Google Doodle for Martha Graham (American dancer and choreographer) left me awestruck by the animation of Martha dancing and the impressions by her movement form into word – Google. The smoothness of figure with drapes flowing so seamlessly kept me pressing F5 again and again to digest the flawless work. Especially when the character forms double ‘o’ by flying into the air and the closure with a  powerful leap.

Initially it seemed like a flash work till I realized it was animation using JavaScript with CSS sprites. By simply looking at the storyboard of this sprite the effort of the designer is clearly reflected.

Ryan Woodward has done an amazing job here in providing tribute to one of the greatest contemporary American dancer. His patent style of animating the human figures performing contemporary dance (conte animated) leaves viewer in mesmerized state.

Google Doodles are going some fantastic experiments for past few weeks – like the video on

122nd Birthday of Charlie Chaplin

and the 50th Anniversary of the First Man in Space

According to Nielsen analysis of consumer behavior suggests 70% of worldwide internet users watch videos online. And I agreed with them as I also most of the time while searching for a product demo, song, tutorial video, national/international advertisements just move towards youtube.com and when I’m looking for talks related to specific topics Vimeo is the way to go.

Younger the faster or Older the wiser?

Though Youtube is a year younger than Vimeo and surprisingly Youtube spread its wings more faster into this space. YT was the product created by 3 ex-employees of Paypal, who later sold it to Google. Now its one of the popular online video site. Youtube moved towards social networking mode allowing users to give comments, rate the video, give it a thumbs up, reply to comments on the wall, share self prepared videos, upload sitcoms, movies, recorded workshops and so on. YT has smartly merged the concept of eHow and Instructables within itself. Youtube simply advertises itself as ‘broadcast yourself’.

The community is totally formed by the users in partial wiki style. Nobody is checking on the uploaded data until its reported. It’s tricky to find the correct data you are looking for on YT till you know it.

On the contrary Vimeo ‘Video Sharing For You‘ precisely allows users to uploaded the videos which are created by them and not any commercial or objectionable videos. They strictly follow the copyright policies due to which vimeo users can enjoy the freedom of uploading a 45min or more video, while Youtube always got caught into legal issues for not moderating the data and in the end resulted with introducing a policy that users with basic account can’t upload more than 10mins of video.

The magnetic point for Vimeo was their HD channel supporting high resolution videos (which is now provided as a basic feature by all the similar sites including YT) but with the changing time Vimeo is also expanding and providing forum to collaborate with other members and create a fun based video, Pick a community of your interest and share the video just with them, want your video to be showcased? put it into the shoutbox and the moderators take the charge then.

If you are a quality oriented video watcher Vimeo gives the experience in just one click and if you are looking for reaching broader audiences and have time in hand to explore then YouTube is your path. Though YT production of video is not as crisp as of vimeo but based on wide range of available data it has 1.2billion users on average day, while Vimeo has 1 million takers for quality.

Select as per the experience you are looking for!

- Color me blind by Extreme

The way design community is growing now days it’s not surprising as the web & mobile world now understands the importance of designers. It’s no more just about adding colors but a lot more goes into applying right color combination at the right place. Bunch of tools are available on the web to help designers do their tasks more efficiently. I have selected 3 best sites to avoid any cross-weaving of thoughts, which I feel are helpful in creating a wide range of color palettes apart from our dear old favorite ones (I believe each designer has at least one special magical color palette of their own, which saves us during a rainy day)

A must for beginners – ColorBlender

Simple easy to use color blender scale. Allows to quickly Create, Save and Load color palette for Photoshop (in .ACT format) and Illustrator (.EPS)

A must for passionate designers – Color Scheme Designer

The best feature I found in this, it allows you to see a sample template in lighter and darker tones of the selected palette. I wish I knew about this site during the days I had struggled to get that perfect color shade. For detail oriented designers, this site provides various options to choose, starting from complementary to analogical colors, adjustment of contrast & shadows, saturation & brightness and a lot more. For those who love to experiment and play with colors, this is what you want.

