Bright Bright Great™ a design company.

July 27, 2010

Monterrey, Mexico Airport UI Redux

After ripping on the stolen interface at the Monterrey Airport, I spent some time thinking about airport information in general. A few hours later voila!

1. Simplify.

Remove all visual and informational clutter. Include only the most important elements. No mystery meat.

2. Association.

I used an actual image of Mazatlan, Mexico behind the interface. Custom background images are hot right now and if Wolff Olins can drop it like it’s hot for Aol, we know it CAN be accepted by the masses. Flying to New York? How about a nice image of a hot dog vendor, or maybe a shot of New Yorkers trying to make pizza, ha.

3. Information Hierarchy

What are the most important elements?
Tier #1: Flight number to what location.
Tier #2: Minutes until boarding time, gate # and whether or not the flight is on time.
Tier #3 Have a nice trip. Realistically, there should probably be airline notes here. That would curtail the 100 people coming up to the counter before each flight.

View full size on Flickr

Note: This is only my approach, not a client contract.

July 23, 2010

Congrats to the UI Designer Who Stole the iTunes Interface And Sold It To The Monterrey, Mexico Airport

@jossbot and I caught this gem on our way back from Monterrey, MX.

Looks like the designer completely ripped off the iTunes interface circa 2002 and resold it back to the Aeropuerto Monterrey/General Mariano Escobedo International Airport in Monterrey, Mexico.

Besides the fact that this interface is essentially stolen, I want to take a few minutes to point out the interface flaws, how they could inhibit the user experience and next week I will design a NEW interface that solves these problems. We will post it on our blog and Jason Schwartz’s Dribbble.

Monterrey airport, if you are out there listening, we are going to do some hardcore free work for you .
Take note.

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Interface Flaws

1. The interface is stolen from iTunes.
Interfaces, like design, are intellectual property. Mr. Ives and the crew over at Apple can take legal action against the airport to stop diluting their visual ID and brand.

2. Board, much?
No matter what time, or what flight, ALL TV screens read “abordaje/boarding” at all times. Not to nitpick, but this is confusing. Can’t wait to board my 9:55am flight at 3:20am three days before.

3. Kerning, spacing, leading.
Dios mio. Centered text, weird kerns, weird spacing, text that is full span in interface elements. Simplify simplify simplify. Airports are confusing enough. No need to confuse people with all the mumbo jumbo.

4. AC 9729? LH 9655? AA 8328?
No idea what these numbers are and why they are important enough to make the flight info screen. No planes connected with our flight and any information from O’Hare in Chicago wouldn’t be available yet to display to passengers, let alone, that info isn’t important enough to display to passengers in Mexico.

Remove please.

5. Motion graphics.
Love that the designer threw some scrolling text in there via the “Que tenga buen viaje!” but as the only element in motion, it pulls the users eyes immediately to the bottom of the screen. Also, might not be the most important element to draw attention to.

6. Related information issues.
2 clocks, 4 flight numbers, 3 ways to say “have a nice trip.” The duplication without ample explanation leads to visual confusion. The information hierarchy is kinda weird and I’m looking where to click the “next song” button to play some Color Me Badd.

A clear information architecture with visual cues will clean it up.

7. General interface gripes.
As a designer, seeing a logo with a white background on another color makes me cringe EVERYTIME. Hello PowerPoint. Either figure out a way to create a vector display, or PNG and drop those bad boys transparent-style. If not, there are a million ways to cheat that effect in the design. I suppose Apple didn’t do it first, so the interface thief didn’t know how to achieve it.

What do you think? Hit us back us on Twitter @bbgchicago

Bright Bright Great Travels The World – Summer Edition

For a good part of the Summer, the various members of Bright Bright Great will be traveling the globe from the good old USA, to Mexico, to France to work on some amazing new projects as well as a few secret photoshoots.

Ah-hem… Carogafoto.
Ah-hem, Italian fashion magazines.

Expect to see a LOT of new projects populate our site in the next two months and watch out for some extremely exciting announcements regarding our team. Suh-weeeeeeeet.

June 15, 2010

Today In We Not Only Like Soccer, We Like Toys!

