PubQuix Android app - a pub quiz finder

My first Android app, PubQuix, is now available on the Google Play market.  It's a pub quiz finder - pub quiz fans can choose their area (restricted to the UK, as of writing), and see any pubs in that region that are listed as having a pub quiz.  It also allows you to filter quizzes by days of the week, and search by pub name.

The information on each quiz is provided by the pub owners and quiz runners themselves, so is as up to date and accurate as possible.  The app displays information on prizes, entry fees, types of questions and more for each quiz, as well as making use of the Google Maps API to display the location of each venue.

The app can only continue to grow, as more people provide information on quizzes and more locations can be covered in depth.  It currently has quiz details for pubs all over the UK, from the North East of Scotland down to the very South of England, with all major cities covered.

The app was developed in Java using Eclipse and the Android SDK. The information is held on an online database, so as to keep the size of the app small and to allow the most up to date information to be provided to the user.

Download it at Google Play for free!

Band Merchandise Designs

I have created some designs for three punk rock bands to use on their merchandise.  It is hosted on redbubble.com,.  The designer submits a design to the site, who take care of all the printing and shipping of the merch.  The designer then takes a percentage of every sale made.  It's a good way to make your designs available, without expenses like buying merch in bulk, and paying a screen printer.

Check out my designs here!

Pricing Logo Design

One difficulty that will face the rookie freelancer is the cost of a project.  For me, web development is easier to judge - once the requirements are known, it is not a problem to estimate the length of time it will take to code and test your web pages.  If you work to an hourly rate, this gives you a simple guide to explain your costs to a prospective client.

Graphic design can be more problematic.  Many find it is not so easy to estimate the number of hours that the design will take, so charge a flat fee for the type of design - whether it is a logo, branding or otherwise.  Any amendments to the design will be offered without any further charge.

The difficulty is that the artwork produced is open to subjective judgement, more so than a well-coded website.  Some clients will want you to produce exactly what their idea of a logo is.  Some clients will want you to challenge your creativity, come up with something that they would never have imagined.  You might spend hours of research on the client, their company, the field they work in, producing a modern design that reflects their company values - only the client doesn't like the way it looks.

There is also the problem that there are a lot of people out there offering cheap logo design services, despite lacking the appropriate skills or training that professional designers have.  And, the client may think, when the professionals can get paid huge amounts, and still make a mess of it, why not go for the cheap and cheerful option?

So, how much to charge?  Flat fee or hourly fee?  To compete with the cheapest offers, or keep your prices higher?  The best way to overcome any misunderstandings is obviously to communicate well with your prospective client - find out what they really want.  Other than that, check out these resources - they might help!

http://www.logodesignlove.com/how-much-does-logo-design-cost
http://www.logodesignlove.com/cheap-logo-services
http://www.davidairey.com/first-steps-to-graphic-design-pricing/
http://www.companylogos.ws/packages.html
http://www.designtalkboard.com/design-articles/charging.php
GAP logo controversy

Android Development in Eclipse

Having previously only developed Android apps using Adobe AIR, I decided it was time to dive into developing for Android using Java and Eclipse.  This means that a wider range of Android versions can be published for, as AIR for Android is only available for Android 2.2 and above.  There is also the fact that AIR when uncompressed on the device takes up about 25MB.

Despite having developed in Java on Eclipse before, developing for Android is throwing up a few new experiences for me.  One problem I encountered almost immediately is explained here:

http://mikeyhogarth.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/android-beginner-top-tip-dont-run-from-xml-files/

Thanks to Mikey for posting the simple explanation and solution!

MisoRamen.co.uk is On Two Design Lists!

Thanks to these two sites for featuring my site in their lists - zoomzum.com's Best Fresh Web Designs and topdesignmag.com's 30 great examples of typography in web design.

zoomzum.com

topdesignmag.com

Thanks, guys!

Portfolio Re-design

I've just tidied up my portfolio site a bit.  I've added some of my more recent work, putting more emphasis on the graphic design work that I've been doing.  I've also switched to circle elements for the snapshots of my websites and app, which I think gives it a clean and modern look.

I was worried the previous logo looked too much like a logo for a restaurant - so I've taken the emphasis off the miso bowl and added more descriptive text.  I hope these changes, and the changes to the navigation, make it more simple to browse through my work and make it immediately obvious what misoramen.co.uk is about.

There was one issue I ran into with the re-design - I use jQuery colorbox to open an html page in a pop out window, which gives extra info and screenshots about an app I made.  However, on closing the colorbox, the jQuery slider animation on the app image link had been affected - it did not slide back to its original position.  In order to fix this issue, the script to load the colorbox has to include 'returnFocus:false', as such:

 $('a.example').colorbox({returnFocus:false}); 

I found this fix here, it was a great help!

Web Trends For 2012

An interesting article on web design trends for the rest of the year: 2012 web design trends.

It seems to me that circles were a big trend in 2011 so it'll be interesting to see if that carries on. One aim for me in the future is to try to marry responsiveness and minimalism - using responsive design to display certain design/content depending on the user's device.  If responsive design is done well, simplicity will follow.