THE COSMONAUTS

Here is one nice pic of the Vostok iPad Sleeves the girls at Jositajosi crafted for us:

Their original post is here.

I deeply believe that honesty and beauty are two of the most important values in design. We put as much as we could in the redesign of the Search Results page of Minube for flights and hotels and the result has been good. Here it is:

Our assumptions

We (both minube and us) put extreme attention to what information mattered the most and made it stand above the secondary data. These were our main assumptions:

• Price matters most than company.
• Price (usually) matters most than hours.
• There is the cheapest and then the rest.
• Airlines are better recognized by their logos/colors than by their names.
• Some things don’t need to be a in a filter: price ranges, airline, websites searched, etc.
• Those with flexible dates need a different way to look at it.
• It’s easier to redo the search than to refine through ajax.
• Flight and flight back are consecutive, so let’s show them consecutive.
• It’s likely that your choice will be among the first 10 results (although you may want to see more).
• White space helps people identify choices, it makes everything clearer.
• Boxes help you separate between different types of content.
• It’s better to show just the essential data.

Old and new versions side to side

Minube is always quesioning how they do things and how these things can be improved. I like to say that at Vostok we are not good at innovating but at improving. The old version was good. But good as it was it could be, and should be improved. Here you have both versions side to side:

Facts prove it

We know the new one is more beautiful and more honest. Facts prove it. Raúl (Minube’s CEO) told me about the A/B Test results and the main indicators doubled in the new one. You should check Raúl’s post in Spanish about it.

We both believe

It’s a great thing we have clients who share our believes. Working with minube is always of great pleasure. We have a relationship based on trust and shared values. They also think that beauty and honesty are two of most important principles of good design.

Acabo de publicar toda la información sobre el próximo curso para formar a diseñadores de interacción. Será la tercera edición del Programa Vostok.

Mi abuelo, alguien de quien he aprendido muchas cosas, solía decir que “las cosas o se hacen bien o no se hacen”. Esa ha sido mi forma de entender el diseño desde que empecé, no sólo para ejercerlo sino también para enseñarlo.

He decidido volver a enseñar diseño de interacción.

Quiero volver a formar gente como creo que hay que hacerlo: sin prisas, enseñando con ejemplos, hablando, debatiendo y trabajando. Creo en la honestidad absoluta de enseñar ejemplos buenos y también errores, de hablar de lo que no funciona y de lo que sí, y también de invitar a gente mejor que uno mismo para que comparta sus formas de hacer. Quiero que mis alumnos practiquen, discutan, lean, salgan a la calle y observen para luego volver a practicar.

He estado dos años sin enseñar. No me sentía con ganas porque dudaba de muchas de las cosas que había enseñado antes. Tras dos años de trabajar muy duro he desterrado alguna creencia y he reforzado unas cuantas certezas. Primero pensé en organizar un curso de dos días, algo intensivo. Lo descarté porque realmente no sería capaz de transmitir todo lo que quiero transmitir. Si hay que enseñar diseño, hagámoslo bien.

En noviembre volveré a reunir a un grupo de 6 u 8 personas jóvenes que quieran crecer como diseñadores de interacción y que estén dispuestos a venir al estudio todas las tardes de los viernes durante 5 meses. Les enseñaré lo que sé, les haré trabajar duro y les trataré como si fueran mi proyecto más importante.

Empezaremos en noviembre. Dentro de poco tendré una web con todos los detalles: fechas, temario, precio, plazas) y podré empezar a seleccionar a los alumnos. Mientras tanto, si te interesa escríbeme a javier@vostok.es.

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH: I’m back to teaching interaction design. Starting this November I’ll repeat the Programa Vostok course I taught twice some years ago. It will be a 5 month course with classes every friday afternoon in Madrid. Classes will be in Spanish. Contact me if interested: javier@vostok.es

We invited Victoriano to come over and have a coffee and he made some pictures of us in exchange. Too bad Timo was in Germany that day. Here are the pics:

Today is Canada day. We salute all canadians around the world especially our own Mark McKay who’s in Canda right now and will be there for a month. We’ll sure miss him.

So, to commemorate such a grandiose day here is our favorite canadian hymn ‘Canadian, please’ by Gunnarolla. To celebrate, people have been remixing the original video.

Hi Everybody,

I just wanted to say thanks for sending a t-shirt all the way to Alaska! You have a great portfolio. Keep rockin’ the minimalism.

Mikaela

No, thank you Mikaela!

It all came to be  with one of those ‘on the spur of the moment’ Twitter event kinda things. We ended up hosting a private reunion to talk about interaction design with some of the best senior designers out there and had loads of fun in the process. How cooler can it get?

