Underdesign: This week Flavors.me is finally rolling out its latest feature, the ‘Grid’ layout, which I had a hand in designing, but is due largely the ongoing work of Jack Zerby. Jack is one of the most underrated designers I know. He’s also one of the few designers I’ve worked with who really understands the value in underdesigning things.
This philosophy is certainly reflected in Flavors.me. After all, its whole purpose is to put its users center-stage. Still, that doesn’t mean there’s not an underlying system at work behind the scenes looking after everything from spacing to line-heights, font-sizes and floats. Hours and hours have been spent developing a system, in which, hopefully it’s kind of hard to make something ugly. The design is there. But while they’re creating their own page, most people will hopefully never notice it.
Any designer will tell you the hardest job you’ll ever do is to design for yourself.
Even though I’ve been a part of HiiDef Inc. for a while now, there’s only recently been a need to put a ‘face’ to the name.
Challenge
There were a few things that made this job tricky.
It’s got to be broad
HiiDef is a web product incubator that’s really hard to put into a single box. Because it’s a parent brand, not only does it need to reflect the company, but it needs to compliment the products we put out.
It’s got to be relevant
Well, I say relevant, but the name ‘HiiDef’ is inherited from one of Jonathan and David’s (founders) earlier businesses. So beyond the idea of something being ‘high definition’ there wasn’t too much of a connection.The new identity had to stay married to this name but also fit with the current company, which meant being simple, bold and flexible.
It’s just the beginning
Let’s get one thing straight: the brand doesn’t make the company. It’s the other way around. Still, whatever meaning we place on the branding, we wanted to be as excited about it as we are about our future.
Solution
So to start, I came up with some rough directional concepts that were intentionally pretty different. The hope was this would allow us to narrow a path from which I could start to refine things.
Some of the broad directional concepts for Round 1
While the guys were excited with where we were going in round one, we all agreed that maybe we should have a look at a second round of ideas. Most of the concepts followed the most obvious ‘high definition’ angle. I also liked the idea of keeping the two ‘i’s lower case, as they reminded me of the two founders (and brothers) Jonathan and David.
Some concepts from Round 2
One concept, however that turned out to be most popular from the second round batch was an abstract ‘H’ and ‘D’ formed through circles in a square. We were actually very close to deciding on this one, but I wasn’t happy. As a web company, I wanted something that could be shrunk to a 16×16 favicon and survive.
Even though this logo itself was quite generic, this sort of treatment was worth exploring.
One, but many
Another direction that I liked from the second round of ideas used a very basic rounded rectangle shape and used changing backgrounds to give it more than one look. I know AOL (oh sorry, Aol.) had recently done something similar, and we were all conscious of not going down that path. What I liked about this approach was that it ticked two of the boxes straight away — what’s broader than a logo that’s always changing? Similarly, it gave us a lot of room for changing direction and keeping things fresh.
Some applications with the final logo. I’ve continued with the many-but-one treatment for the HiiDef Inc. website.
And we’re done.
So the solution (it must seem obvious at this point) lay in combining these two ideas — a shape using the ‘H’ and ‘D’ in a form with enough symmetry and simplicity to be styled in many different ways. And unlike every other concept that I’d sent through for feedback, this seemed to get everyone mutually excited.
I’ve closed up shop and become what the Japanese like to call a ‘salary man’.
Well, not exactly. In early 2008 I started working with Jonathan and David Marcus on a ‘little shoe project’ which eventually turned into Superkix.com. Since then we’d been throwing round the idea of working together exclusively, and late last year we decided to go for it. After all, they were my favourite clients by a mile.
This is a big change. Even though the actual work is much the same, the situation of dealing with a dozen or so clients (essentially bosses) on a handful of simultaneous projects is very different from working on a single large project. As a product designer, I’m working alongside former Design Director at Vimeo, the one and only Jack Zerby. Jack’s an OCD designer with mad skills. He’s also the mastermind behind the interface on HiiDef’s other recently launched product, Flavors.me.
