We are pleased to announce the new interactive website for Matthew White of Dirk+Weiss.
The site contains a collection of ideas and projects, and is loaded with lots of information and connections.
This new site is built in Flash, and contains information graphics, video, marketing, web development and graphic design.
First, it was a website. Then, an iphone app that allows you to make the same instant Helvetica posters.
Now available in the iTunes App Store, the SwissmakerPro app is the most advanced Helvetica poster generator on the market. In fact, it’s the only Helvetica poster generator on the market!
The Pro version of the Swissmaker enables the designer to make perfect black and white Helvetica posters, with a twist. To be a professional designer, you must be able to use type and image. So, with your iPhone and iPod Touch, you can add a photo from your photo library to your poster! So now, with the SwissmakerPro, you are a “Professional Graphic Designer”.
But Wait! There’s more!
In addition to adding photos from your library, we have given you the ability to take photos on the fly with your built in iPhone camera! Try it with friends!
Recently, we took part in Pecha Kucha Boston. Pecha Kucha is a creative lecture format/event that gives a handful of speakers 20 slides and just over 6 minutes to give their pitch. When it was our turn to take the floor, we unveiled not only a bit about or “number one hit single” project Anyone Can Swiss, but the concept of how designers can use “Our Design” to become the new Rock Stars.
Our Design – Working Theory
Our design simply means, all of us: designers, architects, painters, electricians, programmers, taxi drivers etc… Design is no longer limited to single fields of study. It can’t be. If designers are to continue to be meaningful and valuable to the world, they must multi-discipline themselves. It is already difficult enough to convince your clients why design cost money and takes as much time as it does.That’s why, with the Our Design method of working, return on investment is 100% a priority.
The key is to understand and communicate to your client, that design is more than just the planning, graphics, and final tangible object. It is the shaping and influence that you as a designer have over the entire project. From planning and production, to post quantitative and qualitative analysis. You know, the numbers that show your client what you did, actual worked! Otherwise, your just ‘pissing in the wind’ as the colloquialism states.
By first logically analyzing all the connections that come in contact with a project, a designer can find new or ‘un-orthodox’ resources for greatness that may have been overlooked in the past, due to a narrow field of vision and study.
By implementing the ‘Our Design’ method of working, and by learning and applying as much knowledge and skill, to all of the projects you work on, the more value you can bring to the table. The days of the ‘lone-gunman’ designer are over. One mind could make a project work, but many minds, working collectively, can make more than a splash. They can make every project a “Number One Hit Single”.
The Beatles were more than musicians. They were a machine. Turning out Hit Single after Hit Single. It was not the vision of one person, but a collective vision (even in the years after the White Album).
Designers are the new Rock Stars
Do I hire a designer that just does front end? Or do I hire a designer that does front end, back end, and understands social media?
Our design is not just a design process, it is a fundamental shift in the way things have been done in the 20th century. The web and hardware technology have not only opened up new avenues for designers, but have dramatically increased the rate and efficiency that people learn and absorb information. It has also, very quickly, changed the way and rate in which humans communicate.
The days of copy cameras, paste-ups, and type foundries (of physical type as objects), are extinct. We all know, however, that technology does not make you a better or worse designer. It can however make you a more efficient, well rounded designer, and thus, possibly, more valuable to a client.
Designers now have the tools to do a great job, fast. One could say that the availability of the tools to the world (Adobe Products, Typefaces, Etc…), has caused a transparency effect in the world of designer. Now, anyone can access the tools for free (legally or not. That’s an ethics question that is unstoppable). Of course, you have to know how to apply design thinking to the tools to make them work. But the point here is, there is less Magical Mystery to the end user.
Part of the magical secrets of the designer have been revealed, and so, some may say designers must work harder. Well, maybe, it depends on the designer. But one factor is true: Designers must work Smarter, Faster, and More Efficient to deliver a killer product every single time. The way to do this, is to be aware of trends, technology, and the way the world operates. We learn a lot just by watching someone on YouTube or Google something that we want to know. Its safe to say that someone out there has already covered the topic in question. Its free, so go get it!
Our culture is now running on a fast, and ‘in your face’ foundation. Text messaging has replaced phone calls and blogs have killed print news. Designers must constantly be making new connections that can keep their clients running 200% above the rest. “Hit Single” projects can be your fifteen minuets of fame, over and over again, each time bringing in not only notoriety, but new contracts and revenue.
“Designers are the new rock stars!”
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 – On Wednesday night we spoke to a crowd of photographers, designers, and architects about our ‘number one hit single’ Anyone Can Swiss. The response to our presentation was quite exciting. We met some really great people, and enjoyed the 20 slide, 6min 20sec format, as it is in the vein of how we work: fast, to the point, and with maximized efficiency over all.
I had lots of great conversations with many people. If you didn’t get a chance to say ‘Hey!’, then drop us a comment below!
Thanks Everyone for a great evening.
Every two years, the AIGA has it’s Best of New England design competition. If you have been following our updates (or love/hate Helvetica) you probably have seen our project Anyone Can Swiss. Well, we can now call Anyone Can Swiss “Award Winning”.
That’s right, Dirk+Weiss has won a Best of New England (BoNE) award for outstanding design. The BoNE awards only go out the best New England designers with ‘knock your socks off’ work. Admittedly, the website for Anyone Can Swiss is not your typical graphic design project, but somehow, it felt right at home inside a graphic design competition.
