Angel Cafe, Gehry and Livingston Streets, San Francisco

So Tremblay and I are on a coffee shop crawl around San Francisco for the day while we work and I figured this may be a good exercise in setting myself up for quick blogging.

The Angel Cafe is a nice little place in the heart of San Fran. It has a very Mediterranean feel which is apparent as soon as you walk in the door. In addition to the usual coffee and pastries you can find olive leafs, hummus, falafel, and other Greek delicacies. There is a downstairs area with internet access and while sitting in the corner listening to classical music on the house radio you get more of a feel of Europe than you do SF.

This place is interesting to say the least, and certainly a unique change from trendy over priced coffee shops that are sprinkled all over the bay area. If you are in SF you should check this place out.

Stop 02-Cup-a-Joe

Cup-a-Joe on the corner of Sutter and Levenworth San Francisco

Stop 03-Nook Cafe

Nook Cafe on the corner of Hyde and Jackson, San Francisco

As a designer of interfaces I have to create wireframes in order to get a good idea of how all the elements of an app or website will fit into a defined pixel space. As I repetitively use the same elements like scroll bars, lists, buttons, tables, tabs, etc. it was natural that I would create Illustrator symbols to drag and drop into my wireframes. Over the past few projects I have tried my best to compile a decent library of elements that any designer, or user interface designer can use in their wireframes.

This download contains the symbol library and a full Adobe Illustrator file with all of the elements spread out on the art board. To install this library just drag and drop the file named “Wireframe Symbols.ai” into your Adobe Illustrator Symbols directory. Once you are in Illustrator go to your Symbols Palette and load the library.

This file is compatible on both Mac and PC. If you know others that would benefit from this file by all means send it along to them. I hope you enjoy the file and happy designing!

Download the File Here

Logo and Icon

Multiplex is an application for DVD management on the Mac. That app was developed with the notion that DVD media should be easier to keep track of as opposed to boxes sitting on a shelf next to your entertainment center. We wanted a clean easy to use interface that utilized Apple’s core animation in every aspect of the application.

Main Multiplex interface with roll over flyout.

I joined the team of Dave Martorana (lead developer), Jason Allum (co-developer) and Jason Tremblay (co-designer) as the creative director and interface designer. Tremblay and I worked closely on every aspect of the interface and how the user interacts. The stadium view interface was something we wanted since preliminary wireframes. We sat with the developers in abundance to get a good idea of how far we could push the design of the interface.

View of the Movie Details section of the Drawer

Elements displayed in the “drawer” were to be fully editable with the ability for the user to select different cover art provided by feed information from Amazon.com. The information in the drawer includes, running time, rating, cast and crew, and other meta data for each DVD.

Selection of move meta-data fed from Amazon.com

The icon was designed to be as sharp as the interface. Lots of concepts were considered but the final result was very distinguishable on the Dock. The large play button was originally designed to be in the app but was dropped after user testing of the interface. We loved the big button so decided to give it a little graphic treatment and voila Multiplex finally had an icon.

Animated search feature view

This project in particular is the biggest application interface design project I have worked on to date. It was a fantastic learning experience in Apple interface design and fortified my confidence in designing interfaces for desktop applications.

Final Logo for IndyHall Labs

About a year after IndyHall opened some of us decided we wanted to work on projects that “WE” wanted to do. The model for this became IndyHall Labs, and of course yours truly just needed to make a new logo for this, seeing as it was a totally different entity associated with IndyHall.

Quite simply the lab style beaker became the center of the design. The process of using Photoshop and Illustrator hand in hand was invaluable during the creation of this. I also had to make the beaker work as an icon because it would be used in various web, desktop, and iPhone apps we plan on building.

This is one of my favorite icons and it finally convinced me that I can be decent icon illustrator if I really wanted to be.

final logo for larger than life prints

Apparently there were a good many of you looking for my Eagles Wallpaper. A little glitch in my archives kept it hidden from the public. Ihave updated this post and re-released the wallpaper. I would have liked to update the wallpaper as well but with all the things I have going on right now, it would be a little difficult.

So here, on the day of yet another NFC Championship game with the Eagles, I give you the Eagles Wallpaper that you all have been looking for. Hopefully the Birds will find themselves on the winning end of this game and give us another shot at the Super Bowl!

Good luck to all the Eagles and hopefully all of you can display this wallpaper with pride for the next 3 weeks!

Tomorrow I will wrap up my Web Design I class, and this article from PSDTuts is such a great example for my students as they continue their studies in design and coding. The article focuses on the many faces of a decent web design template, exploring the diversity of a well prepared layout. It shows how one simple, clean structure of information can be used in an abundance of designs. It is a must read for any budding web designer and the detail the author places on his topic are second to none. Check it out here.

I have no excuses. I should be incorporating blog posts in my week just like I incorporate Tweeting. So I am going to give it a real effort. There have been a lot of resources and other things going on that I want to share with the community and my students.

The abundance of requests for Wallpaper Wednesday’s return has sparked this desire to post more. There has also been a lot of progress on the projects being worked on through IndyHall Labs and it is about time we got some more word out there to the masses.

I am really hoping I can get at least a post here a week in Wallpaper Wednesday. So keep hounding me folks. I hear the squeaky wheel and I am trying to fix it.

The past few days I have been getting requests, from my old site, to create a desktop version of the Phillies iPhone Wallpaper I created last year during the playoffs. Luck for all of you I had made a desktop version for myself and now I am giving it to all of you Phanatics!

So go on, show your support for the Fight’n Phils with this desktop!

click on the image to start the download

HorsePigCow.com is the blog of Tara Hunt, famed co-founder of Citizen Space in San Fransisco, and first lady of the Coworking movement.

After the release of Independents Hall’s logo and my involvement with the coworking community, Tara asked if I could make her site all kinds of pretty. I wanted to give the logo a very ornamented aesthetic. In keeping with the whole “farm” theme of a Horse, Pig, and a Cow. I illustrated a simple barnyard theme that would be the focus of the crest.

Once the logo was complete I started the Wordpress Theme which was inspired by the web design Gods at A List Apart. We tied the theme loosely to their layout mainly because it is driven by typography and makes the content beautiful.