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11
Dec

off-topic : Tee-shirt design

by Tal Zubalsky on 4:37 pm 12 Comments

This is a bit off-topic, but I just submitted my t shirt design to threadless, and I’ll be glad if you check it out.
If by any chance you’re a registered threadless user – VOTE (and help get it printed)

Here’s my design : “The Texas Gardener”
The Texas Gardener

Thanks!
Tal.

Categories: Graphical Design — Tags: , —
30
Nov

Keeping it simple : Design and UI (2/5)

by Tal Zubalsky on 9:52 pm 4 Comments

This is the 2nd of 5 short posts about Octabox’s approach to simplicity.

One of our main guidelines during development is that the user’s information comes first. Nothing should stand in the user’s way to his information: not banners or alerts, not screen-blockers or any other graphical distractions.

We apply this principle by designing the UI to be as focused, simple and clear as we possibly can.

Octabox Dashboard
(click the image to view full size)

The main work-area is centered and white – hovering above the darker background, making it feel closer to the user. The navigation is placed on the top and the sides, not taking the eye’s focus from the main area – but still – remaining noticeable, quickly and easily accessible.

We try very hard to stay true to our principles while dealing with issues like:

  • Different screen resolutions (yes, some still have those 17″ CRT monitors running with 1024×768 …)
  • Fluid UI (yes, some work with that history bar docked to the left)
  • Cross-browser support (unfortunately, some still use Internet Explorer 6)

We don’t think minimalistic design takes the place of an aesthetic, modern design and the feedback we got so far on the UI has been confirming our believes.

We use less detail, graphic elements and visual load on the user’s eye to make the user feel the application revolves around him and his info, making it easier on the user to consume his relevant data easily and in a focused, productive way.

In my next post in this series, I will cover our simple approach to structure and logic.

Categories: Graphical Design, Web Development — Tags: , , —
30
Nov

Keeping it simple (1/5)

by Tal Zubalsky on 9:52 pm 0 Comments

No one wants complications. It’s as simple as that.

I’m Tal, one of Octabox’s creators, and Octabox’s designer and user experience specialist. I have learned animation and design and have been working in the field for 5 years specializing in web, UI and interaction design, as well as animation and post production for television and music videos.

In the following short posts I will elaborate a bit about our approach to simplicity in the various aspects of the development process:

  • Simple design and UI
  • Simple approach to structure and logic (Very soon)
  • Simple interactions and usability (soon)
  • Simple approach to sharing (soon)

We live by these principles day in and day out, trying our best to incorporate them into our products. We always keep them on the back of our minds in every step we take because we feel simplicity and focus are the key to a successful, useful service, to you – our users.

Categories: Graphical Design, Web Development — Tags: —
03
Sep

Octabox has a new logo and a launch date

by Eran Galperin on 1:04 am 4 Comments

It has been a long time since our last post here, and we’ve been busy as all hell (I especially moved on to writing mostly on my own personal blog). But we have been making steady progress towards a release (still self-funded by the way).

We have recently contracted a logo project at crowdSPRING, a community design site in which multiple designers submit concepts to design projects. Our project was a huge success (we hold the current record with 504 different submissions to our project), and we enjoyed the process immensely. You can check out our new logo at the site.

We also marked a release date for a our public version (yeah, finally!) - it’s September 30th. While nothing is guaranteed in life escpecially in web development, we are definitely on course to make this milestone.

With the new logo we will be redesigning our website soon, and also put up fresh and more relevant content on our service. We’ll keep you posted.

Categories: Graphical Design, Start up —
07
Apr

Octabox gets a facelift

by Eran Galperin on 4:55 am 4 Comments

The new layout went online today. This might sound ridiculus, but the previous design was supposed to be a temporary placeholder for a couple of weeks (and stayed for over 5 months…). Either way, we are very happy with the new concept and hope you will like it too.

I’ll just leave a teaser and say that this facelift extends much further into the platform (though its not on the public server yet). Stay tuned!

Categories: Graphical Design, Start up, Web Development —
20
May

Switching to a tab based design

by Tal Zubalsky on 7:45 pm 1 Comment

As many other web developers probably do – we encountered a layout problem: too much information to display on the page, too little horizontal space, and a strong desire to avoid scrolling when possible.

So, after a nice brainstorming meeting, with a few possible solutions in the air – we decided to give tabs a try. I took the concept and started playing around with it, trying to fit it to the rest of the design. As I went along, things very quickly fell into place, and most of it felt right.
After showing the first draft to my colleagues, it was obvious to all of us that it is the right step to take. So, after a few more rounds of fixes and tweaks, the design looks good, and the implementation of tabs begins.

The tab design has many up-sides:
- Functionality is clear and stays intuitive
- Much screen space is conserved for content (1-2 text lines instead of a menu column that takes up a significant chunk of vertical space)
- Spices up the design, adding some graphical elements that make the overall feeling more interesting.

Thus far I’ve encountered only one downside – fitting many different content panels with tabs – when there are more than 8-10 tabs, it starts to get a bit tight. But we’ll find the solution to that as well.

Here are the before and after designs:
No Tab With Tabs

That’s it for now,
Tal.

Categories: Graphical Design, Web Development —
14
May

Upgrading to Adobe CS3

by Tal Zubalsky on 2:46 am 0 Comments

I will start by introducing myself - I’m Tal Zubalsky, Octabox’s Lead Designer. This is my first blog entry here, so nice to meet you!
A couple of weeks ago I upgraded to Adobe CS3, and I’ve primarily worked with the new Flash and Photoshop releases since then.

As far as the work on the Octabox layout is concerned (which takes place mostly in Photoshop, a bit Illustrator too here and there) the new features don’t change or improve my workflow, basically because I just don’t use any of them for that kind of work.

On another project I’m working on, on the other hand, the new features in Flash and Photoshop, and the correlation between them really make a hell of a difference.
As a designer with a basic knowledge of actionscript (Flash’s Java-like scripting language) the road from designing a layout in Photoshop to having a fully functional interactive page in Flash, with animated transitions and buttons, is shorter than ever.

Some of the highlight features, for me at least :) :
(more…)

Categories: Graphical Design —