Tales of a Designer

New Personal Project: TappGala

A little over a month ago I was helping a colleague find resources for UI design for the iPhone. Since he doesn’t own one, I was trying to link him up to a design gallery. There are a billion and one CSS design galleries, but oddly, I only found one iPhone design gallery. It didn’t seem like it was getting updated much, so I decided to design my own.

I had been posting a few shots on Dribbble as the design progressed, and now it’s finally ready to release into the wild. I kept thinking “What’s missing from this design?”, but the goal of the site is so basic that I kept coming up with blanks. I think for now, it’s get the job done in a simple manner.

I tapped David Mulder to help out with the development of the site. I’ve known him for years and thought this would be a good opportunity to work with him, and me focus more on the design.

The typeface I used for the logo and headers was Tungsten, which is easily becoming my new favorite typeface. This was my first time experimenting with the @font-face property, and it was easier than I thought it would be. The type rendering turned out much better than when I first used Cufon and sIFR on the site.

The icon set is called Iconic, which I also love, and am actually using on another project as well. While I’m glad the icons are free, I would have easily paid for them.

The minute I saw the Nivo Slider, I knew I wanted to use it for the individual app pages to cycle through screens. It’s one of the coolest sliders I’ve come across in a long time, and would definitely recommend it.

There are features that we want to add in the future, but we wanted to get the basics out of the door first. if there’s something that you think could add value to the site, feel free to comment here or through the TappGala contact page. And definitely submit app designs if there’s something you think we should have on the site.

So, go check it out, and let me know what you think.

A Few Thoughts on Dribbble

After months of reading about Dribbble, I finally got my invite, thanks to Mike Rundle. So far, I’m loving the site, and I can’t wait until it’s opened up to the public. For those that don’t know what Dribbble is, this basically sums it up…

Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. Share sneak peeks of your work as “shots” — small screenshots of the designs and applications you’re working on. via

So many times I’ve been working on new design projects, and want to share it, but usually it’s just too early to let the cat out of the bag. Dribbble fills that void because you’re only sharing smalls snippets of a design, which doesn’t reveal the whole thing. And you’re able to get feedback on it. Genius? Maybe not, but I sure hadn’t thought of only sharing a small chunk of a design. So that is very useful to me.

The other thing I’m impressed with is how far they took the concept of basketball for the whole site. The attention to detail shows quite a bit, even in their service update emails. All of the writing is very creative and always follows the overall basketball theme. I think that’s a little harder than it seems.

In the short time that I’ve been on the site, it’s been a great source of inspiration. I’ve been very impressed with design work I’ve seen on the site. That’s another reason I’m excited for it to open up to the public. I can see it being a valuable site for the design community.

So those are my quick thoughts. Are you on Dribbble? If so, let me know your username so I can follow. Mine is jwphillips. Looking to connect with more designers. I’ve also posted a few teasers of my next personal project that I’m working on, and will hopefully be launching in the next couple of weeks.

If you’re on Dribbble, what do you think of it so far?

Personal Project: Press Record

A few years ago, I had some thoughts on personal projects, but since then I hadn’t really started anything, until now. Back in early January, I downloaded the djay software to play around with it, recorded a mix or two live, and loved it. So it only seemed right that I do more of that, and make a project out of it. I designed a little teaser, not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but it was motivation for me get moving on the project.

In comes Press Record. So I don’t have to repeat myself, you can read more of the back story/concept on the welcome post on the site. But here’s the concept in a nutshell…

That brings me to the theme of this site. Just pressing record, and start mixing. All of the mixes here will be just that. via

The goal of the site is to post recorded mixes made on the fly. No more, no less. So I wanted the design to focus on that, which I feel I accomplished. There are a bunch of features that I thought about adding, but removed most of them because they just didn’t matter right now.

Give people just what matters. Give them what they need when they need it and get rid of what they don’t. via

The typeface used for the masthead/logo was Sugar Pie. I came across it a little over a year ago and fell in love with it. But I never had chance to use it because it didn’t really fit any of the client projects I had. For icons, I used a few from the Corner Stone set from Iconlicious.

I dipped my toes into CSS3 using some text shadow for the headers and text, and I’m very pleased with the outcome. I considered building the whole site in HTML5, but since browser support is so limited, I changed my mind. But the site is built in WordPress. I also decided that I’m not supporting IE6. This isn’t a client project, therefore, I just don’t care about those using IE6. Sounds harsh, but I just don’t want to waste time on those who continue using the worst browser on the face of the planet.

Future Plans

There’s a bunch of stuff that I want to add to the site in the future, depending on how the site is used, including playlists, a search, requests, and easier ways to share. I’d also like to work with other dj’s to contribute to the site, which could help expand the genre’s of music being played. I’d also like to polish the record button icon in the masthead. I’m not great at designing icons/logos so I want to either keep working on it, or pay someone to redesign it.

So there you have it. Head on over to Press Record and check out the first mix. I hope you like it. I’m very excited to start adding to the site.

I’m also open minded to design suggestions and such, so feel free to comment away about your thoughts.