Friends spending time together

Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar.

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A group of friends taking a selfie on the beach

Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar.

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Three girlfriends spending time on the beach

Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar.

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Making time for your self

n UX design, few things are more intricate than time and personal time management — only a good arsenal of mobile design patterns and information architecture principles can save you. This is the story of redesigning the UX for a popular calendar tool on Android: Business Calendar. We’ll cover designing systems, interaction design problems, scaling across screens and platforms, research, and big business decisions and their outcomes.

Business Calendar started out as a side project, a one-man show, and is now run by a team of eight in Berlin. The app was very successful right from the time Android entered the mainstream market, and it now has an active user base of 2 million. But instead of modernizing the design and usability regularly, the developers focused on implementing user requests and customization options. Outdated design and new features stuffed in had made the app heavy and complex — full of features, hard to maintain for the team, hardly accessible for new users.

Knowing they needed a redesign but having few resources themselves, the team approached Opoloo to get design and interaction on the same level as the development. For the task, we delineated goals to attract new users and keep the existing user base satisfied:

  • Improve user experience
    Strip down and reorganize the user interface to revive the simple, fast, efficient work process of a productivity tool.
  • Improve accessibility
    Keep old users happy, lower the barriers for new ones.
  • Incorporate task management
    Integrate tools that users need every day to create more value.
  • Apply modern design standards
    Address the main criticism: “Could be prettier.”
  • Extensive tablet support
    Improve the tablet experience as a first step to ubiquity.

The hardest part of any mobile calendar’s interface is the density of information, with each little piece fighting for attention: grids, events, time indicators, text labels, colors and other elements to interact with, manipulate and customize. Finding the right balance is what makes for an accessible calendar UI. Below are a few tricks we pulled with the presentation of data (i.e. how pieces of information are consumed, searched for and compared).

Although an iconic and heavily used feature of Business Calendar, the favorite bar was barely accessible: It became too small and too crowded to use as the number of calendars grew. Our solution was to use Android’s black system bar as an optical trick: The favorite bar now feels much taller and easier to tap, due to the black-in-black design. Additionally, we improved touch targets, made visible and invisible states clearer, and implemented a scrolling pattern to house more calendars.

Tools are an extension of our hands, and as such, they should be versatile, quick and intuitive. A lot has changed between the print era of offset presses and the digital era of cross-platform screens. Developers have attempted to adapt our tools, but Sketch is perhaps the most successful app.

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Life Treasure’s Timelapse

“Treasures of Zakynthos” is a film completed in its entirety using the timelapse cinematography technique in the most beautiful parts of the Greek island – Zakynthos. Some of the places portrayed in it are typical tourist destinations, while others are unique, quiet and magical. The real treasures for the eye are the unexplored, off-the-beaten-path locations. The film lets the viewer experience the extraordinary nature and magic of the formidable Greek landscapes. Enjoy.

This film was made thanks to the enormous commitment of many wonderful people.

4 trips, 840 hours spent on Zakynthos, 2000 km travelled on the island, 28 days of shooting, 3TB of timelapse footage, 380 hours of post-production, 100 kg film equipment weight.

It took me a couple of weeks to finish the first draft of the chapter, then it was reviewed for the first time. Vitaly gave some nice feedback about where I could go into a little more detail (he is always thirsty for more knowledge), so I did. After the second review, there wasn’t much to edit anymore. I went over the chapter one more time and sent it for proofreading.

We used Basecamp as the communication management app. By “we” I mean Vitaly, the Smashing team, and everyone else who worked on the book. It was my first time using Basecamp and I quite liked it — it helped keep everything organized and in perspective. Knowing where everyone was in the process of writing was also quite helpful.

When I told Vitaly I wanted to write this article to introduce the SVG chapter to you, he asked me to be as critical of the entire writing process as I wanted, and mention anything I did not like about it, or even about him! But I couldn’t come up with anything, really.

The one and only criticism I have is the delay in the release date. I’m a very punctual person and when we started working on the book it was scheduled to be released in March and to start shipping in April, but it took a few months more to do that. That said, everyone who worked on the book also had a ton of other commitments and stuff to do besides writing it, so delays like this are only natural, I guess.

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Saje and Take Care of You

Five years later, that show, “Bad Dads,” has blossomed into an annual event hosted at Spoke. Wes Anderson himself even commissioned one of its contributors,Richard Pellegrino, to create a sketch that would appear in The Grand Budapest Hotel. (The original, “Two Lesbians Masturbating,” appeared at last fall’s show.)

Another wildly popular artist involved in the “Bad Dads” exhibitions since the beginning is Max Dalton. The Buenos Aires-based illustrator’s work has been featured in many other pop-culture group exhibitions at Spoke and elsewhere, including the cover designs for Matt Zoller Seitz’s compendium The Wes Anderson Collection and supplement The Grand Budapest Hotel. But since Dalton is based in Argentina, pulling off a solo show in SF wasn’t easy.