posted by on June 09, 2011 at 11:23 AM
filed under:
Process
The entire world around us is changing at an inconceivably fast rate. Immersive digital technologies have not only evolved from science fiction to reality, but they are beginning to enter the mainstream. With greater availability and popularity, it’s time to embrace the future and learn to harness the potential of the latest and greatest innovations. This week
Sam Ewen published a post on Mashable which outlined some of the most promising new technologies that are poised to reinvent advertising and marketing…
posted by on February 23, 2011 at 11:51 AM
filed under:
Process
Amazing.
Bringing the imagination of children to life through storytelling, performance and technology.
Little Magic Stories from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.
posted by on January 26, 2011 at 11:25 AM
filed under:
Process
It’s official. My life with stickers has come full circle. After a month in Asia
FINALLY finishing my
MBA, I returned to what we like to call at
TBG, “The Process Summit”. This has now become an annual tradition where the
TBG directors block off a week and take a thorough look at our company, evaluate our priorities and then agree on what we need to spend energy on improving for the year. With 15 directors in a room there are lots to discuss and a lot of ideas put on the table. This makes it essential to have some sort of mechanism to be able to rank and prioritize. How do we do it you might ask? Well, we go back to a trusted tool I used to employ during my days teaching Kindergarten….. dots. Here we are hard at work:
In Kindergarten we used dots for everything. Silent voting on special activities, assigning groups for field trips and even special holiday crafts. Check out this nifty paper plate snowman perfect for a day like today :) (directions available upon request):
In business school we also made good use of the dots. Core group spirit, program identification and easy drinking buddy association. For those not as familiar, nametags are everywhere in business school and there is nothing like a little colored dot in the corner to foster some core group pride or help you find “insta-friends” at happy hours, corporate presentations and orientations.
All this to say… Stock up. Dots are good. Pink are my favorite.
posted by on August 28, 2009 at 04:15 PM
filed under:
Process
SPOILER ALERT: You can always improve on something great!
We’re now in our third year of The Barbarian Group’s collaboration with Kashi. We’re calling this release a refresh rather than a redesign. To clarify, think about the project as a house. When you do a redesign, it’s like tearing down a home to its foundation and starting fresh. That’s not what was needed here, for our foundation was already stable, our website was already successful. Think of this release like remodeling a kitchen, it’s an improvement of what was working, and an optimization of what wasn’t. So we put on our thinking caps and many months later, we’ve surprised ourselves yet again!
The countless improvements to the site are too many to list, but some of our favorites include: a redesigned navigation system, a dynamic footer showing the current community activity, a vastly improved commenting system, a simplified sign up and log in system, an improved look and feel, and of course, a ton of IA and UX refinements. And that’s just what the user see’s. The site is faster, more enjoyable, easier to use, and most importantly, easier to find what you are looking for and more likely to discover things you didn’t know were here. On top of this, we are already working on a number awesome super secret features and updates to be launched soon, so stay tuned for those in the coming months!
We love this client, and we hope you enjoy the site!
posted by on August 23, 2009 at 12:07 AM
filed under:
Process
This is not a work of art, and that’s entirely the point.
I’m a designer. It’s my job to stay fresh, to keep my creative capabilities from growing tired. I love my role at The Barbarian Group, a company in which our motto is to find the bleeding edge of the internet, and see how far and how successfully we can bring out clients towards it. I am proud of every project that has gone out the door that I have worked on, but there is always room to improve. That’s where bitchin’ times that have nothing to do with a paycheck come in. Sometimes, you need to be able to step away from the task at hand and tap into something that client work cannot supply: a lack of purpose.
New rule: Take some time out of every day to step back and create a quick sketch. Experiment. Rock and roll. Open my mind. Keep it fun. Love every minute of it. It’s never going to be a work of art, but it’s always going to be worth it. Hitting reset on your brain from time to time, no matter what it is you do, can be a pretty good idea.
Interested in seeing more? Follow the rest of my daily sketches
here(Today’s sketch is dedicated to , who loves Joy Division more than anyone I know.)
posted by on June 15, 2009 at 11:24 PM
filed under:
Process
I’ve been designing for the web for the better part of 7 years, professionally for 4, so while I’m no expert, I have made about eleventy billion mistakes over the years. Each of which I have learned from. Here’s some bad-ass tips that I wish someone had told me:
- Learn how to design with form elements. These are a fundamental flaw of millions of sites on the web, and something that is sadly overlooked by many designers as an after-thought. I can’t stress this enough. If you can’t design a form that gets a user from the beginning to the submit button within a form without making them think, then I suggest you read this book: Web Form Design – by Luke Wroblewski
- Research! In nearly every aspect of web design, examples of solutions can be found everywhere. If you’re designing a page that needs to display a recipe, find out what others are doing online. But don’t stop there: you can take cues from magazines, video games, letter-pressed posters, television, and even architecture and industrial design. They all have a wonderfully rich history to reference. The best answers will be found in the most unlikely of places.
