Blog: Behind the Scene
journalFriday game
Today is a Friday. This means it's time to shoot some bugs.
journalPost about our new site
Many of our subscribers witnessed some fluctuations in our RSS feed yesterday. This was caused by the launch of a new version of our site. “So, what’s really new!?”— some careless users may quip. In fact there is a lot new about it.
cookbookHow to draw an icon. Minimization process
So get your magnifying glasses handy — we continue! After long and feisty arguments (do not worry — no blasters involved) we have 3 approved icons sized 64×64. Further starts the work that requires attention and patience but its end result will be seen by the Alien Invaders much more often (as it happens in the process of evolution they did not enlarge the screens but worked on improving their eyesight). Now we will grab your attention with the proper method of drawing small icons.
cookbookHow to draw a good icon for Google?
Not so long ago we berated the new Google icon and called it bad. But denouncing something that is not yours is easy! But what icon would be good? We decided to answer this question: let’s take four designers and make them draw a good icon for Google. Such approach we call running ‘a creative boutique’.
journalDribbler
Today our Russian football team is going to play its first match in the Euro 2008. We truly hope that our guys will win! By the way, our friends from Thematic Media have recently launched a social utility for football fans called Dribbler. Almost all graphics for this project was created by our precious hands, which makes us very proud.
cookbookWhy the new Google favicon is bad?
A few days ago I visited the site of my favorite search engine and saw a new icon in the URL line. My first thought was that I misspelled the URL but then it occurred to me that Google had changed its favicon. I do not reckon it’s some kind of world-shaker for the whole IT industry but to me — an GUI designer — this fact appealed as rather interesting.
journal<SUP>
Some time ago we paid a social visit to the office of SUP — the company famous for managing and developing the fabled LiveJournal. The office is unique for being located in penthouse of a tower building and the view from its windows on Moscow is just awesome. Pictures, as always, are available for your viewing pleasure at Turbomilkr.
journalPhotos from ReMix
We have recently come back from ReMix the web developers’ conference. Thankfully in one piece, safe and sound. We also managed to cram all the exciting images into our Turboflickr. Steve Balmer happened to be an extremely energetic man and told us very interesting stuff about out bright digital future. BTW, I managed to be one of those lucky whose questions had been posed to Steven in public. My question was about the interfaces. Check out the photo proof.
journalREMIX’08
I have dreamt for so long to visit the Hall of Columns at the House of Trade Union in Moscow, do the tough guy catwalk on the red carpet, and gaze at the magnificent chandeliers. Besides, meeting Steve Balmer in person would not be an unpleasant experience, however a bit frightening. The dreams come true. We are going to REMIX’08!
journal7 Principles of Effective Icon Design
Pretty cool article on icon design by Sean Hodge "7 Principles of Effective Icon Design". Also we like the design of PSDTuts where article is posted.
journalTen
Starting with today the number of Turbomilkers is a two-digit figure! The staff of our modest company (but with intergalactic ambitions) reached ten! It means that during the last two years the company grew twofold. What does that really mean? It means that more cool icons, fancy interfaces and smart posts are coming out anytime soon!
journalGTDInbox 2.0 is out
Two month ago I wrote about my experience with GTDInbox. Now it is my pleasure to announce that Andy Mitchell has released GTDInbox 2.0!
cookbookFancy color names or Royal Blue
It all started when our client wrote, seemingly as an afterthought: “Please change the color of the icon to royal blue.” To tell you the truth, this request struck me as rather unusual. We have dark blue, light blue and ordinary blue, but no royal blue that I knew about. So I did some research.
cookbookEnlarge your icons
A small icon is OK! It’s nothing to be ashamed of; it’s not a big deal. Icons can even be very small or plain tiny. This has been their iconic fate. For many years it was the reality and everyone was happy. But something went wrong. All of a sudden, icons got big!
journalCorrecting mistakes
When I wrote the article 10 mistakes in icon design, I did not expect it would arouse so much interest. Clearly, who would want to read about icons?! But I was wrong. Visitor statistics that usually make for somewhat dry and boring reading suddenly erupted: 93,386 visitors in a day!
cookbook10 Mistakes in Icon Design
It is much easier to criticize somebody else’s work than to create something cool yourself. But if you apply a systematic approach to criticizing, make a numbered list and prepare illustrations, it will be regarded as a fully-fledged analysis! In my opinion, icon design is undergoing a transitional period. On the one hand, screen resolutions are increasing, hence enhancing icons. On the other hand, we still have good old pixels. Icons sized 16×16 and even smaller are still widely used. And so, here are the most commonly observed mistakes in icon design…
cookbookMy GTD experience: emptying my inbox with GTDInbox
It was a year and a half ago, my head brimming with ideas about GTD, when I realized that an efficient system of self-organization based on the principles of GTD would make most sense if built around the email client; simply because the vast majority of incoming material requiring attention is delivered via email.
journalOlympic icons
Fish, Giant Panda, Flame, Tibetan Antelope and Swallow are the heroes of our new free set of icons. No, we have not gone mad. These are the mascots of the Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing this summer. And also these characters represent the five Olympic Rings, hence their corresponding coloring.
cookbookMy GTD experience: emptying your head
I wanted to share my own experience in organizing my life in accordance with GTD for a very long time. You have most likely heard about the GTD. However you have probably missed the book under the same name. I would definitely recommend everyone to read this book. Nevertheless I will try to tell you my story so that some of the methods comprising the theory would be clear to you even without reading the book.
journalSeason Holidays
Dear clients and friends!
We are happy to inform you on our working schedule over the season of holidays. Our office closes December 29 to reopen January 9 next year. We will be anxiously waiting until after the holidays for you precious orders and correspondence!
Continue your reading in Cookbook Archive and Journal Archive.
About this Blog
We at Turbomilk talk about the subtleties and nuances of visual interface design in a popular scientific style. In our blog we give you touching stories about icons, critique of other people’s designs — and praise of our own! — plus exciting links and news on the life of the company.
- Journal — snappy notes bursting with info on given topics
- Cookbook — extensive ponderings about the eternal subjects and secrets of design
- Case Studies — exciting and detailed stories about our projects
We will be over the moon if you decide to place a link to our site from your site or blog. We have stashed one pretty picture for precisely that purpose:
Please refer to the home page of our site: www.turbomilk.ru
We often write
rather useful stuff.
cookbookHow to draw a good icon for Google? Josh: I like Dmitry Joukov's, really reminds me of Google. Much better than the current.
cookbookHow to draw a good icon for Google? wiki: new google favicon is much better then old one. and no one favicon presented here is better!
cookbook10 Mistakes in Icon Design Jean-Christophe Caron: Very interesting article. I just want to say that if you must talk about the gnome design then you need to be sure to use the gnome default…
cookbookHow to draw a good icon for Google? Miguel de Oliveira: I thought people were referring to these as the bad ones and the lower case g as the better looking ones. Seriously, these suck, specially the colo…
cookbookHow to draw a good icon for Google? Shawn Adrian: Ha! In my previous comment (on your previous post) I said you should pitch Google on a new icon, but secretly I just wanted to see you design one, …