Overall, we feel the judges connected to the bigger picture, and maybe even had a little fun with the project. That’s exactly what we wanted. Anyone Can Swiss is not just a “Perfect Helvetica Poster Generator”, it is a social experiment for graphic designers. Sure it pushes a few buttons, and causes some to ask “is this a joke? or serious?”. That’s the whole idea: contemplation and discourse.
We would like to thank the AIGA BoNE Show Judges and AIGA Boston for taking the time consider Anyone Can Swiss as an award winning design project, and creating an opportunity for us here a Dirk+Weiss to promote what we do to the greater design community.
Now what? Well, check out our Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app. Why the iPhone? We ask simply, why just be on the web, when you can be on the web and mobile? And we feel it is a safe assumption that many of the 40,000,000 iPhone users in the US are indeed, graphic designers.
First, thanks to all of you who have supported AnyoneCanSwiss by downloading our free Swissmaker 2.0 App. Our new build is on its way. This time, we have outdone ourselves.
There will be an update to the current free app, with some new abilities including:
We are also announcing the release of our SwissmakerPro App. This is a $0.99 upgrade to the current free app, and it introduces the new features listed above and two exciting new features!
That’s right friends! The Swissmaker 2.0 App for your iPhone is now available for Free Download in the iTunes App Store. Since its approval this Saturday June 6th, we are averaging over 65 units downloaded per day!
The Swissmaker 2.0 includes the ability to create a “Perfect Helvetica Poster” from a single line of text. Then, you can save it to your photo library and share with friends.
How can we make it free? The same way the rest of the web can be free, with a twist. We have included inside our Swissmaker 2.0 app, an advertising model that incorporates a co-branding vehicle to help promote products and brands virally. As a participant, you only pay if your ad is viewed. We have a detailed reporting and advertising system plugged in behind this and all our up coming apps, powered by OpenX.
If you our your company is interested in advertising on the Swissmaker 2.0 App and co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, contact us.
Download it now! Fun at parties! Try it with friends! Now Available For Free Download — Visit http://www.anyonecanswiss.com for more details.
If you have not already seen our smash hit site AnyoneCanSwiss, please do check it out. In the first 48 hours, 11 thousand unique-visitor, poster submissions, we’re collected and shared on Flickr. And now, AnyoneCanSwiss, is going mobile.
Here at Dirk+Weiss, we have created a new iPhone app that takes the concept of AnyoneCanSwiss, and makes it mobile. In the next few weeks, you will be able to download your own Swissmaker 2.0 App to your iPhone from the App Store on iTunes. And did we mention, its totally free!
The app will not only make instant Helvetica posters, but will allow you to save the posters to you photo library on your phone. From there, the possibilities are endless! Email a poster to friends, or set one as your phone wallpaper. If any other app on your phone can access your photo library, it can also access your posters.
Also included with the launch of the Swissmaker 2.0 iPhone App, is an advertising model that can connect interested brands to a niche viral market. This process of co-branded advertising is a no-risk model in you only pay for the views you receive. If you our your company is interested in co-branding with AnyoneCanSwiss, send us a message.
Apparently, long time software developers are finally making bank by creating one of those $1.99 iPhone apps. I have now read countless articles about struggling software companies who are giving up their pc/mac box development, for the iPhone platform.
So what’s in an iPhone app? Well, from what we can see, besides some code and graphics, there is an underlying philosophy that has put up the white flag to proprietary software piracy. Software companies have, and are beginning to understand that there is no bringing down piracy. The old mentality and business model of “big box, big software, big price” has been eradicated by open, collaborative development, and the iPhone has brought the same software development strategy to a mobile and light weight, if not viral stage.
Lets do a quick calculation for an example iPhone app’s annual revenue:
200 downloads/day x 1.99/download x 365 Days = $145,270!
Now that’s the way to make a six figure salary.
Stay tuned for the Anyone Can Swiss iPhone app!!
This past weekend we had the opportunity to talk with new design students at the Art Institute of Boston. Nathan Felde, chair of the design department, invited us to come show not only current and past projects, but also talk about the current state of graphic design, and design in general.
Nathan started his presentation with an explination of the design program and the transition is is going through. Up untill recently the design department at AIB was on a different, if not anitquated track, for teaching design in the 21st century. Nathan’s theory of “Eventual Design” focuses on the hypothesis that design has moved beyond just objects and visual aesthetics, to behavior and interconnected goals. The role of the graphic designer for the 21st century is more involved than ever, in where the decisions of said designers, can effect all aspects of a brand, business and product. A comparison of design to Cybernetics was made.
Our presentation started thereafter. It seemed to be a nice follow-up to Nathan’s bit. We covered Ticknology, Kiosk, Contact+, and AnyoneCanSwiss. The students were definatly engaged and were humored by our AnyoneCanSwiss and the selection of posters.
Nathan feels that the our projects are artifact of the notion that with design training (graphic in particullar), a person can have a profound effect on all aspects of a project. In particullar, projects such as Kiosk and AnyoneCanSwiss, we feel are examples of this type of design theory. Kiosk is not only graphically designed, but also contains a buisness model and prototype, where previously a designers resposibilty would end at just the graphics.
Next week, Matthew will be attending AIGA’s Student Portfolio Review Day at MassArt, reviewing graphic design portolios of perspective students. Updates to follow with some photos of great design.
