Following up on Samara’s Awesome Paper Folding Parties and the killer igloo notepads that are the result of said paper folding, I present you with notepad2.0.

Taking notes is great and all, especially in one of Samara’s notepads, but the only problem is you need to read through them again to remember what you or someone else had to do and if you’re at all like me (slightly scatterbrained), sometimes it’s difficult to work out what you were thinking when writing said note.

Solution: Add a to do list to your notepad pages
Only actionable items are put in this section, then when you’ve been in meetings back to back all day and your brain is fried, you can review your notes and have a clearly defined list of To Do Items for you or other team members.

There’s a whole methodology surrounding this sort of thing that I won’t really go into, but I’m finding it works well for me so I thought I’d share. I’ve put together a PDF template that breaks your pages up into, Notes, ToDo Items and Ideas for Later.

It pretty much does what it says on the tin, the only thing worth explaining is the “Ideas for later” section.  In a brainstorm, lots of ideas get thrown around, some feasible and right for the brief, some awesome but off point for the task at hand. These are worth documenting for use at some point later on. Record them here so that in the future when you think “What was that cool thing that did the thing with the other thing” you can flip back through your notebook and presto, there it is! Booom!

Also, I’ve put a nice little dot grid on the notes pages for drawing your concept sketches. Yay!

Finally, you should probably check that your printer can run paper trough it twice so that you can still use the backs of your scrap paper and save a tree before you wind up in trouble with IT for screwing up the printer.

Here’s a PDF that I made especially for you. Enjoy! Now I can tick “write igloo blog post” off my list (see it works)

Igloo Melbourne is looking for a Freelance Mid-Weight Digital Designer who lives and breathes digital. Someone with skills and ideas, who understands the fundamentals and is looking to collaborate with the creative team to deliver amazing work.

Were looking for someone who’s got the skills in all the standard industry software. Bonus if you’ve spent some time designing for Flash or could show us a thing or two about motion graphics.

If you’ve looked down the barrel of a project and thought “how the @#$% am I going to do this” and came out unscathed then we want to hear from you! We’re looking for someone with ideas but more importantly someone who can take a concept from a sketch and turn it into something incredible.

Working at igloo you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the creative process with a bunch of like minded individuals all passionate about driving the idea forward and having a great time doing it.

If you like the sound of this then send your Resume and Folio URL to: info@igloo.com.au

I have blogged a few times lately about attempts publishers are making the price of content on the internet (here and here, if you’re interested). Traditional media sources and content producers have always struggled with creating a profitable online model, and the rise of the smartphone and the tablet both highlights the issues they are facing, and presents new opportunities for a solution.  Two more attempts at this solution have been getting publicity recently. First, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced it’s plans for a new, national US publication designed specifically for the iPad. The publication is will feature short, snappy news stories (take this to mean lots of pictures, little in the way of analysis) and has been created with the goal of “having young people read newspapers”.   The second thing which got me thinking about it was a story about a series of new magazines created specifically for tablets, called Nomad Editions. Basically, the idea behind is that they’ll produce 5 “editions” around specific topics (food, movies, surfing, viral video, etc), published weekly, which users will be able to subscribe to. It will be built using an interesting technology called Treesaver , which allows users to view ther same content, using the same addresses, on their desktop or mobile device.

These are both nice ideas, but they both seem inspired by a premise I’m not sure I agree with. Mark Edmiston, CEO of Nomad, claimed that Nomad was borne of that fact that “…people reading on their iPads, they’re reading a different way”. Rupert Murdoch made similar claims about his national newspaper concept. The implication in both cases is that the new technology necessitates new content, as well as new content delivery. (more…)

Here is the definitive guide to the election brought to you by the igloo digital design team. We look at the things that really matter. Like what font and colour is the brand in. How many followers has each party leader got. Who owns the digital space.

If people are going to judge our next leader on the colour of their hair, the sound of their voice or the type of swimwear they favour, then its our right, as designers to judge them font against font, brand against brand, HEX against HEX. And of course a few minor policy promises. Who is it going to be?

View a full size version of The Designer’s Guide to The Australian Federal Election 2010

While i’m desperately waiting for a an invitation to the Flipboard iPad app, all I’ve got is their website which I find truly amazing, yet so simple. This is a great reminder that horizontal websites can really enhance the user experience. Here is my selection of the most outstanding fresh horizontal websites. You’ll also notice that none of these websites are using Flash (only plain HTML). If you know any other well-designed horizontal websites, feel free to share them in the comments.

