It’s an old motto that, the more information you can give a designer, the better the final design will be. This is especially true in the case of the audience. One of our key audiences, which is near and dear to my heart, is the video game community. I’m of the generation that came of age with the Atari 2600 and hung out in dark arcades dropping quarters, so it’s an audience of which I’m a member. Designing for yourself is always fun and whenever I get a project targeting at gamers I dive right in.

There are a few things that will always peak the interest of a gamer and at the top of my list is robots (others include ninjas and monkeys — both completely viable options). Access Communications hosts an annual party at the gaming industry’s biggest trade show E3 and I was tasked with developing some email invitations for the event. Naturally, I developed, designed and wrote the copy for the invites using a robot theme. The key concept of the 2009 invite was that the event would feature alcohol dispensing robot. After a hard day trudging around the trade show, everyone’s ready for a drink and it seemed natural to combine the two ideas. Of course, the whole idea is meant to be taken as tongue in cheek humor — there would be no actual alcohol dispensing robots at the event (but we can dream). The invite was met with success and even got picked up and posted by the online gamer press which is always a good sign.

When this year’s event rolled around, the team and I brainstormed and narrowed it down to two themes: pirates (another gamer fave) and a continuation of the previous year’s robot concept. The pirate theme centered around a skull and crossbones logo I developed (more on that at another time), but it didn’t have a story behind it. Crafting a compelling story is another key to getting the audience to engage and without a story (or time to develop one), the pirate concept got shelved.

I was also completely intrigued with the idea of continuing the robot story from the previous year. It’s rare that we get the opportunity to tell long arc stories and to continue the conversation with the audience. So many projects are just one time affairs soon to be forgotten. For the follow up invite, I wrote copy that directly referenced the previous year’s invite and moved the story forward. The invite was met with a ton of positive feedback and although it did not get picked up by the gamer press, it had a more substantial impact — Access had to increase the budget for food and booze to accommodate the increase in RSVPs.

Here’s sample screens from the two invites and each links to the full invitation:

E3 2009 Invitation

E3 2010 Invitation

Here’s a few of the comments the team received on this year’s invitation:

• “I will try to make it unless the robots get me first”
• “FINALLY, ROBOTIC BEINGS RULE THE WORLD”
• “Please RSVP me for this event, even though I will have to order drinks from a filthy human and not from a precision calibrated robot”
• “It just won’t be the same without the drunk robots, but I’ll still be there!”

Coming in Part Two: What I designed for the events themselves.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it. Every summer I end up working on projects that are promoting something for the winter holidays. The old phrase is “Christmas in July” and I never cease to find it weird. It may be 90+ degrees outside, but I find myself drawing snow.

Here’s some samples from this summer’s big winter project. They’re from a Sony PlayStation fourteen page booklet I designed and illustrated. I really like the way the cover came out and no one can resist Sackboy.

For an added bonus, one of the pages of the booklet got picked up in the gaming press and posted online — starting a huge debate (i.e., flame war) regarding Sony’s new motion controller.

Here’s a poster I’ve been drawing up for the upcoming holiday weekend. It’s about 90% complete, but I wanted to post a preview before the holiday. There’s still some minor tweaks to do, but I think it’s looking good. I’m thinking of using it as a foray into screen printing — actually working with a printer to get a limited edition run on a nice paper stock. The hard part will be pairing down the colors. I tried to keep it to four colors, but kept coming up with other ideas — and that was before I started working on the texture for the background. In any case, I think I get a version that is somewhere around 4-6 six colors for screen printing (although that’s still a lot). It’s 22″ x 28″.

Sometimes meaning is unintended. Here’s an example I ran across recently that couples hand written text and improper installation to create new meaning.

It’s from a panel of scaffolding on a neighborhood home renovation. Obviously, the panel has been installed upside down and the text is supposed to read, “520 W.”

Instead, when viewed upside down — and very importantly, with the specific handwriting — it now reads, “Moes”

There’s something wonderful in how the “2” transforms into a lowercase “e” right in the middle of what appears to be an all uppercase word. And the number “5” doesn’t always make a good capital letter “S” but yet it works in this case. Additionally, there appears to be no space between the zero and the “W” helping to create a single word. All very accidental and more wonderful for the fact.

Beyond typography and design, it also made me think of “Moe’s Tavern” from The Simpsons.

Mmm…beer.

Now, I’m am in no way a specialist in user interface design, but as a designer and more importantly as a user, I find this example to be particularly annoying.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Look closely at the positions of the “Next” and “Previous” buttons. See what I’m getting at? In our western, left to right reading world, the “Next” button should be on the right to indicate, well, the next item. Items position on the left indicate “back” or in this case “Previous”. Look at the position of the back button on your web browser. On the left, correct? And the forward button on the browser? Yeah, it’s on the right.

For someone unknown reason, the buttons used in this interface are reversed. And it’s annoying. Not that I spend time clicking the wrong button, but more that I have to actually take a second to ensure I’m clicking the correct one. It’s a small detail, but why would you go against convention and standards and make your product more confusing to use.

Some background on the example. It’s from a product called eRoom from EMC which is basically a web based content management system. The interface isn’t the only flaw — they call the Windows-only .EXE application a “plugin” and they do not yet, despite many years on the market, have a Macintosh version of the app. Mac users (such as myself and my team) can still use the CMS — but without many of the features of the full application.

This is exactly the kind of thing corporate users are forced to deal with on a regular basis. Software that seems to be missing key thinking in it’s initial design. It’s what they complain about (and I hear them). You don’t need a focus group or a board meeting to figure out that the “next” button is intuitively in the wrong position. You need a designer.

Sometimes good design is the product of true inspiration.

Sometimes good design is a matter of trial and error.

I’ve recently become acquainted with a product that I think expresses both of these in a single package of form and function.

It looks absolutely beautiful and yet still manages to function with precision.

It’s beauty was instantly apparent when I first used it. It’s function slowly revealed itself over time as time after time it worked perfectly.

It’s a Tiffany’s crystal decanter.

From the first time I filled it with a fine single malt, the reflected light from the decrative cuts and the amber liquid even impressed my wife — although like many women, she expected nothing less from a Tiffany’s product.

And as I filled, the first part of the functionality became evident. The decanter holds exactly one entire 1.75ml bottle of booze.

The function brought to my mind a sense of history as I imagined scores of well-heeled people using the decanter. The rim of the decanter, along with cradling the stopper, serves to catch the last drop of liquid and gently guide it back into the decanter. Genius — and for those of us drinkers on a budget, practical.

That little detail, that little piece of functionality won me over completely. (Sipping fine scotch while admiring it and contemplating it’s functionality didn’t hurt either.)

And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the lovely young couple who gave us this fine Tiffany’s decanter as a wedding present, the eminent Dr. and Mrs. Robert Epstein. Thanks guys!