Blog
iTunes 10 UI changes.
Apple announced iTunes 10 today, and after an unusual delay in actually releasing the application, we are now able to download it and examine what UI changes they’ve implemented this time round. It seems they are forever changing the style of iTunes – perhaps it is their testing bed for new designs; either way, it can often cause annoyance and frustration.
The biggest difference seems to be that they’ve removed almost all traces of color – not sure about that, it seems very bland now…
The new iTunes 10 icon.
New vertical traffic light buttons for expand/close/minimize
All icons have been grayed out… looks quite boring
New PING icon for iTunes Social side
The new AirPlay icon – replacing AirTunes
Even the iTunes Preferences have been desaturated.
What do you think of the new iTunes 10?
Icons.
Have you ever found yourself requiring some decent quality Adobe icons?
I did last night… and I could not find any anywhere! So I made them myself, and thought I’d share.
They are 300dpi, 600x600px images of InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop CS3 icons.
An hour of Design – visually
This is my work travels for an hour’s worth of Brochure Design today! I used IO Graph to track the movements from 11:30am – 12:30am.
Fun to checkout the Mac OS Expose corners, my side-screen toolbars and the frequent travels to the top File Menu structure.
Also where my Dock is on the bottom of the screen.
You can find a larger pic here.
Liquid Mobile – Guided Tour
We’ve finally launched the Liquid Church Mobile site so you can carry “Church in Your Pocket!” Check out this video for a Guided Tour through the new site.
Barbie Stop Motion
We were going through some old files in the office today and found some equally old videos from a previous series in February 2009… okay – so maybe not that old.
They were my first effort at stop-motion photography, and they had me hiding in the office basement for days playing with Barbies. Hrmm… The final result turned out much better than expected, though! So after hours of careful Barbie manipulating, hundreds of photos and a dash of Photoshop & Final Cut, we arrived with 3 series promotional videos: Beach, Night-Club and Anniversary.
If you’re interested, you can check out the rest of the Heat series here.
Enjoy.
Liquid Church Mobile
We’ve just previewed a sneak peek of the new Liquid Church Mobile… check it out below.
I’ve been working on the design of this site for a while now, and it’s finally going into early user testing before it’s rolled out for the start of 2010!
Exciting stuff!
One of our biggest goals with the Mobile site was for it to be accessible from all Smart Phones, not just the usual iPhone application, so we’ll be working hard to get this onto as many phones as possible! If you own a smartphone that can access the internet, you will soon be able to:
- view Message and Worship Archives
- sign-up to Liquid events
- interact with the Online Community
- watch Church Online LIVE from their phone
- take message notes during a service
… and much more!
Other aspects of the design will allow you to share videos and links with friends via the Liquid Church Facebook/Twitter/Vimeo accounts, as well as have differing tools and options depending on whether you are ‘New to Liquid’ watching ‘At a Campus’ or doing ‘Church Online’.
If you want to sign-up to help us test this new side of Liquid, checkout this link here.
Meanwhile, here is the sneak peek graphic…
What are your first impressions?
The Answer.
So there were some trickier ones in there. I expect you will see the answers and have an ‘Aha!’ moment or two…
1] Coca-Cola
2] Google
3] 7 Eleven
4] Facebook
5] Fedex
6] Flickr
7] McDonalds
8] MySapce
9] Windows
10] YouTube
How did you go?
The Importance of Colour.
Have you ever stopped to think about how important the use of colour is within Logo’s and corporate branding?
And not only the colours, but the consistent use of them within public marketing?
I created this little game for you all, to see if you can guess the company purely on a colour scheme and the occasional help element. I’ll post the answers in a day or two but I think you’ll realise you’ve may have been brainwashed!
Have a go and post your answers in a Comment!
A Healthy Reminder.
I recently read a challenging, albeit long, blog post by Joel Houston of Hillsong United discussing ‘The art of visual semantics‘ and the varying degrees of difficulty surrounding the creation of their yearly album artwork. He vents quite candidly about how they have tried so hard to capture the genuine heart and intent of the United band within their designs, only to be knocked back time and time again by fickle complaints and crazy mis-interpretations.
You’ll have to read the full post to realise how much they seem to be banging their heads against the wall… yet for all the venting, Joel concludes with this statement:
“…and at the end of the day, our art is simply a donkey.. Just like the one that carried Jesus.. just a donkey, who’s purpose was to carry the Savior.. The same goes for all our creative expression; our music; our photography; our design; our talents and gifts etc. whatever it is, our challenge above all else is to make sure it carries HIM. That it serves to carry the life giving message of Christ. We get that right, and it’ll do the job.”
That really hit home for me.
It is healthy to be reminded of why we do what we do… why I moved to New Jersey, why I am working for Liquid Church. It isn’t to create works that can further my own portfolio, or gain me applause and encouraging feedback – as nice as that is; my role is ‘to carry the life giving message of Christ’ through everything I do and create.
Thanks for the reminder, Joel.