Ali Ali Thinks : My delicious thoughts! » design

A Feed Apart

Ali Ali — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:56:15 +0000

A Feed Apart is the official twitter aggregator for An Event Apart. It was originally created by Pete Karl and Nick Sergeant at the AEA Boston 2009. After a resounding success and in anticipation of the AEA Boston 2010, Pete and Nick decided to have A Feed Apart reprogrammed and redesigned.

One day Nick approached me while we were working together at dwaiter and asked me if I wanted to redesign AFA… My answer immediately was “HELL YA!” My task was to create a new look for AFA. This included a logo, icons and a user interface.

The AFA logo and twitter avatar

I started with the obvious which is the logo. We were not sure if we wanted to go really far from the look of AEA or to stay fairly close, so we ended up in the middle. The new logo has resembling elements from the AEA brand while having its own unique look. I came up with ten different variations.

We all agreed that we liked number 4 to be AFA’s twitter avatar and number ten as the official logo. The logo got tweaked a bit too after some nice feedback from Andy Birchwood on dribbble (http://dribbble.com/shots/14991-A-Feed-Apart-Logo)

AFA Icons

One thing the original AFA was missing were icons. Since I love pixel icons and this was a great platform to use them, I thought why the hell not! So I started with my iPhone. I know some of you might think, oh he is going to do some research on iPhone icon designs. That wasn’t why I turned to my iPhone though. The reason was this C64 Paint XL app

I was able to use it to create a huge family of pixel icons which I ended up utilizing some of for AFA.

AFA User Interface

One thing that really helped me with the design of the new AFA website was the old AFA site. Pete and Nick put a lot of thought into the original AFA which made my life way easier. Nevertheless I had to improve the interface and find better ways to show sessions and other elements in the website. I tried my best to stay true to the simplicity of the original AFA while giving it a visual enhancement. I can’t wait till AFA goes live in May. Stay tuned

Design & Happiness

Ali Ali — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:27:21 +0000

You might wonder how could happiness and design somehow come across each other on a path to finding one another? Sometimes we can make someone happy by evoking a powerful emotional response using design, or maybe happiness itself is the motive that inspires us to be creative! People have always strove to reach happiness although you might wonder what does happiness even mean?

Stefan Sagmeister does an interesting job explaining happiness by breaking it down into a three layered piece of chocolate cake. That in itself should tell you something about Stefan’s philosophy and his design process. The award winning designer also offered us a list of things that makes him happy in addition to the showcase of some of his art work, which he was in Indonesia. Stefan’s lecture at RIT was very inspiring and motivating. Thus, If Stefan happens to be giving a lecture close to where you live, don’t miss the chance to go see him.

Everybody’s Good Website Illustrations.

Ali Ali — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:38:33 +0000

This collection of illustrations was made by me as well as the full interface design for the everybodysgood website at Dumbwaiter Design. This website is created to serve the needs of the LGBT community in Rochester, NY and else where. The site will go live in October.

Green Dude Wallpaper!

Ali Ali — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:13:22 +0000

I turned my latest illustration into a wallpaper design that would fit right into your desktop and iPhone screen . Share it! Enjoy it!

Latest Illustration

Ali Ali — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:27:23 +0000

New illustrations created using Adobe Photoshop. These were made as a part of a bigger website design project which I will share more details about on a later date. Hope you will enjoy it.