Meg Robichaud

Is it flattering to become the Growlab mascot?

Another illustration before the night is done! One of the founders of Sunnytrail (one of the companies in the GrowLab cohort) has the tendency of saying unexpectedly awesome things, that have led us to believe that he’s an evil genius. I’ve somehow been convinced to draw the t-shirts?

28 Nov 2 short url

First Round of the Placing Webplates.

Well, I’ve already started iterating on these - but I forgot that the best part of posting things is watching them evolve! So, to that point, I thought I would post the first round of the Placeling webplates *PRE* feedback. I would love to hear your thoughts. Oh, I should preface this with that the illustration in the footer is intended to change with each page … the illustrations have just been a bit on the back burner lately.

Profile page with activity feed

Oh, and you can do a bit of hover business with the header

Places

Complete with a drawer for places & tags…..

And a little hover action too…

And a Tag Page…

And finally, a photo page

24 Nov 7 short url

This is what I spent my day on - not a bad day, not bad at all.

11 Nov 7 short url

A little peak..

at what I’m working on for ecquire!

(oh, and here’s how she looks in action)

17 Oct 17 short url

Map Markers: Surprising Challenge

Today I spent a good deal of my day making the Placeling map markers - and was very surprised to find out how difficult the are to make properly (and even more surprised to realize that google was the one that nailed it).

First, you have to figure out the shape - not an easy task. There are four major competing ideas:

the tap area has to be sufficient that you can easily tap the location;
the point has to be narrow enough such that it is clear where the marker is actually pointing
the whole marker has to be small enough that it prevents crowding when you zoom out of a heavily populated area
it looks *so* much better when the markers are short and fat

Luckily I anticipated these issues and was able to use the markers from the logo as a starting point:

Only a few adjustments required; added a brown outline to the bottom, flattened the bottom out a bit, added appropriate shadows… (okay actually I tried a pile of other stuff, before I came back and decided that I had it right the first time)

While the highlight and gradient look nice, they were actually a critical part of the functionality. The highlight allows multiple markers to lay on top of each other without losing definition. The gradient contributes to this, while also helping to define the specific location the marker is indicating.

and it just so happens that I need two markers (one for “My map” and one for comparing my map to a friends)..

Now here’s the challenge..

What do you do when both people have marked the same place..?

So far.. I’m stuck. I’ve got a lot of failed markers, and a lot of mediocre markers, but nothing is knocking it out of the park. I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I like to mark it out of the park…

(Okay, you don’t have to comment on the checkered ones, I know that they aren’t working, but I just kind of like the look of them - you know for something some day, they’ll be just right)

Thoughts?

*EDIT*

I got so much great feedback from tumblr, twitter AND forrst that I thought I would quickly post a few more variations (based on all of YOUR ideas!)