I had the opportunity to design an icon for the newly launched Deals feature in Highrise. Jason approached me one morning to think of some icon ideas to depict “Deals”. The development site used a stack of gold coins icon that Ryan had created, so I used that as a jumping off point. I started sketching variations of stacked coins. After a few minutes I decided to think about it in a different way. The word “Deal” kept bringing me back to the concept of card dealing. Card dealing is in no way related to the Deals feature however. I just couldn’t shake card dealing from my head, so I started sketching stacks of cards. I really dug the form that the stacked cards were making. The missing piece was: How is this related to “Deals”? I decided to take some inspiration from Super Mario Bros. and add a star to the top card. I finally had an idea to kick around with Jason and Ryan.

Jason and Ryan were not sold on the star idea. I assured them that it needed more development, so I started producing the idea in Illustrator. I usually start icon work in grayscale. It is way too hard for me to lock down colors right away. The nice thing is that I can concentrate on getting the form just right. Color can always be added later. Once I completed the form I realized that I had the perfect icon. In the Deals tab of Highrise you can set your proposals/bids as Pending, Won, or Lost. The black and white icon would be the Pending state. I would add green for the Won state and red for the Lost state. It was all coming together. There was a problem though. Jamis and Ryan were already deep into development, and this dynamic icon concept would add scope. I shelved that idea and went back to Ryan’s original gold coins icon. Let’s use gold for the Deals icon.

Jason and Ryan were still not digging the star. We went back and forth for about 10 minutes when Ryan had a great idea. Let’s ditch the star for the currency symbol. When you’re dealing with USD proposals then use a dollar sign. When you’re dealing with Yen then use that symbol. I loved that idea and started producing the rest of the icons to map to the currencies that we currently support in Highrise Deals. It is refreshing to work on a little project like this. Jason and Ryan were able to make quick decisions about my icon design direction. As a result the project took less than a day to finish with a majority of my time spent learning about the feature. Side note for those that have kids: WebKinz KinzCash uses the same symbol as the South Korean Won. Feel free to track Deals in Highrise with your WebKinz Krazy kids by using the Won hack. You heard it here first.

I presented a slideshow of Skateboard Graphics to my co-workers while we were in Maine a few weeks ago. Skateboarding and its culture had a strong influence on me during my adolescence. Skateboarding is the main reason why I pursued a career in Art and Design actually. It turns out that a few of my co-workers also had fond memories of skating. Mark Imbriaco used to skate and Jeffrey Hardy still does. Jason Fried used to light his Vision Gator deck on fire and ride it down the street. Now that’s hardcore!

Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz, etc.

Ah the ‘80s. The graphics of V. Courtlandt Johnson and Jim Phillips are iconic. Menacing, horrid, grimey. Punk Rock and Metal. I would spend endless hours drawing skeletons and dragons in my school notebooks. During this time, all graphics were influenced by this style. However, as the 80’s came to a close that would change.

World Industries

The graphics for World Industries changed the industry. They were different than the usual skulls and gore that were popular at the time. Artists Marc McKee and Sean Cliver introduced an element of wit and pop-culture commentary that would take the entire industry in a different direction. World Industries gave birth to Big Brother magazine which in turn gave birth to Jackass.

Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender

I loved it when skaters did their own board graphics. I should have also included Ed Templeton in the presentation too. These guys weren’t just great skaters but also incredible visual artists in their own right.

Chocolate

Chocolate is a company that broke away from World Industries. Their graphics continue to innovate. Artists like Evan Hecox take seemingly mundane images like guitars and soda bottles and elevate them to art by putting them on skateboards.

More…

Obviously this is all just scratching the surface. There is so much more to explore with skate graphics and skate culture. Here’s my presentation below. I’d love to hear your stories about skateboarding and how skate culture has influenced you.

“4 artists paint 1 tree” was originally a segment in a 1958 episode of “Disneyland” on TV. This short film served as a promotional spot for their upcoming film at the time: Sleeping Beauty. However, it goes much deeper than that. With Walt Disney’s narration we get a glimpse of the creative philosophy at Disney and the legendary artists working there at the time. This philosophy can be applied to what you’re doing even if you’re not in the business of animation. If you design websites, develop software, or even run your own small business you might take away something that will help you find your own way of doing things.

Advice to art students

Walt begins the segment by telling us that the Studio frequently receives letters from art students asking how one should paint and what styles one should imitate. Walt says:

Students become confused by honest admiration from one school of painting, mixed with the recognition of the success and popularity of another style, along with advice to follow a still different approach.

Walt’s advice is what artist Robert Henri says: “Be yourself. Don’t imitate anyone.”

Continued…

In my past experience, I did not like designing and producing HTML email marketing campaigns. The emails that I created had their conceptual birth in another medium altogether: a Catalog, an Advertisement, or the Website. The concept and strategy was already finalized before it had gotten to me. At that point it was all about production.

How I see email working for 37signals
I want to take a different approach with 37signals email. Because we are not ready to start redesigning the marketing sites, I see an opportunity to use email as a means to experiment with concepts in anticipation of the redesign. That’s right. I am reversing that conceptual flow often practiced at many online retailers. Email isn’t going to follow what’s already been laid out. It’s going to lead the way. This is email as an inexpensive design and content testing platform.

Here’s the original design for the first Highrise email test:

I am hoping to address some marketing site issues with this email. There is no place currently on the Highrise site where customer stories or tips can be found. We have a great Product Blog with stories and tips, but you can’t sign up for Highrise there. It is also difficult to know that we have Basecamp and other products if you’ve come to the Highrise site directly. Maybe Basecamp will suit your needs better. This is how we did it with this particular email. A few emails down the line might take a different direction altogether.

One caveat about using emails as a design and concept testing ground is that email clients are not perfect. The original design had to be adjusted slightly. You can see what we finally ended up with here: http://www.highrisehq.com/newsletters/090908/

Design compromises aside: Email becomes the perfect platform to perform this synthesis experiment. Elements and concepts from the design above may or may not make it into the final site design. That is still a ways away. We’ll cut our concepts for a site redesign over a span of several emails in the coming months. Would you like to see how it comes along? Sign up for our newsletters to see where these emails take us.

My first project here at 37signals was to evolve our email marketing and triggered messaging design. I want to share some thoughts about my first Getting Real experience and the design decisions we made to highlight “free Campfire accounts” for Basecamp Max plan customers.

I get it now!
Jason asked me to design our Welcome to Basecamp sign-up emails. The emails were being sent out as plain text only. Important messages like the “free Campfire account offer” were difficult to highlight in plain text. Max plan customers were confused as to how to get their free Campfire account. I started designing and producing the email last week while Jason was at the Web 2.0 Expo.

We use Campfire here at 37signals nonstop to communicate with each other. I knew Jason was out, but he checks the Campfire transcripts regularly to keep updated with the day-to-day. I made sure to upload the design showing the “free Campfire” conditional block so that he could give me some feedback.

Sam started integrating the HTML template while I was waiting for feedback from Jason. After all, what would he have a problem with? It was looking great and we were hoping to deploy it before the week was over. Sam was nearly finished with integration when I finally received feedback from Jason: We should break out that free Campfire message into a separate email.

Fuck really? OK I agree. But really? I mean I was hoping to get this out soon. Like today! I checked with Sam.

“I have to rework that email.”

Sam says, “That’s OK. I’ll deploy this. Just get me the free Campfire email next week.”

Continued…