It’s World Cup time! And it’s also Collins Design time!
We must’ve done the opposite of walking under a ladder, because BBG was once more honored by getting an exclusive copy of Collins Design’s newest book: We Are Paper Toys! by Louis Bou.

The book is, of course, about the elegant and somehow mystical world of paper toys, a mix of creativity, curiosity, and a bit of patience.
Since paper toys are so hot these days, this book comes at the perfect time. We Are Paper Toys! is a collection of some of the best toy designs created by famous artists from around the world.

The book is beautifully illustrated and awesomely inspiring. It features 32 designers in 200 pages filled with interviews, photos and design tips for toymakers. The book also comes with a CD with more templates than you’ll be able to make in a summer.

And a special visual bonus, and because here at BBG we firmly believe in the art of experimentation, we decided to enjoy an afternoon of toy making and photography: we printed, cut, folded and glued and went outside to shoot our creations!

Here’s what we made:

Freddy Krueger by Horrorwood.

Rameses Paper Lion by Dolly Oblong.

Carmi by charuca.
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So if this tickled your origami sense, you’re in luck, because the book is out today!
Order here or here, enjoy maybe here, and promote here and yes, here.

Also, if you buy the book and make a toy, let us know here! We’ll be delighted to set up a paper toy duel! Prize is watching Cloverfield at BBG for the 20th time

Now look at some of the pretty pages:

See all the pictures on Flickr.

May 31, 2010

BBG Writes For The Chicago Photography Center

Here at BBG we love a lot of things: cupcakes, toys, fonts, photography… and within photography, we love styling, lighting, and photographers; but we also love classes. And when photography, classes, and BBG somehow meet, fun things always happen.

For the last month Jocelyn has been writing for the Chicago Photography Center‘s website as part of their 2010 online redesign. The big reveal will be sometime in June, but we thought it’d be nice to brag about it now.

Once it’s up, we’ll let you know. Happy rainy Monday!

May 26, 2010

2010 GDUSA American Web Design Award Winners! Woo Hoo.

We did it. After all the hard work put into it, we just picked up a GDUSA American Web Design Award for this very website www.brightbrightgreat.com.

Props to Keith Norman on the code and Jocelyn Ibarra for the copy.

View the GDUSA AWDA Award page here.

May 18, 2010

Bright Bright Great Loves Banksy West Loop Chicago

Bright Bright Great had the lovely opportunity to step out and check out a Banksy piece in the West Loop in Chicago. Rumor had it that this went up late last week, which didn’t exactly correspond with the opening of Exit Through The Gift Shop, Banksy’s new movie, but could potentially have aligned with a Banksy appearance, or lack thereof.

The piece is dope. It’s  located at Randolph & Peoria in the West Loop of Chicago. You DEFINITELY need to check it out.

Apparently this piece was symbolic from a scene from The Untouchables, which was shot in Chicago’s Union Station, where a woman is caught in military crossfire in turn pushes a baby carriage down a flight of stairs. Skip to the 6:00 mark.

Update: Piece is still up as of 5/18.

May 10, 2010

United & Continental New Logo AKA How To Waste Millions of Dollars On Your Brand ID

After the United Airlines and Continental Airlines merger was announced last week, the “new” updated brand ID was announced, which really put off the entire blogging design community.

First, it should be said that Saul Bass actually designed BOTH the United Airlines logo AND the Continental logo in the late 1960s. United updated theirs with the help of Pentagram and Continental moved in an entirely new direction opting for the clip art globe.

Brand New covered the merger creative last week. (Image from Brand New.)

Hmm, I’m not sold. Looks like United just gave in and accepted Continental’s brand ID. If you take a vote, United’s brand ID and logo are seriously stronger than Continental’s. Let’s take a look at the logo elements individually.

United is pretty much stronger across the board. I think the blue and yellow color scheme of Continental has similar potential to the United blue and red, but until the ID system is rolled out in it’s entirety across print work, billboards, credit cards, etc., it’s hard to tell.

Oh wait, I think I’ve seen this before?

Why lose the momentum that United has with their existing brand ID for something that pretty much already exists. Not sure if Copa is one of Continental’s partners. Hopefully, I never check out in a terminal where Copa and Contintental are both located. Might get visually confusing…. SINCE THEY ARE THE SAME.

