Suite XVI logo

I'm working on a common profile for all of Copyleft along with it's products. It's quite a big job, but it's also lots of fun since I'm in full control. There are at least 3 companies, 5 products and maybe 10 smaller systems, each with it's own logo, website, etc. Comments are appreciated.

Suite XVI is a platform for making asset management systems. An asset can be just about anything, people, cars, computers, training courses. The platform is design to be easy to implement and very flexible. To be honest, we don't quite know what the limitations are for it.

Here's the logo:

Editorial Mapas site launched

Today we launched a new site, www.editorialmapas.com, for the company who makes the Travesias travel magazine. Strange design, but I like it.

Anual FIX/Copyleft Julebord

Yesterday was the anual FIX/Copyleft christmas party. Enjoy.

¡Soy Contento!

Today we're launching a new website for one of our productized systems, now called Contento in homage of it's Mexican origins. It's a CMS system and altough we still have a lot of work to do on the polish, it has quite a nice admin interface compared to alot of things we've looked at.

I'm hoping this will be the first of many launches during my stay in Norway. One of our most defined goals for 2008 is to get several of the many systems we have running for our clients made into a real product.

Any comments about the name, logo and site are welcome.

Our work

Getting together a decent portfolio of your work is always hard. First you need clients, then you need to make sure the projects are actually launched and then you need to sit down and take the damn screenshots. Today I started to play around with ViewBook which at least helps with the last part.

Large view

What is web design?

A list apart can sometimes be a bit tedious and arrogant, but today they have an article which perfectly sums up what we, in the web industry, struggle to explain to our clients. Web design is not the same as poster design. It's not about finding the right color palette and slapping on a logo and some stock photo.

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

This will become my mantra from now on.

New colors for kabin.no

Things are starting to roll on the buisness side of things now and I've been in and out of meetings these last 3 days and hopefully we'll start working on something very soon. In the meantime I've been helping Copyleft Software with some design work for a client of theirs, kabin.no

Basically I'm redoing the color schemes to help with readability and to make sure that there is a logic behind the color palette. In this case I'm using two thirds of a triad based on their logo and I did it using a nifty online application by Adobe called kuler.

Less is More: A guide to simple, user-centric, bullshit-free web development

I've finished my paper on the Less is More web development method. I think it covers most of the important points I have to make on the subject. I'm passing it around now, hoping that someone, somewhere will have feedback so that I know how to improve it. It borrows on things I've picked up in other workplaces (alterbrain and abargon especially) as well as the 37Signal book Getting Real and 10 years of personal experience.

Download it here

10 days and counting

Expectations for the trip back to Norway are still high although the weather in Oslo is beginning to worry me a bit. So far I've managed to get though 3 minor crisis dealing with the move involving my father, my wife and my bank account without backing out of it. I've begun to realize that I have a fair amount of fear hidden somewhere in my subconscious and it seems to be seeping into the planning stages of the experiment.

For anyone not up-to-date, on the 16th of November I'm heading for Oslo to live and work with the head of Copyleft Software for at least 3 months. The goal of the stay is to finish several software products which are suffering from usability and design issues. As a side-project I'm also going to try to get a small off-shore business running, selling to Norwegian customers the work we can do in Mexico.

My going-away party is set for next Sunday and the plan is to invite people over to my place for some food and maybe a bit of beer/wine. I made this adorable invitation:


In other news my blog is now in English and moved to Google. I've probably lost the older stuff unless Paola V. can provide some sort of backup I can input here. I've managed to restart my "book" project about the "menos es más" method. It's now called Less is More and looks to become more of a long article rather than a book (is there an official limit or definition to what is considered a book?). I'm hoping to have a draft ready to bring to Norway and get someone to help polish it before uploading it somewhere.