Heaven for color lovers – COLOURlovers

A dream come true for designers who are interested to share not only colors but hop on to the next stage of shapes and forms. A global design community where one can discuss any color under the sun, share palettes, patterns and discuss design trends. Highly recommended for designers who believe in community work.

I would be happy to review and include any good color tool, which can help our design community. Keep the suggestions pouring as always

Other posts on color:

• http://deepikadutta.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/color-challenge-for-designers/
• http://deepikadutta.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/how-to-design-a-logo/

iPhone

• Mock-up Stencil for Balsamiq users http://mockupstogo.net/iphone-in-app-social-networking
  This stencil has additional Twitter and Facebook screens.
• You can also upgrade your version for iPhone mock-ups from http://balsamiq.com/blog/2009/03/01/iphone-controls-new-icons-and-much-more/
• Photoshop file for visual designers http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2010/06/14/iphone-gui-psd-v4/

iPad

• Mock-up Stencil for Balsamiq users http://mockupstogo.net/ipad-controls
• Photoshop file for visual designers http://aceinfowayindia.com/blog/2010/02/free-apple-ipad-psd-file-download/

Android

• Mock-up Stencil for Balsamiq users http://mockupstogo.net/android-controls
• Photoshop file for visual designers http://www.matcheck.cz/androidguipsd/

I’ll keep on adding more posts which would expand this repository and our design community. Would love to hear if it was helpful

Frantically searching multiple photo-stock sites in different tabs and the ticking minutes just add to the aggravation. Still we are just not able to get the right shot with the right background. Looking at the heavily designed backgrounds in an image with the thought of extracting an object from it gives goose pimples to some of the designers.

I found a very helpful tutorial which provides different techniques for extracting the object quickly http://wegraphics.net/tutorials/photoshop/photoshop-for-beginners-techniques-to-extract-anything-from-its-background/

Key to get the job done => Use the right tools at the right time.

I quickly tried to extract an image from background using one of the techniques and below are the results. Bit of practice and a careful execution would lead to better and flawless output.

Original Image

Background Removed

New Background Added

Know your tools right and the activity might just take 5 to 15 minutes maximum, depending on the complexity of a photograph.

You can also download iPad wallpapers from below links:

Freedom Unleashed Wallpaper – Landscape (1024×768)

Freedom Unleashed Wallpaper – Portrait (768×1024)

I am sure there are many among us who are absolutely creative, and are full of ideas. However, the creativity falls short if it is not expressed the way its envisioned. And here’s where the tools that we use and our knowledge about them holds prime importance. It’s the tools that help bring our creativity to life. This very thought gave me a new direction to add in my blog – Quick Tips Category

Following is a quick tip of using the tools more efficiently.
Changing fonts/measurements from points to pixels (or) reverse in Photoshop

There are 2 ways of changing the Units:

Method A -

Open an image, Right Click on the Ruler to change units. If ruler is not visible press Ctrl+R

Method B -

Open an image, Double click on the Ruler, which will open ‘Preference’ pop-up. Alternatively you can go to Edit > Preferences > Units & Rulers

This not only changes the ruler for your file but also the font sizes too. These methods set your preference for all future files and you don’t need to change the units with every file.

Just a simple selection and designer’s life is easy

There was a time when almost every household product globally was associated with a mascot but over the years either some of the brands have dropped their mascots or rarely use them as a part of marketing documents (Note: only marketing documents, not products)

Since childhood I have been seeing them around and thought people could easily relate to the word mascot (the face that speaks a thousand words). But my earlier blog was an eye opener where I realized very few people today understand or relate to mascots. Maybe the difference is in observation a person builds since childhood.

Over the years, I saw the mascots fading and then came the trend when everyone starting creating a mascot for their brand. Immediately looking at them, it just clicked to me how mascots have moved to web in this web2.0 era. My earlier post was targeted at Website Mascots, so here’s the flashback of some mascots which existed during our growing years. Going back to the memory lane might be interesting for some of us, and make us more observant in today’s life.