- Every pixel counts. The entire screen is your canvas, so don’t let all your hard work go to waste because you didn’t think anyone would notice that your buttons look like ass. Your horizontal rules are just as important to telling a visual story as your video player or main navigation. Don’t let a few flat notes ruin an otherwise awesome web site.
- It’s alive! This isn’t print media, and this isn’t television. It’s not a passive experience, so give the user an experience they can invest in, something that is uniquely only available on the web. Make them fall in love with the actions of the site, not just the content. Make them love clicking a button. Make them smile as often as possible.
- Step back as often as possible. Let your Mom, who is scared of the internet, test your site. Don’t help her. Just watch and listen. You’d be surprised at how much a few confused comments will help your work. Always test for your audience, since no one will ever know you design’s intentions as well as you do.
- You aren’t the King of the Planet. OMFG RAD! You made an award winning website! So what, that doesn’t mean you have all the answers. Know what others are doing, because they might have solved a design problem you ran into way better than you ever thought to do. Never stop learning from others just because people tell you that your agency is totally epic. (But definitely be stoked to be there!)
- Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! Never fear, even the most complex problem can be solved with the least complex of design solutions. Don’t make your users have to think about the interface, but rather make considerable efforts to make them enjoy it.
- Understand the nerdy shit. Get your feet wet in as many aspects of web design as you can. Learn how to code what you build. Understanding the strengths and limitations of the “nerdy code stuff” will help you design a site is an all around better experience. Hell, you might even realize that all those awesome gradients you love to use are actually a pain in the ass to code.
- There are no rules yet! Everyday, a new site pops up with wonderful new solutions for presenting content to a user. Break boundaries and rules as often as possible. Make your own rules, and then break those as well.
- Enjoy everything you make! Just like anything else in life, if you don’t put all your heart and soul into it, people will definitely know. Some of the best sites out there were obviously fun to design. Find what you love in every project, and then dive in!
posted by on June 12, 2009 at 05:43 PM
filed under:
Process
Justin Timberlake’s middle name is Randall. His first two solo albums have sold more than 18 million records worldwide. His wikipedia article names “beatboxing” as one of the four instruments he plays. He owns a car wash just outside of Memphis, and has a golf handicap of 6. He does excellent impressions of his celebrity friends, and still remains the type of gentleman who will ask if it’s okay to have a snack during a meeting. In fact, he’ll even offer to share it with you.
This is the type of JT info you once had to painstakingly scour the entire worldwide web to find… until now.
posted by on April 17, 2009 at 03:48 PM
filed under:
Process
Have you guys heard of this event,
Pecha Kucha? It’s kind of an informal artist lecture night, hosted in cities all around the world. It draws a shockingly large crowd from all walks of the “creative” landscape, and offers them a series of presentations from a pretty wide range of fields. This last Wednesday’s gathering at Mantra collected architects, visual artists, scientific visualizers, and… well, people like us. But not just “us” – people like
Phil Stockton.
Phil and I were up to make the same sort of presentation that everyone else did. 20 slides, shown for 20 seconds each. And so I yammered on for a couple minutes about our creative process, brainstorming, and so on and on. But Phil, man. That guy took things to another level. He cruised along with the audience on a guided tour of the CNN T-Shirt campaign and I swear, he might as well have been doing it from the audience’s collective living room while massaging their feet and soothing all their pets and children. It was so comfy. He walked through where the idea came from, where it went, and tied it all up in a nice little bow that did nothing short of planting the image in each audience member’s head that detailed just how damn fine they’d look in a new shirt from CNN.
Just look at this bastard.
Here’s Phil in a photo taken by Jason over at
Common-Content.com, where we see him in the midst of some sort of transcendental trance, most likely channeling a distillation of the entire creative process. Straight to the brain. And the audience is totally enthralled. The guy to the right? He’s looking for a halo. The girl on the left? Looking for her future. It was an amazing thing to behold on such an impressive night.