Here’s video proof:

Today we had some spare time to do an iPad wallpaper feauturing our 3-window rocket. Here’s how it looks and the original file for you to use it:

… and the file (links to the one you have to use, 1024×1024 px.):

Enjoy it.

These are @sebadog‘s notes on the presentation Javier and Mark did at the iPadMadCamp last Saturday. We think they’re great. Especially if you read the tiny letters on the bottom left hand margin  ;) You can see it High-Res here. Thanks for sharing this with us @sebadog. More to come soon…

What does Wall Street look like in 8-bits?

Our partners and friends at Riot Cinema (they make movies) just did this amazing video for Unience, a social network of investors. We love it not just becuse of the aesthetics but also because the script is so well written it makes you open an account right away:

Vostok’s senior designer, Mark MacKay, was one of the four professionals involved in developing Misparadas.com, a simple but efficient web app to get around Madrid by bus. The app was submitted to the 48-hour hackathon AbreDatos. We’ve asked Mark to tell us a bit more about how it works here:

Misparadas.com was developed by  Sam Lown, Fernando Blat, Christos Zisopoulos, and Mark MacKay for AbreDatos.

We are glad to welcome cosmonauts Gabriela Lendo and Timo Taglieber. Timo is on a space-tourist internship building the iPad version of Planetaki, while Gabriela joins the permanent outpost helping out the spaceship’s comms systems.

Gabriela Lendo majored in International Relations, and her command of English and French are top-notch. She has worked in Madrid for Notisistema, and has headed the communications teams of cinema related projects in London (Portobello Festival) and Madrid (The Cosmonaut).

To sample her work, just take a look at the latest videos we’ve posted.

Gabriela is also an awesome cook, after sampling her banana bread we called the cops on the suspicion of, ahem ilegal flavor enhancements, but it turned out regular banana pancake can be addictive. And she would beat the crap out of Julia Roberts at a smiling contest.

Timo Taglieber majored in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Timo programmed MetaMan, a MediaWiki plug-in that suggests categories and properties based on similar pages. Take a look at his portfolio to view his work.

Timo is very eager to enjoy Madrid’s nightlife. According to the authoritative Xenophobe’s Guide to the Spanish:

The Spanish never go to bed at night if they can possibly help it, because they might be missing out on something more exciting than sleep. On the other hand they never fail to have a siesta.

We are hoping German discipline prevails over Spanish hedonism.

A week ago we became partners at Riot Cinema Collective by acquiring a moderate percentage of the company. This makes us extremely happy and excited. It’s the consumation of a love story between Riot and Vostok that’s been around for a year now.

We admire Riot’s work and their fresh approach to anything that deals with moving images. We love them so much we wanted to share, to be influenced, to intersect with them.

Now we can proudly say “we make movies”.

Six Revisions has included our Vostok Theme among a compilation of 20 Beautiful Minimalist WordPress Themes. That is something we are proud of, for sure. But we are even more proud of knowing that more than 65.000 blogs already use it.

Vostok Theme was designed by me (Javier Cañada) and coded by Rubén Lozano quite long ago. I am still confident about most of the design decisions in it, especially those about features and layout. But as screen resolution has increased I feel like type size and column height should be revised.

I’m also considering making a “white version” with the same legibility goals. Or perhaps a Serif version. Do you think that would make sense?

Hunter S. Tyler is the new guy at Vostok. We don’t care about him being a telecom engineer or about his German or his Chinese, we don’t care either about his short films. We wired him for this:

Well.. Being a telecommunications engineer as he is, he’ll obviously add more WARP’s to our programming and systems engines. He is already taking care of all the stuff related to thecosmonaut.org (Riot Cinema’s movie) and will soon start doing other übercool and experimental stuff that’s not been disclosed yet.

Welcome on board, Hunter S. Tyler!

A simple wallpaper image with our three window rocket:

Downolad the one that better fits your computer:

· Vostok Wallpaper 1280 x 800 (.png file)

· Vostok Wallpaper 2560 x 1600 (.png file)

We congratulate Mark MacKay for acquiring his first Canadian passport. O Canada, Mark’s home and native land, with glowing hearts he sees thee rise, he stands on guard for thee…

And now DANCE with us!!

You suddenly realize the world is well designed after you have a big plate of Mixiote Chicken (Mixiote Wheat Gluten for María) cooked by our always surprising comrade Mark Mackay.

We are back! July was a tough and intense month. We closed may projects and left nothing (or almost nothing) pending so we could go to Vigo to focus on new stuff and relax a bit. It was more relax than focus but hey… we deserved it. August was complete disconnection from the studio matters and now… Man, we are back. New projects on the horizon, freshness and a huge blackboard…