My cat, Windy, is up for adoption. I hate to do this, but circumstances force me to. I adopted her together with my ex girlfriend about two years ago, when she was still a kitten. She’s thusly about two and a half years old, black and white, short-haired. She’s been sterilized and vaccinated, and had a check-up just a week ago and seems to be in good health.

She’s a lovely cat, friendly and playful. She likes to sleep in my arms when I work, or at my feet when I’m resting. She’s a bit scared of strangers, but once she gets to know you she’ll be the most affectionate cat in the world.

The main reason I’m giving her away is that, because of a change in family situation back home, I might have to travel a lot more next year, and I might also have to leave Singapore on short notice. I think the apartment I’m in currently is too small for her, and before I move again, I will have to be out of Singapore for 2-3 weeks. I therefore feel it would be better to find someone who can take care of her, instead of bouncing her between friends and cat-sitters over the next year. Since I will move out of Singapore as well, I most likely need to sort this out sooner or later, and sooner is probably better for the cat.

I would have preferred to give Windy back to my ex girlfriend, but she’s unable to take her in at the moment. It breaks my heart to have to do this to someone who has become a family member, but at this point in time, I don’t see much other choice.

Please let me know if you or anyone you know has room for a cat.

Thanks.

Since Photoshop is the application I spend most of my time in, I figured that perhaps I should share a bunch of the things I’ve done to tweak my GUI experience, and that I now probably couldn’t live without:

1. Home made grids…
   Since I use Photoshop to mockup websites, I need to use a grid to line stuff up. The show/hide guides can only do so much, and until Adobe gives me the option to colour code the guides, I usually resort to designing my own ones and put them in their own folder.
2. …and how to show and hide them
   Now, the tricky thing is that there’s no easy way to show/hide these grids, so I wrote a javascript that looks for the folder with my grids (that I’ve named GRID), and shows it if it’s hidden and hides it if it’s visible. Then I use the actions panel to tie a shortcut to the script, in my case F1.

   

3. Shape layers…
   I love shape layers, but most people don’t agree with me on the grounds that they tend to attach themselves to fraction of pixels, and that usually leads to a lot of fixing afterwards. Luckily there’s a hidden option to make them snap to pixels. Unfortunately, this option only works well for rectangles and not (yet) for lines. You will want to enable this checkbox.

   

4. …also work as masks…
   One thing I find myself using more and more lately is using shape layers as masks. This is not, perhaps, as much a GUI thing as a personal workflow thing, but if you haven’t tried it yet, do! Not only do they work on individual layers, but also on groups. Easiest way to do it is to create a new shape layer, then drag and drop the vector mask to another layer or group, and delete the shape layer.

   

5. …and their shapes can be grouped!
   In a big, complex photoshop document for a webpage, 100 or more layers are not uncommon. Sure, you can always group together layers into smart objects (which I don’t find myself doing as often anymore). One sweet thing you might wanna try if you draw, for instance, a lot of lines as shape layers is to instead of duplicating the layer, just duplicate the actual shape with the Path Selection Tool (a). This way, you select the whole group of lines with the tool, and can change the width of them all at once.

   

6. More keyboard shortcuts
   There are also a bunch of shortcuts that I’ve created to make my life slightly easier: ctrl-apple-c and ctrl-apple-v to copy/paste layer styles from one layer to another, and ctrl-apple-z to delete a layer. I also always change the default settings so that apple-z is Step Backward (not undo/redo) whereas shift-apple-z is Step Forward, but that’s probably just me. Change these settings in the Keyboard Shortcuts in the Edit menu.
7. Layers, groups and naming
   My partner Patrick and I have a nomenclature system where we name folders with upper case letters and layers with lower case. The point of this is that when you right click with the Move Tool (v), you can browse the layers under the cursor. This way the folders show up more clearly in the tree structure.
8. Curse you, Quick Mask!
   And lastly, one of the things that used to annoy the hell out of me was enabling the Quick Mask by mistake by pressing the Q key (supposedly trying to press A or Tab). This makes a lot of things stop working, especially selecting layers with apple-click or using the path selection tool, and the only visual cue you get is that the Edit in Quick Mask icon in the bottom of the toolbar is highlighted. To fix it, go to the Keyboard Shortcuts and disable the darned thing.

