Turbomilk

Identity: MSDN TV

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:16:36 PST

Microsoft features a popular resource for programmers and other developers alike called Microsoft Developer Network. MSDN is so huge and powerful that it even has its own TV network. We have been entrusted with developing a logo for this project.

This will be a logo for our project MSDN TV, a service that will be regularly updated with interesting videos. You could come up with something like YouTube’s logo with a TV set or even better. Denis Kotlyarov, Microsoft

The client wished that the logo looked similar to the original MSDN’s logo:

First, we thought about modest and simple logos. So that we could place them over the videos and they would look cool in small size:

Then it occurred to us that HD video has nearly become a standard and we decided to think beyond. Continuing the line of Channel 8,9,10 sites we drew a funky logo that fits the trend and is very straightforward for the user. Multifaceted TV is constantly changing, so everyone would be able to see something in various facets:

Then we came up with some soft and cozy version with a vintage TV and antenna. Here the logo is simplified and the idea is clear. Video-flow spills outside the box to the viewer, or maybe it’s just that there is a lot of it and it cannot fit into the box, or the content is so good that we cannot tell it apart from reality:

Inside Microsoft the logos have been severely debated. Fortunately no one got hurt and the TV set logo came out as the winner.

Tools: Wacom Bamboo Fun M Pen&Touch

Denis Kortunov — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:11:04 PST

Nearly every computer in our company has a graphics tablet connected to it. This fact is easy to explain, since we are all designers. Today yet another “pet” was adopted by our office: Wacom Bamboo Fun M Pen&Touch. I want to take this chance to share my personal impressions on this tablet.

I will start off with my personal relationship history with Wacom’s products. I have been using the tablets of this Japanese manufacturer for over 10 years. Originally I owned the first wacom intuos А5 that I used for quite some time. Then I upgraded to again the first intuos but size A4. Later I got back to size A5 since A4 was too bulky for me, and now I use Wacom Intuos 3 Medium. There was a time when the tablet served as a complete replacement for my computer mouse.

All these tables were from the professional line. And this may evoke a logical question: “Why in the World did you buy a tablet from a lower line for 8510 RUR, if you already own a pro-model for ca. 15000 RUR?” The point is that I am really attracted to the Touch function, enabling finger gestures in addition to the use of the pen. The tablet also claims to support multi-touch, which I have mastered using the notebook’s touchpad.

The package comes with a simple but elegant setup. The tablet and the packing have a pleasant plastic smell. Not like freshly unpacked Macs but still OK. I remember having troubles with a weird and inconvenient vertical packing in the past with all parts packaged into separate boxes.

The tablet turned out to have a very high quality touch and feel. It doesn’t look so neat on the pictures posted on the site. In reality it is much better – metallic glazing of plastic and a white glossy insert. The tablet comes with an ugly but handy pen, three anti-friction cores, a special ring for removing cores and a box with disks and the user’s manual. The good news is that there is no huge power adapter in the kit; the tablet is powered through USB. Also, the kit does not include a mouse. Finally the people at Wacom realized that nobody needs it!

With great disappointment I discovered that unlike my previous Wacoms the tablet was made not in Japan but in China. But still I hope that it will work just fine. There are so few parts that can fail there anyway.

One really notable feature of the tablet is the red Wacom label like the one on jeans. It turned out to be a special pen holder. This is a really ingenious idea: the pen will never get lost. But the traditional ink-holder is still more convenient for everyday work, especially when the table is cluttered with all kinds of very useful stuff.

The tablet fits ideally to all Apple’s stuff in terms of design. Here it is pictured with the Apple wireless keyboard. I think it would also look great with the Magic Mouse, if I had one.

The tablet detects multi-finger gestures. As far as I understood not more than two figures at a time, since the three-finger gestures do not appear in the settings. It is very convenient to rescale or rotate pictures. The tablet also works perfectly and precisely as one big touch pad.

I truly enjoyed the two-finger scrolling. This is the most important feature for me. I do a lot of web browsing, read various documents, so I do quite a bit of scrolling. If you work with a pen, you have to put it first and then reach out for the mouse’s scrolling wheel. Here, you also need to put the pen down but you do not reach for the mouse.

