2 Out of Three recently finished a project for our former Electronic Arts colleague Nitzan Wilnai and his new video game social network VG Views. Working closely with Nitzan – and the 2 Out of Three engineering team – we created a site we’re very proud to show off. We also thought it would be fun to take you through the design processfor VG Views; showing you some of the wireframes, rejected logo designs and the multiple stages of web site design.

For each project it’s good to try and get to the core of the product or service that is being offered. In the case of VG Views we did not have to do much research as we have been working in the video game industry for over six years. So when it came time to find a design metaphor that encompassed the variety of different video games and gaming platforms we quickly gravitated to the idea of pixels. All video games – from low fidelity cell phone games to the graphic intensive games found on the “Play Station 3″ are made from pixels – therefore, it just made sense to create the logo and website design for VG Views with pixels in mind.

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A dash of Manu Chao, a pinch Gabrielle & Rodrigo and top with Thievery Corporation – bake at 400 degrees and 20 minutes later you have Federico Aubele. The Argentinian musician has been dominating the speakers in our Whistler apartment which earned him two tracks on December’s sOUNDTRACK tO mY lIFE. The music feels very international with Aubele’s guitar mixed into stylish lounge beats and enticing vocals. The smooth sound is no coincidence as the album is actually produced and distributed by Thievery Corporation’s ESL Music label.

While Aubele was my favorite artist of the month my favorite song of the month goes to M.I.A’s Paper Planes. M.I.A. is another artist who combines a variety of different musical genre – I don’t know if I’m listening to indie rock, dub reggae, hip hop or something in between. However you want to classify it, it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.

You can listen to both Aubele and M.I.A below. Let me know what you think of all the songs for this month’s soundtrack.

p.s……did you notice that December soundtrack was released on time?!?!?

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A new year has arrived and it seems like a good time to post some pictures from the past month. I was slacking in blog posts for the month of December so I have pictures from Whistler, Vancouver, and Christmas with the family in SF to show you. I should also have some designs and a soundtrack to my life to share with you in the coming weeks. I hope everyone is looking forward to a creative 2008.

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