re going to have haters. It just comes with the territory.

Infographics: Examples of Teaching by Showing

Ross — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:17:33 +0000

Infographics have seen an explosion of growth in recent years. As people are trying to find new ways to communicate information, graphic design has proven to be effective and entertaining. Mint has been especially fond of graphical representations of information, with near daily postings of fantastic infographics. Take a look at yesterday’s post on coffee and you will get a feel for how cool these can be.

I’ve gone though and gathered a few of my favorite examples of effective communication through infographics. Some are more entertaining than functional, but they send a message in an easily digestible format that makes you hungry for more. Here are several infographics that show how this medium can be a powerful way to spread ideas.

Click to enlarge each picture.

Colorful infographic with lots of information. Easily readable type with examples and illustrations for many of the how-to’s.

From the book Show Me How, a great illustration for hikers and campers. Not so much an infographic, but the idea is the same: the illustration explains more than just words could.

This graphic shows tons of different ways to hack your sleep patterns. This is a vertical infographic that almost reads more like an article on a webpage than a page in a book.

I found this graphic on Photoshop keyboard shortcuts shows us a few things. First, the content is what is important here. Print this out and put it next to your keyboard or monitor for a quick reference. Rather than a huge vertical picture, the size lends itself to be easily printed. I would think that for a Photoshop reference tool, it would look better. The design is uninspiring, but that might not have been a priority for the designer.

Just how big is a petabyte anyway? Freaking big apparently. Speaking of petabytes, Farmville pushes over a petabyte a day. My WTF moment of the week.

Here’s an example of a graphic that is more on the entertainment side of the information spectrum. This random assortment of life hacks might be better expressed as just a bulleted list. None of the pictures serve a purpose, but then again infographics wouldn’t be infographics without illustrations. This is not without some value, though. I have a new way to get free phone chargers now.

Another entertaining and extremely important graphic that all men (and some women) should read. This is probably the manliest infographic out there.

And just to show that infographics are nothing new, a gem from Mutual of Omaha from the 1950′s. I can only assume this was in a magazine when it was first run. It’s funny and entertaining to us now, but back then it was extremely informative to a real threat.

Consider using infographics in your overall marketing plan. As you can see, these can be used to entertain as well as educate. Infographics work well to supplement whatever promotional activities you currently have. They are easily shareable, easily digestible and there are people willing to seek them out and spread them no matter what the topic. Also, consider hiring a dedicated designer from our pool of talented students! You’ll be glad you did.

7 Simple but Effective Twitter Backgrounds

Ross — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:20:45 +0000

Going nuts with your brand’s Twitter background design may not be a wise decision. Here’s seven excellent examples of simplicity that some big brands have used to represent them.

1 | @Starbucks

Starbucks puts their main product on display with their background. No frills here, but it works to keep the attention on the conversation.

2 | @JetBlue

JetBlue’s use of angles and complimenting colors on the white background make this design as fresh as the company itself.

3 | @MailChimp

Everyone’s favorite email marketing service incorporates the company’s mascot against a great color scheme.

4 | @CocaCola

The most recognizable brand in the world. It’s also functional with links to their other social media sites.

5 | @Target

Target has done much to improve their look and design over the years, and it shows here with an elegant design.

6 | @DisneyPixar

All your favorite Toy Story characters are here to bring Pixar’s Twitter page to life. No added clutter is needed.

7 | @WholeFoods

The simple earthy greens in this logo identify well with the organic supermarket chain.

As you can see, a complicated design isn’t always necessary to pull off a good representation of your brand. Most times, simple is better. Our student designers know this, and can provide Twitter backgrounds on par with the big boys! Try them out today!

3 Tips for Your Logo Color

Ross — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:12:32 +0000

Your logo is your business’ identity. It can take an unlimited number of shapes and sizes and have a nearly infinite number of color schemes to it (color nerds will say there’s more). After browsing the internet for what seems like days, I’ve noticed some patterns in logo design.

1 | Your logo should be just as effective in black and white as it is in color
Just as color is important in your logo, the absence of color is just as important. Your logo should still be functional and recognizable when it’s printed in black and white. This is also the place you should start when designing a logo. Black and white first; color later. Get the shape and form right and then add color to bring it to life. Here’s a great example of the logo I think has and always will stand the test of time.

Despite being nearly three decades old, MTV’s logo still looks fresh. The black and white versions are identifiable and clear. The logo never changes through the years. Instead it exists inside of a larger changing world with the updated graphics and color changes. It’s hip and timeless at the same time.

Here’s an example of a logo that just doesn’t work in black, white or even color.

To Altria’s credit, you don’t need to know what they do or recognize them. They are a conglomerate that mostly brands of cigarettes and wine. In fact, Altria as a company probably doesn’t want you to know they are related to the products they sell.

2 | Don’t follow the crowd
Trends are best left to the fashion industry. You need your logo colors to stand out from all the others. Your form and colors need to stand out from the rest of the logos that are blasted out into media. Those swishes you would see in Web 1.0 logos? Gone. Web 2.0 logos with reflections? Those will be on their way out. I have seen many logos lately (Facebook, I’m looking at you!) that are very “app” like. Small squares with something resembling a logo inside them. Don’t get caught in the trap of designing your logo that looks like an app. Apps won’t be around forever.

When it comes to color, luckily you have a lot of room to be unique. Most corporations play it safe and choose red or blue. There’s a few with green as their main color. This gives you great leeway in choosing the color right for your company. Just don’t pick magenta, T-Mobile actually owns the right to the color magenta.

3 | Break every rule you have ever heard, even these ones
You’ll always read or hear about rules for everything in life. When it comes to logo color choice, these rules came from things I noticed. The best logos though broke every possible rule, even the rule of standing out – sometimes you will want to identify closely with another company, so you emulate their logo. The main “rule” I came across was to create a logo with a prominent single color, and choose red or blue. I came across the perfect counterexample to this. I think this company’s logo will speak for itself.

When it comes to your logo design, take your color very seriously. We here at OrangeSlyce take our design (very) seriously. So save some time and hire a student designer today!

Happy Labor Day from OrangeSlyce!

Ross — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:21:25 +0000

Happy Labor Day everyone! We’re taking the day off to pay our respects to the labor gods. Have a fun and safe holiday!

Tips for Student Designers and the Small Businesses Who Love Them: OrangeSlyce Life » Small Business

Are we appy with our apps?

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Startup lessons learned: Stalk your customers and others…

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Form vs. Function: An Epic Battle in Design

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Personal Portfolios Are Here!

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Is Your Personal Website A Dinosaur?

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

The Gap Logo Scandal

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Infographics: Examples of Teaching by Showing

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

7 Simple but Effective Twitter Backgrounds

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

3 Tips for Your Logo Color

More from OrangeSlyce Blog

Happy Labor Day from OrangeSlyce!

More from OrangeSlyce Blog