(Ctrl+N)

Farmhouse Fare

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Quit recently launched a new TVC ’Never give up giving up’, a departure from the usual scare tactics historically used by Quit Victoria to a more positive campaign that focuses on positive benefits and outcomes. Supporting this is a small campaign site that explores key reasons for breaking the quitting journey, positive health and financial outcomes from quitting and what changes occur to the body during the process.

Below is an insight into the creative journey undertaken by igloo to deliver this site.

From sketch to reality (typo’s and all), you can see how the ‘Wall of Positivity” concept was born and how it developed into a functioning solution for Quit Victoria. Along the way, variations on the concept have been expressed including a set of more medical style applications that were rejected by Quit for being a bit too harsh given the concept was about positivity and not shock. Creatively, the site intends to inform, much like a display at a museum, rather than shock. Overall, however, the campaign will sit amongst the more shock and fear style ads.

The final outcome is a striking, graphic extension to the TVC with selected positive content sourced from the main Quit Victoria site built in Flash. Despite there being a lot of talk about the use of Flash in sites like this (and in general), Flash was chosen as it is still a viable platform that supports video and keepquitting.org.au is essentially a campaign site.

Behind the scenes, you can see that a sketch is still a quick and cheap way to convey an idea. It takes a fraction of the time to sketch something rather than try and conceptualise in Photoshop and a sketch focuses on the idea, not the design. For that reason, sketches are big at igloo (and sketching ability is something we look at in peoples folios!)

Quit are now on facebook and twitter so if you are a smoker thinking of quitting or want to help support someone on their quitting journey, make sure you follow them.

More freebies for you guys. We’ve developed another font as part of a job called the igloo fold. There is a uppercase and lower case version so that you can make words join up. Download it for free. Yay! We also have igloo_dot if you missed that last time. These fonts are for unlimited use on any work, commercial or private. Hey, make a buck out of it if you can. Font probably works best as a headline and not as body copy. We would love to see any example of it’s use, but it’s not essential!. As a kind gesture, we would really appreciate you share this link with your community! And… a big thanks to Samara for the use of her London shots.

Download igloo_fold.

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There are two items I have to tick off in my “Places to go before I die ” list.

#1. Fly to Denmark, check-in to the Hotel Fox and spend a few nights in different rooms enclosed by walls designed by the best illustrators in the world.

#2. Fly to Sweden and live up in the trees.

Yup – that’s right. Trees. As a fan of modern architecture – I was completely amazed when I found this. Architects Tham + Videgard Hansson Arkitekter have designed a hotel hidden up in the trees, properly entitled “Treehotel” in Harads, Sweden.  And it has just been opened up for bookings!

The rooms all have unique names: The Tree Sauna, The Bird’s Nest, The Cabin, The Mirrorcube, The Blue Cone and The UFO. Each have its own distinct character. Rooms are accessible by a rope ladder or rope bridge and are all minimal and well designed.

If you ever need to go into solitude to clear your head and have a Henry David Thoreau like experience, this might be the perfect getaway for you too (just add it down to your list).

Watch the video here.

No, it’s just Samara hanging her marvellous creation. igloo’s very own soy sauce fish chandelier™.

Or as we in the biz call it, a soyfishdelier™.

Designers, meet Dribbble. Forget Twitter, now we have our own version where we can share sneak peeks of our work in progress in 120,000 pixels or less – how awesomely geeky does that sound!

Grab a snippet of your work, crop it to 400 x 300 pixels, and share with the world. It even has similar functionalities where you can follow designers with great work and keep up with what they are working on. And of course you can show your appreciation by ‘liking’ them with a heart.

Some of the bite-sized snapshots on the site are pretty inspiring and interesting as the work varies from website navigation, typography, brand identity, illustration, print work and even iPhone/iPad apps. Looks like it’s a great way to generate interest for your work or create some suspense before say, going live with a new design.

The downside is, it’s a membership driven system so you can’t sign up unless you have been invited by a current member. But they claim to routinely issue invites to existing members who might just announce these opportunities on Twitter, so look out for that. In the meantime… invite, anyone?