Telecom Brand Mascot which was allowed to be a part of lifestyle products. Till now Mascots have been strongly visible on merchandising items only. Vodafone is the only brand which allowed its mascot ‘ZooZoo’ on products to a lifestyle brand.

Domestic and Industrial Paints:

The famous Indian Cartoonist R K Laxman’s creation of Mascot for Asian Paints ‘Gattu’

‘Goody the Tiger’ – friendly and smiling mascot remained with Nerolac paints for 30 strong years, till company planned for an image makeover.

Food & Beverages:

Pepsico licensed the popular cartoon character Fido Dido worldwide for its lemon drink ’7Up’ .  The sleek young funky character became extremely popular though its animated television ad series and soon was seen on lunch boxes, schoolbags, video games, stationary items, T-shirts, 7Up cans/ bottles and is additionally available as mobile wallpapers too. FD with its universal appeal has also been one of my favorites since childhood.

Being in the industry from 1988 this trendy character has come a long way and is still going strong. In the web2.0 time FD has created its space on Twitter, Youtube and Myspace to name a few.

Amul - the largest food company in India, launched  the first Amul hoarding during 1967 in Mumbai. Mumbaikars witnessed the hoarding sporting a young girl in red polka dot frock with ‘Utterly butterly delicious’ jingle. Amul mascot messaging continues to be subjective till date with a tone of humor. For those interested to read the complete story of Amul

Jollibee the bee mascot for a fast food chain of Philippines, introduced by the brand in 1980 is the most widely recognized character in the Philippines.

McDonald’s ‘Ronald’ our very own friendly clown and famous name after Santa, has been the most recognized mascot among kids and elders. The smiling clown is often seen around McDonald’s doing tricks and playing with kids.

M&M’s colorful round shaped candies being a product of Mars originated in the United States around 1941. The computer animated “spokescandies” mascot was launched along with a new campaign commercial by M&M.

These digital characters were created in different colors representing different flavors like – ‘Yellow’ peanut candy mascot depicts the happy and innocent nature while ‘Red’ milk chocolate candy exhibited the ironic character.

Pillsbury Doughboy mascot was the brain child of Leo Burnett ad agency . The little dough chef is now seen globally on all the Pillsbury products, giggling and blinking his blue round eyes in the commercials for Pillsbury cookies, flours, pancake mix and many others.

Mr. Clean a brand of Proctor & Gamble is an household cleaner. The smiling muscular man with a ring in one ear, makes him resemble like genie spreading the magic in a whirl.

Kelvinator, a global brand came with an appealing tag line ‘the coolest one’ supported with penguin mascot lost its appeal when it got sold to Whirlpool. It was the sad ending of the coolest penguin.

‘Maharaja’ of Air India airlines, is a creation by JWT and became a famous identity of Indians overseas. The King of Mascots symbolizes ‘Maharaja’ (king) like treatment to the airline travelers.

Energizer’s pink bunny mascot beating a band continuously in a commercial grabbed the interest of users in North America but could not excite the Indian market. This is one brand which has different mascots for Europe and Australia – the pink bunny has been replaced with the muscular human like battery mascot, since these part of the globe were already running ads for the Duracell pink rabbit.

Sports Mascots:

Commonwealth Games 2010 mascot was released in a special launch of stamps in India. The human like tiger mascot with folded hands is called ‘Shera’. The athletic skill with power and grace is what this mascot reflects.

Commonwealth Games 2006 held in Melbourne had Karak, the red tailed black cockatoo as their mascot

Atlanta Olympics for the year 1996  had ‘Izzy’ as the event mascot

Olympic Mascot for 1988 was  ‘Hodori’

You can also see some more of Olympic mascots

Mascots for Software products:

Linux Mascot – The name of the penguin mascot is “Tux the Penguin”. The story goes that father of Linux (Linus Torvalds) mentioned his liking towards penguins, during the time when everyone was trying to invent a name for the operating system. Linus’ one statement stopped all speculations and the name was finalized. Interestingly in the linux community the name of someone that uses Linux is called a Penguinista.

