Logos have always fascinated me and so I get excited when I learn more about how the great ones get designed. These small symbols often made up of simple shapes or even the intersection of letters can take on a very large meaning. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign logo quickly captured a nation and then the world’s hopes and dreams. It eventually took on a life of its own and became instantly recognizable – it was plastered on everything and came to mean so much to so many.

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The culmination of months of design, photography, and development have been assembled together and launched onto the information superhighway….and its name – Neela Bags. Neela Bags is a new, reusable bag venture for those who want to be environmentally friendly and stylish at the same time. When Neela’s founders approached us to create their web site and provide art direction they were looking for a way to show off their stylish bags and demonstrate the company’s commitment to environmental issues all within a clean, modern design. We’re very happy with how things turned out. Jump over to Neela Bags and let us know what you think.

Great web site design concentrates on the small picture as well as the big picture. Little things like icons and graphics turn a web site into a memorable browsing experience. The next time you’re looking into a new product that you might purchase take a look at the company’s web site and look at their visuals. More often than not, if they have great images or icons they probably have a great product – look here & here. The thinking is if you’re going to spend hours, days, and weeks obsessing over the graphic imagery of your web site, you’ve probably spent twice as long designing a great product that will satisfy you’re customers.

I just returned from a trip back to the Bay Area to help one of 2 Out of Three’s clients with this idea – delivery on the small things. We spent four marathon days capturing creative and high quality product and lifestyle images for the Neela Bags‘ website, which will be launching in the next few weeks.

We went into the four days of shooting with ideas for eight different types of shots at six separate locations around the cities of San Mateo and Burlingame. Everything from detailed product shots, to lifestyle shots, to images of the company’s founders we’re taken. It’s fun to look at some of the numbers involved in our 4 days of shooting.

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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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At 2 Out of Three we are passionate about good design. And we want more of it. So, why do companies like Apple or Google just “get it”? Where do they keep coming up with great products and software like the iPod or gmail? They certainly didn’t just appear out of thin air or even from a moment of Photoshop inspiration. Good design – be it for software or a physical gadget – comes from a good process. First the idea comes about, then a good design process develops that idea into a tangible product, and finally it’s executed upon. At 2 Out of Three we follow a design process in order to achieve something we’re passionate about. And we’re willing to let you in on our secrets so you can go out there and make more web sites and gadgets that we get excited to use.

Let’s begin by giving you a general idea of the steps we go through when we’re first approached by a client to create a web site. In this post I’ll concentrate on the big picture, walking you through each step of the design process. In future entries we’ll go into greater details about each step. You’ll be able to read about the reasons why we do certain things and the secrets we’ve learned over the years to create a high quality finished product and avoid disasters.

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I recently started reading Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge, one of the founders of the influential product design firm IDEO. The book is a fascinating compilation of interviews and analysis of the best designed and most innovative digital products. It covers everything from the industrial design theories behind the original laptop to the interface design for Google’s search page and all in between.

In particular, I was struck by Monggridge’s definition of essential design skills that he stated early on it the book:

The core skills of design are synthesis, understanding people, and iterative prototyping.

- Bill Moggridge

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