I first looked through a few options for frameworks to build on, and ended up choosing QuickStep. It offered everything we were looking for, including huge images, a sleek interface, a built-in gallery, and the ability to create a single-page layout. I pushed for the single-page layout. Looking at the analytics for almost any website taught me that most visitors are lost as soon as they have to click a link to visit a different page on a website. They could be missing out on important information, including how to contact the business! I believe that putting all relevant information on one long scrollable page is one step towards solving that issue.

The design process was jumpstarted by the fact that Smith Lawn and Landscape already had a great logo. The only thing I changed was the font in order to give it more of an organic and modern feel. From there I went on to pick a color palette and a selection of fonts to work from. You can see them above. Going through these few steps of preparation made the rest of the design and building process so much easier.

Designing this website was only half of the story, however. There were a few requested features that were not built into QuickStep, and I had to spend a great deal of time finding plug-ins and tweaking the code to make them possible. The most difficult one was a slideshow that spans the full width of the page. I was happy to see it all come together flawlessly, while still preserving the responsiveness of the website. For the full affect, drag your browser smaller or view it on your phone.

Once the fortress was done, it was time to start building the outposts. It disappoints me when brands don’t take the graphics they put on their social media pages as seriously as their website. If you’re using Facebook to connect and market with new customers, then it better look as clean and professional as your website, if not more so. I used the dimensions I listed out in a previous blog post and created graphics designed specifically for each platform.

The main goal during all of this was to push Smith Lawn and Landscape to the top of Google Search and get more exposure for this great company. I’m happy to say that this re-design alone pushed the company to #4 in search, and I’m confident that it will only be moving up from there. I recommended that they update their blog at least once a week. This will teach Google’s algorithm that this is a website contains newer, more relevant and more valuable information.

In conclusion, I am very excited to announce the release of the new website design for Smith Lawn and Landscape!

Sunrise reimagined the calendar from the ground up by converting all calendar events into a timeline. It uses Google Calendar as it’s backbone, but adds functionality on top of Google’s very basic features. You’re also able to connect Facebook and LinkedIn to import birthdays, events, and meetings.

Here are just a few:

• Add contacts to events with ease. Type in their name (or email, if they aren’t in your contacts yet), and their pictures will show up under the events, making it easy to see who you’re meeting with and when. Sunrise will automatically add their LinkedIn account to the event for a quick background check.
• Content aware icons. Notice the knife & fork icon in the screenshot above. Sunrise will automatically assign icons to your events based on their content. “Lunch” or “dinner” will have the previously mentioned icon, birthdays will be assigned a birthday present icon, and meetings will have an icon containing a couple speech bubbles. You don’t even have to read your schedule to get a general idea of what will be filling your time each day. Added Bonus: When clicking on someone’s birthday, it gives you the option to text or Facebook message them a happy birthday directly from the app. Convenient!
• Weather integration. Sunrise automatically inserts the predicted weather into your calendar throughout the day. This allows you to see whether it’s appropriate to schedule activity outside or not.
• It’s nice to use. This is the most important feature. It’s not difficult to use or hard to navigate. Everything is logical and fluid, and you will actually want to keep your calendar updated.

In summary, give this app a test run if you are able, and let me know what you think!

First, let’s take a look at a sample of Apple app icons.

Do you see it? Look closer. Closer. That’s right. Every single one of them has that hokey highlight stretching across the top/middle. All of these icons look dated and cheesy, and a big reason for that is this awful highlight. But wait. It gets worse.

It’s spreading like a virus! Let this be a lesson to you, app developers. Highlights are okay, just don’t use this one anymore.

Nice work, Pandora!

Leap Motion is basically a Kinect with pinpoint precision that hooks up to your computer. What’s so amazing about this?

1. You can “physically” interact with objects on your computer screen. The best example I’ve found of this can be seen in the video below.

2. You can create artwork in 2D or 3D with no extra peripherals. In some of the demo videos, they actually use a pencil as a stylus and the Leap Motion was able to recognize it as a writing tool.

3. It’s backwards compatible with touch screen applications, so it already works with a ton of different programs. One example is the ability to scroll down a web page simply by swiping it up with a finger.

I’m very excited about having a new way to interact with my iMac and finally free myself from the mouse!

1) Songza. The concierge feature is killer! It’s really easy to find an enjoyable playlist for any activity you might be doing, whether it be driving, working, relaxing, or saving the world.

2) Waze. It’s a fully-functional GPS with turn-by-turn navigation on your phone. There’s a big social element as well – you can notify others about traffic, police, and road obstructions. One of my favorite, but simple, features is the fact that you can listen to music while using it. When directions are being given, the music drops to the background.

3) Duolingo. You may remember me talking about Duolingo in the past, but now they have an app! It’s only a couple weeks old, but let’s you learn a language on the go. Awesome.

4) Highlight. This app tells you when there are others near you with similar interests. I really like the concept, but it’s not all that useful until a bunch of people are on it. So get it! It’s available for iOS and Android.

5) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This entire game has just been released for iOS, and will be coming out for Android soon. Explore the entire city and do missions on your phone. Mind-blowing. Your also able to create a playlist in iTunes and listen to it as a radio station in the game.

One idea I particularly liked was applying this concept to driving. Here’s how it would work:

1. I’m Heading Out. A button stating “I’m Heading Out” or “I’m Driving” is placed so that it’s as easily accessible as the “Go to Sleep” button. Press it.
2. The Driving Page. A splash page appears with a graphic depicting a steering wheel and the open road. There will also be a timer on this page.
3. Arrived. A button stating simply “Arrived” is located at the bottom of the splash page. Pressing this stops the timer and posts a message on your timeline.
4. Rewards. What’s the incentive here? Maybe a reward system should be put in place à la Waze (another app I’m greatly enjoying). If nothing else, you’ll have the comfort of knowing that you’re driving safely, and your family and friends are aware of that fact.

Seeing as how Path is meant for connecting with your closest friends and family, the default sharing options should be that your drive time, route, and destination are posted openly on your Path timeline for them to see and respond to.

Facebook.

Cover Photo: 851x315px
Profile Picture: 160x160px
Application Icon: 111x74px
Timeline Photo: 403x403px
Timeline Photo (Highlighted): 843x403px
Restrictions: Cover photos can’t include price information, contact information, references to Facebook features, or calls to action. This means you can’t make it say “Like Us!” and have an arrow pointing to the like button.

Twitter.

Cover Photo: 1252x626px*
Profile Picture: 73x73px
Background: 1680x1050px**

Google+.

Cover Photo: 940x180px
Profile Picture: 250x250px

Pinterest.

Profile Picture: 160x165px
Pinned Image Width: 192px
Board Cover: 222x150px
Board Thumbnails: 55x55px

YouTube.

Profile Picture: 60x60px
Background: 1680x1050px**
Channel Banner: 970x150px

*Twitter’s new Cover Photo requires that you upload a large image, but it gets scaled down to different sizes depending on which device you are using. On the web, it is scaled down to 520x260px.
**There are no requirements for the background, but making it too small will result in an ugly cut off line. Common displays can run from 1024x768px up to 2000x1920px. Keep your background on the large side, or create a transition point into a solid color.

Artists create films about film, paintings about painting, sculptures about sculpture, and so on. I believe that this is caused by a lack of diversity in education and interest. Think about it. If I train and spend all of my time becoming the most incredible painter in history, what will my paintings be about? Well, what subject am I now the most knowledgable of? Painting. See the problem?

Keep in mind, there has been long and interesting history of art that has brought us to this point. But now we’ve reached it. Time to move on. (Those of you that are creating incredible work that just so happen to be meta, keep it up. This is for everyone else.)

More and more of our time is spent moving, copying, editing, and transferring files, opening menus, painting, and designing on our computers. But we’re limited. We’ve been trained to communicate with computers through a simple peripheral that allows us to direct a pointer around a 2-dimensional screen. The mouse hasn’t changed a whole lot since the 60s. It’s time for something new.

Touch screens. These have been around for quite some time, but never really hit it off with humanity until the iPhone. These still aren’t commonly found on desktop PCs, but just wait. This technology takes us one step closer to ‘physically’ working with digital data.

Bendable technology. Up until now, bending our phones, tablets, or computers would break them. Samsung is about to change that. Imagine you had a digital newspaper that shut down when you rolled it up. Or a flashlight app that turned on with a twist. We might finally see that Bop It app we’ve all been waiting for!

Voice recognition. While I wouldn’t drop $100 extra bucks on a phone to get this feature – I can’t wait until I can just tell my phone when I want to wake up in the morning. Simple tasks like this are exponentially more difficult when having to flip through menus using a keypad. I’d like to be able to walk into my office and say, “All right, I need you to open Gmail, Illustrator, and Facebook.” Yeah, that would be way easier.

Augmented reality. Yes, my blog posts always seem to come back to this. Augmented reality is going to remove the need for a mediatory device by allowing us to deal with digital data the same way we handle objects in reality. I can’t wait for this.

Can you think of more ways we could communicate with our technology? Let me know below!

I have a wish list of features that I think would vastly improve what’s currently available.

Search. It’s possible to type in the name of a font and not have to look through the list, but this requires that you know the name and correct spelling of each font you want. This isn’t always the case. There should be some sort of algorithm that allows for searching for a font name and providing the closest results.

Categories. It would be nice if fonts were sorted into categories that allowed one to narrow the number of fonts they’d have to look through. dafont.com has a crude, but functional, version of this.

Favorites. We all have favorite fonts. Well… many of us have favorite fonts. I’d like to be able to click a star to make a certain font more accessible. Favorites could get pinned to the top, or they could show up in a separate list entirely.

Adobe, take note! Any one of these features would become an indispensable tool that I’d be using constantly. Please develop something like this.

Are there other features that would help you with managing your fonts? Let me know in the comments!