We make a big effort in Vostok to choose our clients wisely and there’s a reason for it: when you work with people you admire you work better and quicker. Like a well-oiled machine. There are pros and cons, true, but they’re worth it. Basically because you have days like today.

Today Minube and Ducksboard are taking two important steps forward. For one, Ducksboard has launched. If you haven’t checked out the pretty awesome video yet, do. We made the video with the Riot Cinema team.

Next in line is Minube. After winning Apple’s Spain’s best app of the year award and the App Date [links in Spanish] award a few days ago, they’re organizing a pretty cool event today to celebrate the launch of their social traveler guides on iPad.

All in all, a pretty good way to begin closing 2011.

Only two companies were featured in RTVE‘s (a Spanish national TV channel) coverage of FICOD (Spain’s most acclaimed forum for digital content) last night. We’re proud to say both of them are Vostok’s clients with whom we’ve been working and desigining together for some time now.

Are we bragging? You bet. It’s not every day that two products you did strategy and design for receive this kind of offline attention. We’re thrilled. Kudos to Filmin and Minube :)

You can watch it online here.

今、私は３６歳になり、インタラクションデザインスタジオを経営している。そして日本で仕事をしようと決心した。

Vostok Studioは日本へ進出する。以前のように旅行者としてではなく、日本人と共に、日本人のために仕事をするデザイナーとして。日本は長年に渡って私たちに多くのものを与えてくれた。今こそ、そのお返しをするときなのだと感じている。いつも私たちに何かを教え、ワクワクさせてくれた国、そして最近ではその国のことを思い、多くの人たちが涙を流した。そんな国から興す美しい復興の一員になりたいと心から思う。

優秀なデザイナーなら誰しも私たちの仕事が日本文化から多大な影響を受けているということを意識しているはずだ。日本庭園、武道、寿司、禅、CASIO、SONY、SEGA、BANDAI、MUJI、Panasonic、SEIKO、TOYOTA、アニメ、ガンダム、深澤直人さん、原研哉さん、・・・その他多くの人やメーカー、ブランドなど、名前をあげれば切りがないほどある。

品質や完璧さ、職人技、美やバランスの感覚、高尚さ・・・これらはVostokが追求する価値でもある。そのような共通点もあり、日本への最初の第一歩を踏み出すのに今が絶好の機会だと確信している。ワクワクせずにはとてもいられない。

私たちは、尊敬する様々なブランドやデザイナー、多くの成果を見てきたが、日本のインタラクションデザインにはまだまだ成長の余地が多く残っているように思う。素晴らしい技術者がいる国、そして、技術者主導のプロダクトが持つ否定的な側面へも寛容だった社会、日本。しかし、iPhoneが日本へもたらされたとき、適切にデザインされたインターフェースとユーザーエクスペリエンスが日本社会でもすぐに受け入れられ、歓迎された。ということは、私たちVostokにもチャンスがあるのではないだろうか。

他国でデザインスタジオの活動を広げていくのは容易ではない。まして、スペインで誕生した小さな会社が国際社会に飛び込み、しかし組織のサイズは小さなままで活動を続けていこうというのは普通ではない。不安定で険しい道になることは間違いないし、具体的に何をどうしていくのかという懸念もある。でも私たちは本気で取り組む事にした。マドリードと東京の双方から仕事をし始めて数ヶ月が過ぎた。将来日本からのクライアントとなり得る人たちへ向け、私たちの仕事や、デザインに対する考えがきちんと伝えられるように、東京にいるチームが映像作品や、ケーススタディ、ビデオなどの翻訳や、異文化適応対策に取り組んで来た。文字を翻訳しただけでは十分伝わらないことは分かっているので、ポートフォリオも準備し、視覚的な面も含め、より様々な角度からVostokを理解してもらえるよう努めて来た。Eri KageyamaとDani Alíasの２人は東京で活動している私たちの誇るVostokチームの仲間だ。Karyna Wallaceも多大な助力をしてくれた。何十年も日本に住み、ファッションデザイナーやファブリック設計に従事してきた彼女は、自身の日本での活躍などを喜んで私たちに教えてくれた。これらの人たちの支えや、そしてもちろん、マドリードで共に働く私のVostokチームの協力のお陰で私は自信を持ってここまで来る事ができたのだと感謝している。

かくして、私は第一歩を踏み出した。入学前日の子供のようにワクワクしている。５年前のVostok Studioの誕生以来、今までで一番重要な決断なのだから。そしてもうすぐそれは現実となり、動き始める。日本へ進出するというのは、険しく冒険的な決断だと思う。膨大な時間やお金もかかることだ。しかし、こうして私を突き動かすのは、純粋に日本が好きという気持ちなんだと思う。

I’m 36 now and I run an interaction design studio. I’ve decided that we are going to work in Japan.

Yes, Vostok Studio is going to Japan. Not as tourist as in the previous trips but as designers who want to work there, for the Japanese, with the Japanese, among the Japanese. Japan has been giving us many things for many years. Now it’s time to give back and to be part of the beautiful renaissance that will come from a country which always teaches us, excites us and recently made us cry.

No good designer can ignore the influence of Japanese culture in our doing: Japanese gardens, Casio, Sony, Sega, Bandai, martial arts, Muji, Panasonic, sushi, zen, Seiko, Toyota, anime, Gundam robots, Naoto Fukasawa, Kenya Hara, and many other inspiring names and brands…

Japanese commitment to quality and perfection, the craftmanship, the sense of beauty and balance, their integrity… These are values that we pursue as well at Vostok. I believe we share a common ground in a perfect momentum. We cannot be more excited about this.

We could go on and on, listing all the references we have, all the brands and designers we admire, all the achievements… And yet, we still feel there is an opportunity to contribute to a better interaction design in Japan. The country has had always great engineers and a society that is tolerant to the downsides of engineer driven products. The arrival of the iPhone to the country showed that their society welcomes well designed interfaces and experiences. Will there be room for us?

Expanding the activity of a design studio to a different country is tough. It is unusual for a small company born in Spain to go international and still want to remain small. Our road is paved with insecurities and doubts on what to do and how to do it. But we are serious about this. We’ve been working on the move for some time now, both from Madrid and Tokyo. Our people there have been translating and adapting many of our materials, case studies and videos so we can better explain what we do to our potential Japanese clients. We felt that translating was not enough so we decided to go even further, to have a stable presence there. That is the job of Eri Kageyama and Dani Alías, two excellent professionals who swim confident in the seas of design. Karyna Wallace has also been of great help. Being a western fashion and fabrics designer who has lived in Japan for a decade, she knows her deeds there and she has been willing to share them with us. The work and help of these marvelous people plus the unquestionable commitment of my team make me feel confident.

So here I am in a Japan Airlines plane that will land in Haneda Airport in four hours. The cabin is dark, people are sleeping but I can’t rest. I’m excited like a kid before his first day at High School. This is by far the most important move we’ve taken as a studio since we were born, five years ago, and it’s about to become real. Starting in Japan has been a bold and risky decision. It is also a great investment in time, money… and love above anything else.

Bought this yuminess at Mallorca Market near Colón.

Happy Birthday, Ric!

Celebrating many more years to come…

Former developer at both The Cocktail and Simplelógica, he’s seriously into music, design (interaction design, that is) and hmmm…irish landscapes (we all need to have our own particular fetiches, don’t we?).

We’re flattered to say he left his hometown Oviedo to come and join us. He’ll be in charge of doing design and touching a bit of coding with us.

We hope he likes it here in Madrid ’cause we sure are proud to have him on board and would love for him to hang around and aid our navigation for some time.

If you want a copy, here’s the PDF.

In short:

In 1998, former Apple, former Microsoft, now journalist and consultant Linda Stone, coined the term Continuous Partial Attention. This should be the fundamental concept behind online newspaper design, what sets the difference between design that is modern and design that is expired.

Before the immediacy of the web, before feed readers, Facebook and Twitter, it took us 20 to 40 minutes to read a newspaper everyday. Today, we no longer read information in blocks, we scan for it or come by it in snippets. One article here, another one there. By the end of the day we have tailored our own newspaper with information gathered from all sorts of sources: blogs, newspapers, magazines. But it didn’t take us 40 minutes, it took us the entire day. I think there’s something there going on for newspapers if only they had the courage to move forward and forget about their print inheritance.

How can newspapers embrace this? By providing us with a homepage that:

• is easy to read, that is not cluttered or where I have to zig zag between columns.
• is continuously updated, and where updates are visible.
• doesn’t tell me what’s the most important news of the day but gives me the latest and allows me to set my own hierarchy.
• is designed to make information king (not the ads).
• visual, where without having to read much, photos can aid me to know what the story is about.
• can work in my iPad, where I don’t have to zoom in hundreds of times to reach a link.
• can inform me both superficially (online) and in-depth (to read later in my iPad).
• doesn’t organize the news into absurd sections (culture, politics, sports), but classifies it into easy to identify/searchable tags.

We’ll keep touching on this subject in the future. In the meantime, let us know if you think we have left anything out in the comments.

Or better still: what’s for dessert? Cheese Flan. Yum, yum? Here’s the recipe.

The World as Design
Otl Aicher

Honesty and design. It’s a book about integrity, about what decisions should be made, when and why. My favorite book about design, it has really changed the way I see my profession.

The book is a series of essays written by Aicher relating to all sorts of things; from how the Eameses designed chairs to the morals behind choosing one color over another to paint a house façade. This book made me understand that there is a reason for everything and every design decision should have a reasoning behind it.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
Matthew Frederick

It’s a tiny book about the basics of architecture and therefore, about the basics of the relationship between people and space. It’s very interesting because it gives you good advice for whenever you need to think about information architecture in terms of environments, just as an urbanist would. Not what happens inside a page but how to receive a user, how to guide him, what should the paths look like. When to make “open spaces” and when to make aisles, etc.

Designing for People
Henry Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss designed many iconic objects we still use nowadays. He was also the first one to apply human factors to his designs. He stated that the characteristics of the human body should be taken into account when desiging something for human use. The idea was revolutionary and completely against the design of his time (the 50′s), which was much more worried about forms that would sell well.

On Designing for People he exposes his ideas along with some thoughts on how to run a studio, its processes and methodologies. A classic.

Universal Principles of Design
William Lidwell

A great compliation on design principles (behavioral, mostly). Each principle is carefully explained; on one side of the page with text, on the other with illustrations or diagrams. Perfect to learn the basics and see them in action; it conveys the message clearly using excellent examples.

It touches on many subjects, among them: how appearance influences people, how many options are optimal, how to order stuff… It’s a must for anybody who wants to understand how users make decisions.

The Psychology of Everyday Things
Donald Norman

A great introduction to cognitive psychology applied to design. Very good at helping understand how we relate to the objects that surround us and the things that go on in our minds. Norman introduces the concept of affordance, among many others, one of the few things I try to always keep in mind when designing.

The Industrial Design Reader
Carma Gorman

A compilation of readings (articles, essays, excerpts…) on design, architecture and the like. I’d say 80% is still applicable to interaction design no matter the year the texts were written (some are from 19th century and very valid).

It’s a good book to help remind us that, even before our times, great minds put a lot of time and effort into thinking how things should be made. It helps me keep focus and give foundations to what I do.

The Invisible Computer
Donald Norman

This book by Norman has a few extremely good chapters on how design (as user experience), technology and marketing interrelate in a project and the role each one should play. It provides you with (and helps you understand) the whole picture; how technological products are made and why most of the time we fail.

Information Architects
Richard Saul Wurman

Wurman coined the term “information architecture” and uses it in a slightly different way to what we are used to. We think of it as structures of webpages, he thought of it as what we now call “information design”. The book is a great compilation of examples by excellent designers on how to shape information in a way that conveys the message more efficiently (most of the times that means visually).

Ambient Findability
Peter Morville

Morville, one of the founding fathers of information architecture, wrote this excellent book about how information acquires new dimensions when leaving the realm of the traditional website. He talks about how GPS, RFID, sensors and many other technologies are creating new forms of data that make information more meaningful. To me, this book was a great introduction to the value of metadata, the internet of things and geoeverything.

Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte

It’s the bible of the digital realm, a book that sheds light on the consequences of converting everything to ones and zeroes. Most of what he says on the book is stuff almost everyone knows now but back then: it was shocking. It should be a mandatory read for some policy makers even today.

Inside Steve’s Brain
Leander Kahney

Learn marketing, design, communication and product strategy from Steve Jobs. Who else could teach it better? The book is half biography half chronicle about Jobs and Apple. It goes deep into many issues in a very entertaining style. Some chapters are worth their weight in caviar. The book was last year’s Vostok present to our clients.

Designing Pleasurable Products
Patrick Jordan

Forget Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design”. If you want to know about emotional design then get this book. It’s entertaining and rigorous and it has everything you need to know about how emotions play a role in the way we choose and use products.

In Praise of Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki

It’s japanese aesthetics in prose poetry. It speaks about organic materials, objects that age gracefully and the beauty of imperfection. It describes the secret pleasure of wabi-sabi.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Leonard Koren

A great essay on wabi-sabi, that side of Japanese aesthetics that looks into the graceful decadence of materials, seductive imperfection, shadows, organic materials, wood, ceramics and beautiful rusty colors. To me, modernism is great but sometimes you just need a break, a good break, not one of those breaks that postmo hipster boys have in store.

Braun: 50 Jahre Produktinnovationen
Bernd Polster

Braun is the Apple of the 20th century. This book is a catalog of all the stuff produced by Braun during the past 50 years. You can see the influence of the Ulm School of Design, Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, Otl Aicher… And also learn through colorful examples how Oral-B ruined the best design driven company that’s ever existed. The book was a gift from my students some years ago and I go back to it when I need inspiration for use of color, layout, etc. Full disclosure: Dieter Rams is one of my prophets.

Digital Diagrams
Trevor Bounford

I lend this book to whoever asks me to recommend a book on information design that’s not just theory. Edward Tufte is fine but it may leave you clueless about how to start. This book will give you many examples and even Illustrator tips on how to visually display data. A great book to have around.

The Kitchen is for Cooking
Otl Aicher

Aicher had to redesign a kitchen. In the process he learnt so much about how everything works inside, an entire microuniverse, that he decided to write a book about all his findings. I consider it a great example on how to understand contexts of use, which are often wider and more complex than expected.

Typography
Otl Aicher

There are many books on typography and I confess that I’ve only read a few but, boy is this one good. It makes you feel a complete ingnorant. What’s wonderful about is that it makes you understand how people read so you can make design decisions on how to display your type. You have to read a good book on typography before you design anything intended to be read and this is probably one of the top books to aide you.

From Bauhaus to Our House
Tom Wolfe

Good modernists sometimes get so fed up with ourselves that we need a break. Wolfe’s book is a satirical essay on the modernist madness and all those “white shoe boxes” derived from the first Bauhaus buildings. Is there a modernist aesthetic and you just used it without being it a derivation of function? Perhaps you are modernist-sick. Go get the book.

Conversations with Jean Prouvé
Armelle Lavalou

A tiny but marvelous book on how an industrial designer thinks and works. In this book Prouvé is extremely honest and modest, a quality difficult to find in today’s designers. He was also a real innovator in materials, form and structure. The way the book is written is like having the master talking about himself in front of you.

Sistemas de Signos en la Comunicación Visual / Zeichensysteme Der Visuellen Kommunikation: Handbuch Fur Designer, Architekten, Planer, Organisatoren
Martin Krampen and Otl Aicher

The book is worth its price just for one chapter, the one where Aicher explains the difference between analytical and synthetic information. It’s the first thing I teach to my students every year. When you know that, you know 30% of everything a designer that works with information needs.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

It’s a great collection of stories about how people behave unexpectedly in certain situations. Gladwell is very good at pop psychology facts that sometimes are good for understanding user patterns or for provoking them.

Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen

An introductory classic. One of the books that started it all. Nielsen is not the guru he used to be but he deserves credit for this great compendium of applied human-computer interaction that kicked our profession in its initial days. The book was also great for convincing clients and “evangelizing”, if you ever want to use that word.

Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krugg

Krugg’s book is also an introductory classic; if Nielsen’s was about principles this one is about techniques. How to run a usability test without a white coat, how to report usability issues effectively, etc. Many examples and cartoons, easy to read (it took me less than 2 hours!). Very good for superbeginners who need to do usability tasks at their products. Also very good for those who’s job is not on the usability/design trench but need notions.

Le Corbusier Talks with Students
Le Corbusier

Designers usually pretend to know a lot about Le Corbusier but they usually know little more than a few modern-design villas with beautiful horizontal shapes without understanding the reasons behind such decisions on form. This book summarizes many of his thoughts on design and architecture. Since the book is a transcript from his talks, it feels very natural and close. You end up learning a few things about systems and contexts from a discipline that has many things in common with interaction design.

UPDATE (31 Jan, 2011)

The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand

Yes, a novel. Setting aside Rand’s political views, The Fountainhead is clearly a good story about honesty and values in creative work. The book is about an architect who fights the world to stay true to his beliefs on what a building should be. There is much about his views on architecture that matches what I consider good design. Also, all the character’s struggle to stay true to himself is a great teaching in a field where clients, peers and fashions have so much influence.

Read it when you feel you are senior enough, not too soon. And stay away from work when reading it. A summer vacation would be ideal.

Javier Cañada leads Vostok, a design and strategy studio that creates smart interactive products. You can follow him on twitter @javiercanada or at Vostok’s blog.

It’s easy to spot the switch from honest appearance to styling, the gratuitious use of color and shapes that are not meant to serve function but to convey things different than the product purpose.

Some time ago we made a short video in homage to Dieter Rams and those beautifully designed products:

We also paid homage to Braun in in our recent “To me, design is…” video. How many Braun products can you spot in it?

BlackVostok WordPress theme in Japanese

Both the website and the theme have been translated by Daniel Gutiérrez Alías and his team at Shaking Asia. Thank you sir.

Unlike advertising agencies, we are not in the business of selling. We love our work and we love showing off the diversity of work we’ve done (please ask to see our portfolio!) but that’s because every project is crafted with thought and research, and with respect for our clients. We put all our resources into every client that engages us because we don’t need to save our best ideas to sell ourselves to potential new clients.

Supernicestudio.com

Click here for high-res photo

Click here for high-res photo

Concepts any John Doe needs to convey: date, time, water, food, lodging.

Concepts the US Army needs to convey: means of identification, ambush, booby traps, hideouts, weapons, destruction, pullover, surrender + date, time, water, food, lodging.

It exemplifies analytic and synthetic thinking at its best, no?

This guide was made by Kwikpoint.  A visual translator company that works with designers, linguists and diplomats to replace “pounds-or kilos-of language dictionaries and phrase books” with images. Javier Cañada bought this sample in 2004, at the height of  the Iraq War.

The great thing about sites like Verkami is that while connecting creators and audiences, they take down the middleman, empower artists and turn into wonderful spaces where to spot truly smart and creative initiatives.

Some of the design elements we like the most

A detail from the creator’s admin page (project is still up and running):

and when the project has finally reached it’s original funding goal:

For those interested in the development, Linking Paths added the programming muscle.

Take a sec, check it out. No excuses to bum around: start a project or become a patron and make great projects come true!

It’s a pity certain things don’t last forever. We’re happy to announce though, our Vostok sleeves are all sold out :)

We’d like to thank our clients and Riot Cinema for this video.

Sashimi at a sushi bar in Asakusa (Tokyo)

Seafood, mostly prawns, crayfish and spidercrab, to celebrate a little bit.

Some japanese gyozas, yakitori and makis from an average japanese restaurant.

Are you attending it? Any very good recommendation on who to watch there?

For those who don’t know it yet, dribbble is one of my top 5 favorite things of 2010, along with fffffound, Salsa Valentina, the Tokyo real-sized Gundam and a yet-empty spot.

FIRST, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PIGMENTS

Man has always wanted to tell stories through images. It all started with cavemen and their paintings. Their language was probably not very rich in vocabulary but they knew they wanted to show others what their memories held and what populated their imagination. So they painted it. But access to pigments and the ability to paint on stone was limited to only a few.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH STONE

Sculpture, along with wall paintings (or glass) paintings were the way advanced civilizations (from mesopotamic to christian) represented visually the characters in their stories. Stories were told and not read for many centuries and sculptures would help people visualize their heroes, saints or divinities. Think of sculptures in palaces and churches where generals and saints were displayed in their epic endeavors. Also painted glass windows and mosaics of those who were powerful and where their power lied. Only the “official” artists had access to such expensive means and their stories were limited to what was the official version of the official story.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH PAPER

Paper was a very expensive technology until just a few centuries ago. It was difficult to manufacture and only a few lettered people had access to it: mostly scholars and monks, some of whom were specialized in miniature paintings illustrating the concepts explained in the books.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH INK

Newspapers slowly started to incorporate pictures in their stories but they tended to be small: sending them was techically complex and the ink was expensive. Stories had be told textually or with a few small photographs. Or at least until the 60s when photography became a commodity for magazines.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH CAMERAS

Photography allowed memories to last forever but, again, it was limited and expensive at the beginning. It took 100 years for that industry to make photography available to everyone. In the 70s people could only afford to have one camera per household. Then they were able to have relatively cheap photoalbums where the stories that mattered to them the most were stored: new born babies, marriages, adventures, trips… they were all narrations composed of visual memories. But still, you couldn’t share them easily.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH BANDWIDTH

Photos and images have always been part of the Internet, especially of the Word Wide Web, but the first modems were very very slow. You had to scan a picture (no digital cameras yet), you had to compress it, reduce its size and expect visitors to wait several minutes for the image to load. The standard was around 200 pixels wide for a rectangular picture. So, we had a medium that allowed us to share our messages with the world but the use of images was still scarce. Text was the only way to go.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH RESOLUTION

Digital images became widely available, everyone could create and share them. Bandwidth grew fast: size was no longer an issue. But… Monitors still didn’t have enough resolution to show pictures in all their glory. Remember when 800×600 was the reference when it came to website matters? Nothing bigger than that was allowed. It took us 10 years to start moving to 1024 pixels wide and even then there was some fear of using big format images. Powerpoint was there and allowed some to tell stories visually (most just used it for bulletpointed BS) but images were still just there to dress a good text.

THEN, WE DIDN’T HAVE THE SOFTWARE

Sure there is flickr now, and many others, but until not so long ago there was not a single piece of cheap software that allowed people to tell visual stories in a sequence of images. Just as we could do in a photoalbum, or a Powerpoint in fullscreen mode, attracting the viewer’s full attention. Images that ARE the message and not just the accompaniment. The Big Picture, at Boston.com got it but they didn’t make it sequential. The iPad did it with its image galleries but they weren’t shareable on the internet. We were almost there…

AND NOW…

We now have the bandwidth, the cameras, the screen size and the Internet. We all need to tell our stories, to show our projects, to be able to share our memories with pictures and videos. And we cannot pay a high price for it.

So we, at Vostok, have made it possible. It had to be done.

We created a tool that allows people to tell stories visually and to share them with the rest of the world. We also made it affordable. It’s a WordPress theme, it’s called BlackVostok – www.blackvostok.com and it’s just $16.

Now tell your story, take over the full browser window with your images and share them with the world.

BlackVostok
Here’s the website: www.blackvostok.com
Here’s the theme in action: www.blackvostok.com/test

Today we had Red Pesto with Mascarpone at Sicilia in Bocca. Yum, yum? try it yourself at Paseo de Yeserías 7 (Madrid).

Today we had Watermelon and Pancetta Risotto for lunch. Yum yum? here’s the recipe.

Their original post is here.

Our assumptions

We (both minube and us) put extreme attention to what information mattered the most and made it stand above the secondary data. These were our main assumptions:

• Price matters most than company.
• Price (usually) matters most than hours.
• There is the cheapest and then the rest.
• Airlines are better recognized by their logos/colors than by their names.
• Some things don’t need to be a in a filter: price ranges, airline, websites searched, etc.
• Those with flexible dates need a different way to look at it.
• It’s easier to redo the search than to refine through ajax.
• Flight and flight back are consecutive, so let’s show them consecutive.
• It’s likely that your choice will be among the first 10 results (although you may want to see more).
• White space helps people identify choices, it makes everything clearer.
• Boxes help you separate between different types of content.
• It’s better to show just the essential data.

Old and new versions side to side

Minube is always quesioning how they do things and how these things can be improved. I like to say that at Vostok we are not good at innovating but at improving. The old version was good. But good as it was it could be, and should be improved. Here you have both versions side to side:

Facts prove it

We know the new one is more beautiful and more honest. Facts prove it. Raúl (Minube’s CEO) told me about the A/B Test results and the main indicators doubled in the new one. You should check Raúl’s post in Spanish about it.

We both believe

It’s a great thing we have clients who share our believes. Working with minube is always of great pleasure. We have a relationship based on trust and shared values. They also think that beauty and honesty are two of most important principles of good design.

He decidido volver a enseñar diseño de interacción.

Quiero volver a formar gente como creo que hay que hacerlo: sin prisas, enseñando con ejemplos, hablando, debatiendo y trabajando. Creo en la honestidad absoluta de enseñar ejemplos buenos y también errores, de hablar de lo que no funciona y de lo que sí, y también de invitar a gente mejor que uno mismo para que comparta sus formas de hacer. Quiero que mis alumnos practiquen, discutan, lean, salgan a la calle y observen para luego volver a practicar.