Feel free to share your own tricks. I’m always looking for ways to make my life easier.

A Sample Grid
The Toggle Layer Visibilty script (place in your Photoshop/Presets/Scripts folder)

If you’re like me (which I hope to God, for both our sakes, that you’re not), and sometimes sit around designing web sites to make ends meet, you might find yourself in need of simple UI elements for your beautiful Photoshop sketches. Since all I could find online were rasterized ones, I put together my own, albeit very Mac OS X inspired, elements as shape layers, which means they’re easily modifiable and scalable.

I didn’t want to copy Aqua completely, so your lovely client will go “but how will it look on Windows?”, but tried to keep it a little more generic.

Use them for good, modify them and create beautiful things. And let me know if you have any feedback.

And if you need cursors, I have a bunch put away with your name on them.

Download UIElements.psd.zip from my iDisk (thanks for the not-so-free space, Apple!)

The (no longer very) new official site for public transport in Singapore has been online for about six months now, and while it still lacks some of the functionality, it’s an interesting site to look at from a design perspective. We at Supershapes did a small presentation for the LTA about brand design integration for public transport, and this site redesign was a part of a bigger presentation that I may post at some point in the future.

What first struck me when I looked at publictransport.sg is that it doesn’t look anything like the design that has been (sort of) implemented through the public transport network of Singapore. It looks more like IDA’s Wireless@SG, though it might be the name and the misused @-sign that seems to be ever so popular on government websites and condominiums (like, unfortunately, mine). This is not public transport at Singapore but public transport in Singapore.

So what has happened here is what seems to be happening in general when agencies develop sites, they create a completely new look and feel, disregarding the fact that it dilutes the brand, the information experience and thus confusing the users. The “symbol for the integrated public transport system” is strangely missing, the colours are green but completely the wrong shade, and they use a blue that’s almost LTA purple, yet not. They also refrain from using the official bus and train icons, and have instead created a new set of icons that has no reference to the information system already in place.

Lastly, of course, there are a lot of visual glitches, strange features and no integrated journey planner (although I hear some people are working on that). I also think the map is way too prominent for something that is not very useful in that sense. So while I was prepping some other stuff in the public transport brand presentation, I decided to take a day to look at how I would improve publictransport.sg.

1. Starting with the obvious - the top. As previously mentioned, the site should look and feel like the design already in place on maps, time tables and other information design for public transport in Singapore, using the symbol, the right colours and the right fonts. That doesn’t mean you can’t give it its own identity, yet still retain the recognition from the rest of the network.
2. Navigation. I don’t quite understand the general favoring uppercase text in the navigation, since it really decreases legibility not vice versa. I also think the structure of the site could be thought through more thoroughly.
3. The Journey Planner. Well, this is not available on the site yet, and the only link is to the previously mentioned one that TransitLink has. Yet, this will probably be the most important feature on the future site, and should be in the most prominent location.
4. The promo space (picture borrowed from Flickr, can’t find the URL right now). Here’s a great chance to create some brand value for the network. Instead of highlighting the service aspect, this space could be used to promote the more emotional values that you want to be associated with public transport. Like, in this case, discovery, and how you can explore Singapore with the help of the public transport network. I’ve borrowed this idea from sl.se, the Stockholm Public Transport Network website.
5. The two promotion spaces. This is where you’d promote your new services or features.
6. Realtime Information. There’s a description there already, but basically, it’d be nice to be able to just key in my location and see the real time information for buses or trains.
7. Service Interruptions. It might be good to know if you’re shutting down Orchard Road over CNY, if there’s a huge traffic jam affecting the network or if Bus 167 is being reverted.
8. “I need some help with…” might be a good way to pick out a few FAQs and link deeper into the site structure.
9. Latest News. Well, this is being used rather poorly at the moment. People using this site are probably not at all interested in news regarding the LTA and its tenders. Instead this should feature news related to public transport.
10. More services. A place to collect the MRT maps, the (somewhat hard to use) Key Bus Services Maps and other resources for download. That doesn’t mean that we should have unlabeled pdf links on the front page though.