So I thought about it and came up with the perfect logo for United moving forward.
It’s the original logo.

No offense, but I’d place my faith in Saul Bass and Pentagram’s work any day. United’s existing logo is memorable, and plain out good. No need to muddy it up. Millions of dollars went into United Airlines rebranding in the last 10 years and there is no reason to create a Frankenstein of the two companies for the sake of corporate “playing nice.” If the new company is going to be called United Airlines, don’t give up on a good thing.

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Wait, don’t I hear the airlines on the news every night talking about how much money they are losing, so they need to pass the fees on to the consumer? This entire rebrand is especially concerning considering the MILLIONS of dollars it will cost to redesign/reprint/revamp billboards, print material, airplane exteriors, etc. And it will take millions. With all the news about fuel prices, new fees, higher priced tickets, I think it would be a GREAT idea to save this money and get it back to the people. Maybe drop a fee or two.

There are tons of places to read about this. Lots of designers are talking.

We also covered this with The Great Pepsico Tropicana Fiasco of 2009.

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This post is written by and is the sole opinion of Jason Schwartz, Creative Director of Bright Bright Great.

April 30, 2010

Lecture Recap ASU April 28, 2010

Bright Bright Great would like to thank Arizona State University for an amazing lecture event. It was a blast and we hope we were helpful. If you are looking for help with your resume and portfolio, or have any general questions drop a tweet at us.

1. The presentation is now online. Download: Going Pro: What You Need & What It Takes

2. Bright Bright Great is on Twitter and Facebook. If you want to stay in touch, connect with us.

3. Jason Schwartz is also on Twitter. You can follow him too, but then you get to hear ALL of the rants and raves, not just design related stuff.

You might also like: Next Secret Handshake Lecture Series Event Announed: April 28, Jason Schwartz at ASU

April 1, 2010

Interviews Are Beautiful

First BBG reviewed and blogged about The Visual Miscellaneum. Now the nice peeps at Harper Collins have made our day again by letting us interview his creator, David McCandless!

David makes our world clearer every day through his website Information Is Beautiful, and we share the love for information graphics, facts and whiskey.

The future according to David? New Apple gadgets like the iBuprofen, the iPod Utility Belt (just like Batman’s!) and something mysterious very appropriately called “Mysteron.”

Ok read!

1. If you could have actual data of something very intriguing to make a chart, what would that be?

I’d like to make more images of psychological and emotional data. Like patterns in dreams, moods, relationships – the kinds of things that don’t technically “exist” materially speaking, but are likely to have some hidden patterns and structure in them. Not quite sure how I’d do it though!

2. What chart has been impossible to make?

No chart has been impossible. NOTHING CAN RESIST THE ALL-SPANNING MIGHT OF THE CHART!

3. How do you decide what should be turned into a graph?

Frustration, ignorance and curiosity. Those are my leads. If I’m annoyed that I don’t get something important. Or I don’t understand something. Or I wonder how something works. Those feelings are the fuel for an image.

4. Are you making a chart of this questionnaire right now?

Negative.

5. Fave website today to catch up on worthy information.

Reddit. (Very intelligent comments)

6. Apple’s “Next Big Thing” now that the iPad is out?

http://www.theinternetnowinhandybookform.com/schmapple/

7. What is the best way to drink whisky?

No ice, in a green leather armchair, by an open fire, next to a window, over a loch, at the end of the day.

8. I like Twitter like I like ____.

Cashew nuts

9. Top 3 reasons why you love information.

1. It’s learning – brain food!
2. It’s fun – like putty!
3. It’s everywhere – no escape – so get with it

10. Any chance we can see a David McCandless life chart soon?

I actually really dislike Life Charts. Shhhhhhh! For me, designers should be solving problems and helping the world be more excellent.  I don’t see how life charts contribute. Who cares how many bus journeys a designer took??

11. What is the aspect of design you give the highest priority to?

Answering questions.

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David’s book, The Visual Miscellaneum is out everywhere, so give in and buy it. You can go see your cousin’s new boring play some other time.
By Jocelyn Ibarra for Bright Bright Great.
BBG loves books!

Images via. One more for the road: