http://www.freezeframedesign.com Studio Blog Updates from Freeze Frame Design. Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:52:27 GMT en-us Welcome to the new look Freeze Frame Website Design page! For a while now, I've wanted to give the site a less corporate and more personal feel, making it much more representative of me and the work I do. I also wanted to make things clearer and more fun! So, welcome to the new site... In actual fact, I had the design almost complete around Christmas, but I've been so busy that I haven't had the chance to make the final tweaks and get the site live until this weekend. I hope you enjoy it, I hope it proves to be more useful, and I hope you continue to follow me and my work via this blog! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/ff_new_1330883589.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/110 Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:52:27 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/110 A while ago I shared with you one of my recent Architecture projects from my time at the University of Bath. I thought I'd share some of my third year work today, a group project title "Linking the Lands". As a team of 4 Architects and 2 Engineers, we designed a conceptual journey across the natural landscape at Brean Down, near Weston-Super-Mare. An incredible cliffside walkway takes you to normally unreachable places for a close-up look at nature, and stunning views across the Severn Estuary. You can browse my complete project brochure at http://random.alexbimpson.co.uk/uni/project302.pdf. More images below. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/linking_lands_1.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/31 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:41:28 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/31 I know, I haven't written anything here for ages! But that's mostly because I've been so busy, which is a good thing! I also haven't tweeted much lately, which is a shame, because I've read a lot of interesting stuff on twitter. You can, of course, always follow my personal twitter account at twitter.com/abimpson for many diverse, impulsive and ridiculous tweets from myself. I am, of course, currently working on a small array of different web sites, some under the Freeze Frame brand and some in partnership with other design companies. I'm also working on a few minor updates to the Freeze Frame site, so keep your eyes peeled for those! Finally, I've also been hard at work on the IceBox Content Management System to power the sites I build. I'm actually using it right now to post this blog entry! It's largely usable, I just need to find the time to add a few more minor features, along with one or two major additions, and then start rolling the system out to clients for testing and feedback in managing their sites. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I shall have version 1.0 ready for testing in a few of our latest websites. In the meantime, I'll be sure to post many more interesting blog posts your way! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/101 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:38:41 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/101 Over a couple of days last week I set to work on a small personal project. I'm very fond of my iTunes collection - it's a thoroughly curated collection of music, films and TV shows that totals over 500Gb in size. As a designer, I'm also very fussy about ensuring I have good quality cover artwork for all the items in my library, so over the years I've built up a good collection of cover art, some of it very hard to come by, and some of it even edited and put together by myself. Given the vast array of low quality cover artwork sites, I thought I'd throw my own hat into the ring with a simple but thoughtful site to share some of the artwork I've gathered. The result of just two days work, Cover Whiz is a simple and intuitive way to discover high quality digital artwork. Hopefully, others will find the site useful and benefit from the artwork available there. I've already had a couple of emails from impressed users, and hope that this will continue! Check out the site at www.covewhiz.com. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/cover_whiz.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/40 Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:08:16 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/40 It's been a little while since I've posted any blog entries - It's been a busy time! We're pleased to announce a new website that's been under development for a little while now for a new student letting company in the Bath area. The site for Lacey Alexander Property Letting is an elegant and stylish site powered by Freeze Frame's new IceBox Content Management System. The site is a beautiful new addition to Freeze Frame's design portfolio, and is one of several sites helping to push development of our content management system further forwards. We'll keep you updated on the progress of the IceBox CMS as it develops further over the next couple of weeks! Meanwhile, please check out the Lacey Alexander site now at www.laletting.co.uk http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/lacey_alexander.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/39 Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:47:31 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/39 "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005 Steve Jobs was born out of wedlock, put up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college, then changed the world. What's your excuse? http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/stevejobs.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/37 Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:18:13 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/37 For those who may have missed this incredible marketing stunt when it was released by Intel a few months back, I wanted to share it with you. Put simply, it's a short video clip that pulls together aspects of your Facebook feed into a visual museum gallery. I came across this again because I've just spent some time being very much blown away by Facebook's new timeline profile view, rediscovering old elements of my life, and making great use of the fact that I can now jump to any point in my timeline of Facebook history with ease. To me, it's the first time that an online social profile has felt emotionally engaging - it's no longer a standard, uncurated text-based stream of updates, it's a visual catalog of everything I've done in the past 5 years of my life. It's also something that no other social network could put together, because no other network has this level of background detail on it's users. After all, noone wants to see your search and Gmail history on Google+. Back to the main highlight of this article, though - Intel's "Museum of Me". Just click the link below, grant access to your profile, sit back and watch your life play past. Visit http://www.intel.com/museumofme/ to browse your museum. For more info on Facebook's new profile updates, visit their Timeline overview page. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/museumofme.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/36 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:46:12 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/36 Freeze Frame Design recently gave South Coast Contracting a site makeover. Taking the content and structure from their old site, we were able to give the company a more modern and elegant aesthetic by creating a whole new site design around the existing content. You can view the finished site at www.southcoastcontracting.co.uk. We can give any site a visual makeover in just a short space of time, so if you have a site you'd like updating, editing or redesigning, don't hesitate to get in touch with us! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/scc_after.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/35 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:23:10 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/35 You may know that I'm a recent graduate of the University of Bath, having studied Architecture for 4 years. As such, I thought I'd share some of my final work here for anyone who may be interested. Today I'm highlighting a group project undertaken in my 4th year, entitled 'Screen Machine'. The project was essentially to design a film institute for Bristol Harbour. As a team of Architects working with a structural engineer, we proposed an extravagant and iconic building designed to 'take you out of reality' and progress you emotionally through the narrative stages of a film. A few more pics below: You can have a look at the complete project brochure in pdf format right here. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/basil_spence_1.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/30 Sun, 11 Sep 2011 11:01:20 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/30 Our latest website, www.sfxevents.com for SFX Events has been featured on Focus Designer! Please have a look, and give us a good rating at www.focusdesigner.com/sfx-events/. You can also follow Focus Designer on twitter at @FocusDesigner. Thanks very much! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/focus_designer.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/29 Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:58:59 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/29 Freeze Frame Design are proud to have launched the new site for SFX Events. SFX came to us a short while ago looking for a high quality site that would clearly put across their experience and expertise, showcase the work they had done and clearly demonstrate the services they provide. We worked closely with SFX Events to ensure that the site gave off a personal touch, whilst cutting to the chase when it came to important information on the services they offer. Social elements such as Twitter integration and an image gallery feed are woven into the site, with the aim of broadening SFX Events' client base and keeping them in touch with every generation of prospective customers. You can check the website out at www.sfxevents.com and follow SFX Events on twitter at @sfxevents. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/web_sfx.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/27 Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:32:17 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/27 Having been using Apple's latest flagship OS for almost a month now, and having got used to all it's new and exciting features, I feel compelled to give a good analytical review of the new king of the jungle. My overall feeling, though, is not really one of joy or excitement, but disappointment more than anything else. It's not that the OS is bad, per se - in many ways it's definitely an improvement over Snow Leopard - it's just that it feels a little half-hearted. I think the problem is that it's edging towards a merger with Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, and Lion is likely the last in the line of OS X versions, incorporating some of the features that make iOS great, but not really fully committing to the task. I think it highly likely that Apple's next major OS (OS XI?) will be a complete new overhaul. Anyway, I'll run through some of the new features and give my verdict on them... The Mac App Store Not an entirely new feature, as it was introduced as an update for Snow Leopard, but still advertised as one of Lion's primary features. However, Lion promos implied that the App Store would be 'fully integrated' into Lion, so to speak. Brilliant, I thought, this'll mean an end of full app re-downloads for the slightest updates, perhaps it'll merge with the Mac's Software Update, and even better maybe apps I bought before the existence of the App Store may be able to receive their future updates through this single system. Not so. the experience is exactly the same as in Snow Leopard. Don't get me wrong, the App Store is a great idea, but it's still very young and very flawed. It definitely needs work. Verdict: 6/10 Multi Touch Gestures & Inverted Scrolling There's no doubt about it, Apple is at the forefront of touch interfaces. The problem is, there's not enough gestures for all of Lion's features. The new addition of swiping between dashboard, desktop and full screen apps means that swiping back and forth between folders or pages in safari gets a bit confused or lost all together, especially using a Magic Mouse. Further, without the use of the absolutely brilliant BetterTouchTool third party plugin for customising gestures, the Mighty Mouse itself doesn't have a great range of touch gestures. Lion's new inverted scrolling behaviour (essentially, scrolling works the opposite way it used to in every direction) is, however, brilliant. It literally took me less than 2 days to get completely used to it, which perhaps suggests this really was the way scrolling should have been done all along. Think of it like scrolling on an iPhone - you're pushing the screen in the direction you want it to move. The only downside will be when trying to use other, non Lion computers from time to time. Verdict: 6/10 Full Screen Apps Not really that much to say here. it's not a feature I ever really felt the need for, but I guess it's nice to have it there. The only apps I use it with are Mail and iTunes - it's nice to just swipe across from my desktop to these with such ease. You don't have to use it, and it doesn't intrude, but it works well if you want it (only with the latest apps written for it, of course). Verdict: 9/10 Mission Control Pretty awesome replacement for Expose. It does feel a little cluttered, and took some time to get used to, but it is, I believe, an improvement. It also does away with the complicated spaces management system, merging it all into one. By far the best way of overviewing everything I'm doing at once, and switching quickly between apps. Verdict: 9/10 LaunchPad The biggest visual influence from the iPhone/iPad is LaunchPad. Essentially, at the click of an icon (or the tap of a finger in my case, configured using BetterTouchTool) you are presented with all your apps displayed on screen, just like the home screen of an iPhone. This is pretty useful for accessing all apps, where previously I was using an application 'stack' popup from the dock. Of course, all your most common apps are already in the dock, so it doesn't get used much. There is no way to order apps by, say, name or kind, and rearranging apps is a right awkward procedure, made even worse by the fact you can't reorder entire pages of apps. In iTunes, you can reorder entire iPhone home screens easily. The solution really would be to simply make the dots at the bottom of the page drag able, so you can reorder entire pages. Overall, a good idea but poorly implemented if you like customisation. Verdict: 5/10 Resume The idea of Resume is that everything saves and restores back to where it was after restarting the computer, or even just an individual app. It works on a few of Apple's own programs, but generally in my experience it's not great. Ok, it works brilliantly in safari, but this isn't really anything new for a web browser. A few non-apple apps do seem to remember which documents were open before quitting, but actually I'm not really sure I always want them to. After restarting my computer, however, all my previously open apps reopened, but didn't even attempt to remember which ones were hidden. In my experience, iCal has NEVER managed to stay hidden after a restart, even when told to in my user preferences. iCal, Things, Twitter, Evernote, LastFM, and Billings ALL popped up on screen, despite having been hidden when I shut down. Pretty lame really, in my view - I'd rather it just didn't remember what was open if it's just going to throw them all in my face after I restart. Verdict: 3/10 AirDrop This one's fantastic. Simply click the AirDrop icon in your finder sidebar, and any other AirDrop macs on the network will appear and allow you to drag and drop files between to share. Works perfectly - one of the few truly great features. Verdict: 10/10 Apps in General All the standard mac apps have received a bit of a makeover. Address book has some fancy new graphics to match the iPad version, all good there. iCal also gets similar treatment. My only irritation is that the list of calendars now appears as a popover, rather than a sidebar. My desktop has a lot more screen space than an iPad - I don't need popovers! Mail has the biggest overhaul. If, like me, you have multiple email account to keep track of you'll probably find yourself going straight into the preferences and switching on the familiar sidebar from previous versions, and therefore hiding the shortcuts bar. The new vertical list of emails gives more screen space for message content on screen, which is great. The ability to