He estado dos años sin enseñar. No me sentía con ganas porque dudaba de muchas de las cosas que había enseñado antes. Tras dos años de trabajar muy duro he desterrado alguna creencia y he reforzado unas cuantas certezas. Primero pensé en organizar un curso de dos días, algo intensivo. Lo descarté porque realmente no sería capaz de transmitir todo lo que quiero transmitir. Si hay que enseñar diseño, hagámoslo bien.

En noviembre volveré a reunir a un grupo de 6 u 8 personas jóvenes que quieran crecer como diseñadores de interacción y que estén dispuestos a venir al estudio todas las tardes de los viernes durante 5 meses. Les enseñaré lo que sé, les haré trabajar duro y les trataré como si fueran mi proyecto más importante.

Empezaremos en noviembre. Dentro de poco tendré una web con todos los detalles: fechas, temario, precio, plazas) y podré empezar a seleccionar a los alumnos. Mientras tanto, si te interesa escríbeme a javier@vostok.es.

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH: I’m back to teaching interaction design. Starting this November I’ll repeat the Programa Vostok course I taught twice some years ago. It will be a 5 month course with classes every friday afternoon in Madrid. Classes will be in Spanish. Contact me if interested: javier@vostok.es

So, to commemorate such a grandiose day here is our favorite canadian hymn ‘Canadian, please’ by Gunnarolla. To celebrate, people have been remixing the original video.

Hi Everybody,

I just wanted to say thanks for sending a t-shirt all the way to Alaska! You have a great portfolio. Keep rockin’ the minimalism.

Mikaela

No, thank you Mikaela!

Here’s video proof:

… and the file (links to the one you have to use, 1024×1024 px.):

Enjoy it.

Our partners and friends at Riot Cinema (they make movies) just did this amazing video for Unience, a social network of investors. We love it not just becuse of the aesthetics but also because the script is so well written it makes you open an account right away:

Misparadas.com was developed by  Sam Lown, Fernando Blat, Christos Zisopoulos, and Mark MacKay for AbreDatos.

Gabriela Lendo majored in International Relations, and her command of English and French are top-notch. She has worked in Madrid for Notisistema, and has headed the communications teams of cinema related projects in London (Portobello Festival) and Madrid (The Cosmonaut).

To sample her work, just take a look at the latest videos we’ve posted.

Gabriela is also an awesome cook, after sampling her banana bread we called the cops on the suspicion of, ahem ilegal flavor enhancements, but it turned out regular banana pancake can be addictive. And she would beat the crap out of Julia Roberts at a smiling contest.

Timo Taglieber majored in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Timo programmed MetaMan, a MediaWiki plug-in that suggests categories and properties based on similar pages. Take a look at his portfolio to view his work.

Timo is very eager to enjoy Madrid’s nightlife. According to the authoritative Xenophobe’s Guide to the Spanish:

The Spanish never go to bed at night if they can possibly help it, because they might be missing out on something more exciting than sleep. On the other hand they never fail to have a siesta.

We are hoping German discipline prevails over Spanish hedonism.

A week ago we became partners at Riot Cinema Collective by acquiring a moderate percentage of the company. This makes us extremely happy and excited. It’s the consumation of a love story between Riot and Vostok that’s been around for a year now.

We admire Riot’s work and their fresh approach to anything that deals with moving images. We love them so much we wanted to share, to be influenced, to intersect with them.

Now we can proudly say “we make movies”.

Vostok Theme was designed by me (Javier Cañada) and coded by Rubén Lozano quite long ago. I am still confident about most of the design decisions in it, especially those about features and layout. But as screen resolution has increased I feel like type size and column height should be revised.

I’m also considering making a “white version” with the same legibility goals. Or perhaps a Serif version. Do you think that would make sense?

Well.. Being a telecommunications engineer as he is, he’ll obviously add more WARP’s to our programming and systems engines. He is already taking care of all the stuff related to thecosmonaut.org (Riot Cinema’s movie) and will soon start doing other übercool and experimental stuff that’s not been disclosed yet.

Welcome on board, Hunter S. Tyler!

Downolad the one that better fits your computer:

· Vostok Wallpaper 1280 x 800 (.png file)

· Vostok Wallpaper 2560 x 1600 (.png file)

And now DANCE with us!!