Wonderful grouping of photos where the visible sky between adjacent buildings forms all the letters of the alphabet. I particularly like how the photographer solved the problem of the letters “b, d, e, g, and q”.

Application company Tapbots caused waves in the iPhone and iPod Touch market with their first app for the mobile platform called Weightbot, a simple application that helps you track your weight loss or gain. Weightbox won a handful of awards in 2008 and has received glowing reviews from some of the most vocal critics and reviewers in the technology sector. Well, the waves appear to be continuing with the recent release of their second application called Convertbot, another simple application that specializes in unit conversion.

So okay, what’s the big deal? Why is this company stirring up the community? The answers are simple:

1. The masterminds behind Tapbots, designer Mark Jardine and developer Paul Haddad, are complete experts in their trades and obviously pay extremely close attention to every detail. These apps are prime illustrations of the successful marriage of design and development. The shapes, textures, transitions, and color schemes fit perfectly with the functionality and underlying guts of the app. The interaction with the UI is in tune with the multi-touch gestures established by Apple without resorting to the native UI elements, which contributes to the uniqueness of the app as well as making it intuitive to use. The UI they’ve developed for their apps is simply striking and easily stands out among the many thousands of apps that occupy the same “shelf space” of the iTunes App Store, but most importantly it doesn’t get in the way of the user’s experience, which leads me to my next point.

2. Both of these apps do exactly what they say they do and nothing else which means they focus solely on providing the user only what they need and expect. In application design the temptation to add in too many features is a common pitfall. The thought that “more features = better application” is a myth that was debunked most publicly by 37Signals and definitely supported here by Tapbots. On a mobile platform simplicity is even more vital because you’re dealing with a smaller screen, less amount of physical storage, potentially slower connections to the web, and usually much more of a “get in and get out” experience.

3. At SXSW this year I learned a valuable tip from a game designer (I fail to remember his name) about UI design on a mobile platform. He said that with regards to touchscreen devices it’s important to remember that the user will cover up the app with their hand if they’re interacting with navigational elements located at the top of the screen. Seems obvious enough, but designing for a mobile device with a large touchscreen is a new area for most designers (especially web designers) who are used to thinking about navigation from a top-down perspective and via a keyboard and mous. With Weightbot and Convertbot about 90% of the user’s interaction happens at the bottom half of the screen, which means the user doesn’t suffer from interruptions with the experience by bouncing all over the UI with their fingers.

4. Lastly is Tapbots marketing. Their site is just as beautiful as their apps. The homepage hits you up immediately with their products, showcasing them like high-dollar automobiles in a gallery setting, with the exception that to own these two beauties will only set you back a collective total of $3. Each page devoted to a product is clean and orderly, features the screenshots you expect to see and a looping demo video inlaid in an iPhone which is a nice bonus. Convertbot however has an additional demo video that I’ve included here:

This video falls right in line with the rest of the spirit of their aesthetics. Sure, they could have used a camcorder from Best Buy to film this thing and show a guy holding an iPhone and interacting with the app. But instead they used a Canon 5D mkII with a 70-200mm lens, fixed the iPhone dead-center in the frame and flanked by subtle backlighting to make it pop, and then only have the users hand in the frame when it’s actually interacting with the app as well as having it slightly out of focus so that your eye never leaves the app.

Again, extreme attention to detail.

Successful executions of design and development like this get my juices flowing. I’m hoping for the opportunity to work on some mobile applications for clients, mostly for the challenge rather than the actual result. Until then there has been plenty learned by studying the products by Tapbots that can be carried over into UI and application designs of all platforms.

Quick grab on my way home during yesterday’s storm. Little did I know that my car had been pummeled by hail at this point.

I just added the personal projects I did last year to my work portfolio. Until this time those projects had only existed in archived blog posts, so now they’re easier to access.

Going through them I got excited to work on some new personal work, especially branching out from illustration and into more detailed and extensive photo manipulation/composites. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

For all you owners of a Diana+ you might want to check out the Diana Instant Back+ which gives you the ability to make a print in a matter of seconds. It’s compatible with Fuji Instax Mini Film and provides a nice substitution for the hole being left by the absense of Polaroid.

Found via wewillbeok.

Clever billboard campaign for Leica’s V-Lux 1. Not sure which agency put these together, but they did a great job with the concept as well as matching the colors in the photos with it’s physical surroundings.

In the spirit of Open Source, Happy Cog has launched an interesting experiment that follows their work on the redesign of the Mozilla website. The agency has posted 3 designs they’ve developed for the project and opened up the comments to collect feedback from the community. Here’s a snapshot of the 3 designs:

Browsing the comments was entertaining and displays the wide range of opinions you’d expect to get from a comments thread. I’m undecided of just how much these comments will ultimately factor in to the final design of the site. That’s not to say that they’re useless or Happy Cog are ignoring them. Some of the comments are fairly detailed and Happy Cog’s Creative Director Christopher Cashdollar replied a little more than halfway down the page, so there is a degree of back and forth communication happening and potential value coming through some of the more constructive replies.

The main problem I see is that comment sections generally yield more fat than meat. You either get someone hiding behind the anonymity of the web and therefore they blast out something that they would never in their right mind say to you if they were speaking face to face. Those usually have to be taken with a grain of salt. The same is true for people who offer up replies like “Looks awesome!” or “I like the 2nd one.” A quick pat on the back isn’t bad or wrong, it just offers little value to the receiver in a setting where the floor is opened for feedback. It offers up questions like “Why do you think it looks awesome?” or “What about the 2nd one is makes it so appealing to you over the other two?”

I think the main reasons for this are that few people understand how to offer up constructive criticism or just don’t want to take the time to do it. I’ve been in countless critique settings where people are afraid to speak their minds because they don’t want to potentially hurt someone’s feelings or on the flip side the person being critiqued takes everything way too personally. Offering valuable criticism and knowing how to take criticism is an art and learned skill.

So I’ll be interested to see the next stage of Redesign Mozilla, the point in the game where comps are reworked based on client and community feedback. For the sake of the experiment I hope valuable feedback is being offered and ultimately contributes to a stronger product. Time will tell.