There are 4 buttons on the side. I programmed them like this:

Expose: show all windows
Expose: show desktop
Right-button click
Left-button click

Originally the first button was configured for turning the Touch mode on and off. I could not figure out the logic behind it, since once the pen touches the tablet, the latter detects it and works solely with the pen. Once the pen is lifted, the tablet starts reacting to finger gestures.

The main problem with the Touch mode is drag-and-drop. At first I was assisting myself with my left hand by continuously pushing a button (one of the four) with a click. But it turned out there is a smart way to do it: you need to quickly click on an object with your finger and drag instantly; this enables dragging. Selecting objects (text or pictures) is also inconvenient; however these are special cases of drag-and-drop.

Ups:

Low price (8500 RUR)
Multi-touch technology
Very pleasant rough tablet coating
Feels like a quality and durable thing (except for the pen)
Convenient scrolling
Excellent drivers (works perfectly with Mac OS – no extra setup required)

Downs:

No tilt adjustment against the desk
Inconvenient Drag&Drop
No vertical pen holder
Pen looks rather nasty and features no rubber holding band
Occasional errors with gesture detection

Conclusion. Excellent gadget for home or office use. Sophisticated artists or illustrators drawing on computers will not appreciate it of course. But it is the right thing for making curves in Illustrator or retouching photos. Good mouse replacement.

Journal: Basecamp turns 6

Denis Kortunov — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:33:06 PST

In our day-to-day work we use a very handy yet powerful tool Basecamp, the leading web-based project collaboration tool. We use it from the moment of its appearance and it seems like it happened quite recently, but in fact Basecamp is now celebrating its 6th anniversary.

We are glad to cordially congratulate 37signals, the “parents” of the system — Thank you, guys, your system helped us a lot! I will even reveal a secret: so far we have 346 completed projects logged in our system that we served to 208 companies all around the World. It’s awesome, honestly!

Identity: Infocont

Alex Stenshin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:18:59 PST

We have been approached by SMS-Automation, a company involved in automation of enterprises in power, petrochemical, food and other industries in various regions of Russia and CIS. We have been entrusted to create a logo and an application icon for Infocont software system.

First, we got really excited but then we realized how tough and responsible that mission was. Initially we had to grasp the functionality of this software system and its main purposes. It happened to be nothing less than an Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence solution. The logic behind such systems lies in reducing chaos and retrieving information from disorganized data by making it more convenient for processing. Such systems give users the possibility to move from an array of sporadic data with a vast number of interactions to a clearly structured picture of production processes.

So after our designers’ headaches subsided after all these complexities, we decided to draw some sketches.

Cthulhu sucking the information from the myriads of long and entangled tubes.
Pyramid split into levels. The pyramid itself serves as a good illustration of the idea of uniting data from various sources.
Simplified Cthulhu.
Simplified pyramid in a transparent sphere. The accents are slightly shifted here: the most important thing here is not hierarchy but the ability to rotate the shape in any direction and to view the information from any angle.

After a lot of deliberations suddenly the idea of Cthulhu and maritime theme drove our client to this:

You might want to think about using an octopus, which is not letting anything to pass by. It has one head and many tentacles and is able to retrieve a number of things at the same time (food, information, etc.). It may serve as a metaphor of integration and aggregation.

Aside from the animal theme and some obvious semantic match it features one clear advantage: we are creating a hero. It may appear in presentations, be distributed as a souvenir (you can buy a hundred of octopuses in a toy store and hand them out at some conference), or be used just for fun.
Andrey Shopin, SMS-Automation

Later we sketched out various octopuses balancing between funny-cartoonish and cruel-formidable images.

Then we drew a Windows icons in four sizes based on the sketches.

Then we drew an alarming login window.

As it happens Infocont system contains additional modules: Designer and Configurator. So we also created icons for these applications.

We are happy that Infocont’s logo turned out to be so bold and unusual. Honestly, it appears more like a character, but it is rather a benefit.

Journal: Portfolio Alternative Navigation

Denis Kortunov — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:37:26 PST

We have decided to slightly revise the concept of our site. Now we will be concentrating more on the portfolio, rather than on our blog. This makes sense considering the fact that we deliver services related to graphic design and we need cool clients. Moreover, our portfolio has become large and very attractive.

Through inhuman-like mind efforts we have come up with a cool contraption: now you can sift through our portfolio intros right on the home page. All you need to do is to point your mouse at the section you want and scroll back and forth using the popping up arrows. Isn’t that great?!