That’s it for now. Of course I have a couple of more ideas for the subpages, and this is just a one day sketch that I thought would never see the light of day, but these are some of the basics that I think they should consider if and when they decide to redesign publictransport.sg.

And Supershapes and I’ll of course be more than willing to come in and help you out, LTA!

I recently spent way too much money on a gadget I probably neither need or can use properly, but I figured I needed something expensive to keep me exercising. In retrospect, I think it might have been a better idea to wait for Nokia to release their Bluetooth HRM that works with their already pretty good service Sportstracker.

Anyway, after realizing that my new HRM only supports IR, that my Macbook Pro doesn’t have proper IR, and that I have to use the darn thing with Windows anyway since Polar refuses to make Mac software (stupid slackers!) I needed to pick up a USB-to-IRDA device. I found a cheap-ish no-brand one at Challenger for $S15.00 (this guy), but the drivers that came with it were for some random portuguese mp3-player. I ended up trawling the web for the drivers for 3 hours before finally figuring which company that manufactured it, and emailed them. They replied with a completely empty email subjected “drivers” from a nondescript address, with four attachments that I almost threw away fearing they were viruses. But lo and behold, they worked just fine.

Seeing as I spent so much time searching for the damn drivers, I figured I’d put them up here. Hopefully someone who needs them find them useful.

ds620.rar
ks959.rar (the one i used)
MA-620.rar
ww-600.rar

If you ever wondered what it is that we do at Supershapes, perhaps it’s time you check out the presentation I’ve spent the last few weeks on whipping together with one of my colleagues.

There’s also a more visual presentation available as a pdf, if big words scare you (you might wanna skip the first bunch of slides though, in that case).

Speaking of logos, my photographer friend Joan asked me the other day if I could help her out with her logo. It was a quick and dirty job, but I still kinda like how it turned out. I haven’t been doing any proper design lately. Just mockups and presentations, so this was a fun break in the boring world of Keynote slides.

On Saturday January 10th, about three months delayed, The Singapore Youth Olympics 2010 logo was unveiled, and the results of the public logo competition were announced.

I have to say up front that I didn’t have high hopes for it. Opening up a competition for the logo of an icon for what probably will be Singapore’s biggest event of 2010 did not seem like a good idea. The idea of separating the brand design identity tender and the logo competition is even worse, but that’s a story in itself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for public participation, but there are things better suited for open competitions than this. Like perhaps a “name the mascot” competition.

And, well, the result was to be expected. This is from the Logo Fact Sheet PDF:

Spirit of Youth the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games Logo – celebrates Singapore 2010 in an adventurous, open and fun way. It evokes the Singaporean sense of confidence and progress.

The three distinct elements of the logo are:

The Flame of Passion
The intense red flame represents the passion to learn and the power of positive thinking. Red is also the national colour of Singapore.

The Star of Champions
The rich purple star symbolises excellence and the pride of representing one’s nation.

The Crescent of Tomorrow
The crescent reflects dynamic youth, full of promise. It has the lush green and calm blue colours of a tropical island city.

The Singapore 2010 Wordmark
Its active appearance comprises individual and unique characters that signify harmony among the diverse participants.

Spirit of Youth inspires all of us to express the Olympic spirit and celebrate the first-ever Youth Olympic Games.

I’ve already hinted that I wasn’t exactly blown away, and let me share a little bit about why I’m disappointed.