show contact photos makes identifying messages quicker and easier too. Finally, threaded messages are brilliant, whereby related messages are grouped together much like an instant message client would do. You can even include your replies into the thread, making it really easy to keep track of a series of email correspondences. For me, the biggest shame is that the user interface in general didn't take on more of the iPad's look and feel. I wish Safari etc had EXACTLY the same look it does on the iPad. I'm also not fond of all the grey sidebar icons that replace the previous OS's colourful icons. It makes it far harder to instantly recognise what you're after. Toolbar icons also are all now monotone, and it's meant I've had to ensure text labels are on everything, as some of them are now pretty confusing to distinguish. Conclusions It's clear that Lion has been inspired by the iPad, but for me they haven't quite taken it far enough in terms of simplicity and coherence. I find myself asking why, if they're going to all this trouble, things don't look and work EXACTLY like the iPad. In Lion if I swipe left I get my dashboard, yet in iOS 5 I have to swipe down from the top to get my dashboard widgets and notifications, whilst swiping left gives me the search interface. Why are many application icons different to their iOS counterparts - Calculator, iPhoto/Photos, Mail etc...if they're going for simplicity and attempting to bring the two OS's as close together as possible, then they've overlooked quite a lot of inconsistencies. This is fine, of course, but to me it just seems to go against their philosophy of simplicity. I'd like to see more functionality in the LaunchPad (ideally, give it full 'finder' style functionality, then remove 'applications' from the finder completely), the ability to reorder desktops etc in Mission Control, all incremental software updates run through the App Store (including App Store apps that I purchased outside the store), less monotonous grey icons, and better iOS coherence in terms of behaviour, layouts, interfaces, aesthetics etc. What we have at the moment is really a half-hearted attempt to make the mac a bit more like iOS, but not really going all the way. I have no doubt that the next mac OS will be a whole new ball game, really merging OS X and iOS properly, but for now we'll have to make do with this. Final Verdict: 7/10 http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/mac_osx_lion_review.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/26 Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:00:18 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/26 Freeze Frame Design is currently working on a high quality site and branding material for SFX Events, a lighting and special effects company based in Hampshire. Part of the site specification requires an integrated content management system to allow easy editing of material on the site by the client. This has proved to be a great opportunity to start fleshing out our proposed new CMS, named 'IceBox'. Whilst still in an early stage, IceBox will soon be in a position to serve as the backbone for all of our websites, and, in our opinion, will offer the very best in efficient, elegant site management. Keep an eye out for future updates on the development of IceBox, as well as the launch of the SFX Events website! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/25 Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:44:42 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/25 Now that Freeze Frame Design is going full time, it seems appropriate that higher quality, more efficient ways of working are produced. One of the most time-consuming elements of the bespoke websites that we produce is the ability for clients to login and manage/edit these sites themselves. Previously, all our websites have featured simple, tailor made content management systems (CMS) built specifically from scratch. Now, however, we're really keen to standardise our management systems. The problem is, most popular existing CMS tools are highly complex, offering vast arrays of options that we have no interest in. This goes against our philosophy of making things as simple and elegant as possible, for both the end user and the client. As such, we are building our own CMS. It will be simple and easy to use, tailored to the many smaller, simpler websites that we build, which may often have less than 10 pages. This system will allow us to implement a higher quality content management system into all of our websites, tailored to offer only that which is required by our individual clients, and providing a standardised management system across all of our websites. The primary aim, and proposed result, of this is a simple and intuitive management system for our clients tailored to their websites, that can be more easily and quickly implemented by our design team. http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/12 Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:44:42 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/12 Having just finished my part 1 degree in Architecture at the University of Bath, I'm taking some time now to focus on my other passion - website design. As such, Freeze Frame Design is going full time, looking to build itself into a respectable, high quality design brand. At present our portfolio may be small, but look out for some impressive stuff currently in development, coming soon! http://www.freezeframedesign.com/content/studio1.jpg http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/11 Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:35:24 GMT Blogs http://www.freezeframedesign.com/blog/11