I’ll keep adding more examples as and when I encounter them and in case you happen to find any, do shoot me an email or put a comment on this page, I’ll be delighted to publish it

The Website Mascots (Part I)

Nowadays we see a lot of sites using mascot for their companies. I like it! It’s a nice way to represent the image of the brand and just by looking at the mascot, instantly a relation is built between the user and the brand.

Some mascots are integrated with the logo while for some sites mascot plays the role of a guiding character:

For a brand name like twitter, the birdie mascot is a representation of the concept – the birdie tweets around the web space.

Silverback usability testing application has a Guerrilla mascot on the very homepage to welcome the visitors

Application launch screen

Website homepage

In freelancer/ personal sites the mascot is designed as a digital avatar of the person:

In the web world everyone wants to see the face of the person they are interacting with, due to which the avatars are being consumed like hot cakes and in the current generation, who does not want to go for global identification AKA ‘Gravatar’.

Existence of Mascot before web2.0:

It seems, not only in these times, but earlier also, mascot has always been a symbolic figure that gives an identity to the brand.

Take the case of the roaring ‘Lion’ for American media company MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer) that we have been seeing since ages. It is a well established mascot.

‘Ronald’ our very own friendly clown and famous name after Santa, has been the most recognized mascot for McDonald’s.

Mascots in web2.0 era:

Interestingly designers have now moved away from real life characters to fun loving non-naturalistic mascots. Such mascots are seen playing around the web page with amusing expression and web users are loving the new found friendly fantasy characters.

Prior to web 2.0, the companies would sue if someone tried to modify their mascot, but now the companies are happy to see their mascots being played around, as it makes their brand more popular. Not only this but brands do push similar contests, allowing the users to create mascot oriented icons, wallpapers, blog themes and so on.

So, can you think of other mascots which have brought recognition to a brand, so much so that the brand logo got eclipsed by it’s mascot.

One of the best example in today’s world is none other than Twitter. Just have a look how people have “creativized” the birdie mascot, and trust me, this is just the tip of an iceberg.

Few more samples of contemporary mascots:

http://www.krolikov.net

http://world.waze.com

http://mivokids.pl/

http://dharmafrog.com/

http://www.cyclo.ps/

http://www.japonshop.com

http://ignatynikulin.com/

http://www.torgraphics.com/index.php

http://sparxtechnologies.com

http://www.nybbletech.com

http://www.thinkorange.pt/

https://www.mochimedia.com/

http://www.mailchimp.com

http://www.komodomedia.com

http://www.hellobard.com/

http://www.hdlive09.co.uk/

http://grinparties.com/

http://www.bizbreakapp.com/

http://aviary.com/

I have taken this post as a base for my next post, and you can see the results in The World of Mascots, Revisited (Part II)

With every new launch of Google product I wait to see Google product demo videos – Not that the products are complicated but I have always loved to watch them. Hats off to the creative team who continuously strive for more and still not make the storyboard complex. A treat for the designer’s senses Google Buzz Demo

Conceptually I love everything about Google videos but somewhere in my mind while watching the demo of Google buzz  – the butterfly concept in the video reminded me of MSN logo (maybe due to my association with msn client few years back)

There is a striking similarity between the Google buzz logo and MSN logo

Google buzz logo – Derived from old / new msn logo?

1) Graphical element: The sequence of red, blue, yellow and green are the replication from msn existing logo, just the yellow and green colors have been swapped, similar to the old msn logo. The color of top wings (new logo)combined with bottom two wings of MSN butterfly(old logo) results into buzz logo

2) Font color: Color used for ‘buzz’  seems to have been lifted from msn old logo.

Buzz logo now looks like a caged butterfly to me!