Firstly; What’s the big idea? What the heck am I looking at? How does it capture the Singapore spirit? This neither represents Singapore, nor the Olympic movement. At least not to me.

Secondly; it looks like a kid’s drawing (which it most likely isn’t, but I’ll get to that). That is probably the biggest mistake they could make. This is not the Olympics for Kids. These young athletes (14-18 years old, not just kids anymore) are the best in the world at what they do, and they probably don’t want to rally behind a symbol that looks like something their kid brother drew with finger paint in daycare.

But hey, it could have been worse! At least they didn’t flip the R in Singapore, for example.

Thirdly; is the logo’s hand drawn appearance, which unfortunately looks like someone used the default brushes in Adobe Illustrator, visually really a step forward? It looks more like the Sydney 2000 logo from back in the 90s, when hand drawn logos were “in”. It was nice back then, but why look back 10 years, when we’re supposed to be looking into the future? They had the chance to really push the envelope when it comes to modern identity design, to be inspired by some of the amazing Olympic logos done in the past, and bring the tradition to the next level for the Youth Olympics, and they completely botched it. This is a step backward. It’s conventional, sexless and very embarrassing, as my colleague put it.

Lastly; The rationale for the colours and the shapes is plain and predictable. It’s the usual mumbo jumbo that designers who don’t really know why they doodled something and picked the colours by random use to sell it to a client. On what planet does a purple, hand drawn star lacking a fifth point symbolise “excellence and the pride of representing one’s nation”?

All in all, a definite let down. And, since the logo competition is complete but no winners were announced (that I could find anyway), I’m assuming that there wasn’t a winner, and they got an agency to do it for them, thus certainly ending up paying a little more than just the mobile phone they had as a first prize in the competition. Which is cool, I think, since that’s what they should have done from the start. But then why have the competition at all?

The logo actually seems to be, at least to some extent, the work of the quite famous brand agency The Brand Union (seeing as the PDF contained this image).

Too bad. It could have been great. But, as a friend pointed out, this probably is the result of many, many compromises. The almost three month delay also seems to point to that being the case. But regardless why it looks like it does, it’s still a shame.

Check out more submitted logos (some definitely better than the “winner”) at the Singapore 2010 logo gallery.

75 Sinaran Drive

#10-01

308322 Singapore

Come visit!

After a little longer than initially anticipated, the gothere.sg redesign went live this morning, after poor Dominic stayed up coding until 7. It’s not 100% perfect yet, but it’s definitely getting there. There were a lot of cross browser issues (just when you think that different browsers are not an issue anymore), which had us pounding our heads against a wall on more occasions than one. But all in all, we are quite pleased with what we came up with. And knowing the passion and dedication of the people at Gothere you can be sure there’s loads more to come within the next few months. Trust me.

Our main focus with the redesign was, this time, just to give a facelift. We have lots of ideas for the future, but this time we tried to focus primarily on just making it look a little nicer, but to keep the basic, simple functionality of the existing design. We wanted to make it a little more playful, adding some colours, giving it some more contrast with different font sizes and also introduced a new set of icons, based on the logo.

Anyway, we’ve not only redesigned the website, but are also in the process of developing a whole new brand identity for gothere. The new logo looks like this:

The symbol element of the logo is the lowest common denominator for the visual identity. Although the main brand colour is green (for go, green light), the icon can come in virtually any colour, depending on context. The empty space inside is to be filled with other symbols or photos to serve as icons, stickers or anything else. The symbol is simple yet visually easily recognizable, rounded to portray openness and friendliness, and it helps convey the gothere brand value keywords of boldness, passion and simplicity.

All in all, I’m happy to have been a part of helping one of Singapore’s most indispensable services websites / tools become a little friendlier and easier on the eyes.

There will be much more to check out at gothere.sg soon, so stay tuned to the gothere blog.

Now go find some directions.