onward
Busy couple of weeks. At Big Cartel, we’ve been putting the finishing touches on several big releases. I am finally back on the initial project that spawned all the prerequisites, and we hope to have that wrapped in the next couple of weeks. And next week, we lose a designer—the excellent Chance Graham is moving on to join Apple’s web and interactive team (congratulations, mate!)
As for button-down bird, things have accelerated. We’ve nearly got the legal paperwork sorted for our LLC, work on designing our launch site is nearing completion and I'm knee-deep into actually designing the book. I’ve never designed a book before, and so far I’ve mostly been fretting over bleeds and learning my way around InDesign. Luckily, the content is relatively straight-forward—text on one page, image on the facing page. Still, there are many subtle issues such as avoiding unnecessary hyphenation, how to handle the front matter, fitting into the right page count and so on. We’re also going full-bleed with the images, which is complicated when the images are collages. I relish the challenge, though.
Progress continues on LAFAYETTE (aka Transitflow). I’ve got a ways to go as far as a shippable product, but I’m far enough along that I’m getting a solid handle on data requirements, architecture and UI. I design better when I have a working artifact that I can poke at. I’m going to take the plunge today and install the iOS5 beta on my devices. (Upon further research, it appears iCloud isn’t quite where I need it to be to remain productive. Maybe in another month…) The new notification system will be key to Transitflow’s UI, and I’m very much looking forward to automatic reference counting (if you don’t know, don’t ask :P). Onward!