Simple. So easy to say out loud but so hard to actually accomplish in applications. Perhaps it’s all the possibilites with development that is the reason for bloated UI’s and applications that do one million things instead of the basics. Just recently I stumbled upon an app that was so simple yet it did what it was meant to do.

I was listening to web radio on the radiostations website and found myself getting a little bit annoyed  that had to have a browser window open just to play the radio and as soon as I needed to turn the radio on or off I had to find the browser tab and stop the player and change to the other tab I was browsing with. It was really not a good experience for me, so I went to the Mac App Store to search for an radio app that could be external from the browser. My criteria was that it needed to play a couple of different radiostations and an easy way to mute, pause or stop playing.

I actually did find an app that seemed to suit my needs, and it would only cost me $0.99. The app that I bought was svensk radio (“Swedish radio”). It’s an app that lets you toggle a few options like choosing between 7 radiostations (the most commons stations in Sweden) and set the channel on and off. No more than that!

Available from the Menu bar, it’s so easy to use and I don’t need to start an app because there is no gui to talk about. The player is just in the background doing what it’s supposed to – stream radio to my speakers.

Just look at the settings window – It’s not full with functions as you would normally see in the settings, you can only switch the “Start on login” function on or off. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Apps like this makes me really happy and I wish that the app world will become more of the mentality that keeping it simple is often the best option.

New York City seen from a bike? Lovely. Via Mari Sheibley.

Oh my this one is lovely if you ask me. It’s a map of data from Square usage over the U.S. The data shown is one hour of transaction volume on a Friday afternoon.

Found at the Atlantic.

There is something about people who do stuff. People who make things with their own hands. I’m very impressed about people following their dream(s) and doing what they want. Sometimes it works out, and other times you fail… The most important thing is that you do stuff.

The project Made by Hand is a documentary series where we get to meet various people from Brooklyn that make stuff.

The first video is from Breuckelen Distilling Company, the first gin distiller in Brooklyn since prohibition. It’s a neat black and white production, about 6 minutes long where we get to meet the founder Brad Estabrooke. He talks about creating something from scratch and failing to succeed.

The website Made by Hand is also a very beautiful design that is responsive and displayed very nice on different screens from laptop and iPad to the smaller iPhone.

Mancx.com is The knowledge market – a site where you can get answers that you need for your business. They put together a short video of how it works. Simple, Easy to understand and beautiful. Take a look!

A common sight on the web is the trends in web design that leads to websites that look similar to each other. Sometimes they tend to look REALLY similar. I have had clients that wanted to use design as inspiration from another site and i’ve done those projects to, but only as a developer instead of a designer. I don’t know how GoAssign decided to design their website, but I guess we can all agree on who they have been inspired by.

Campaign Monitor have been a well-known website for its design for some time now so there’s no question about “who was first”.

Twitter is great for a lot of stuff. One thing I love about twitter is the chance you get to take part of experiences of others via links, comments and such. One proof of that is this video.

This video is cultural pornography at its best. It’s so inspiring to see that people can create such great things as this video. The director, Evan Dennis have created a masterpiece. For someone like me who enjoy the life of big cities and especially N.Y. this kind of video makes me wanna book a flight for tomorrow and get a new tattoo. My guess though is that more stuff from Evan Dennis.

Every once in a while you get inspired/jealous/chocked/impressed/etc. Today i touched some of those emotions when I stumbled (via twitter) over a prototype video of a way to use Apples iOS built-in design style and graphical elements to improve the notification system. I was very impressed with the elaborate thoughts on how it should work to be a much better system. Many of us iPhone (iOS) users complain about the current system and that Apple have to create a better system, but few of us take our thoughts and opinions to the next level.

The Swedish author of the concept, Andreas Hellqvist described the idea on blog and there was one sentence that caught my attention;

“When I started thinking about how to improve the notification system I felt almost immediately that Apple is all about apps, so why not make an app that handles this task”.

The concept is quite simple, yet it seems so right when you read it and watch the video (below). Sometimes the best thing to do isn’t the hardest one. The old phrase “less is more” was created for a reason. A phrase I like even more is “keep it simple”. When I design in my profession and in my projects I try to remind myself once in a while that keeping it simple is most often the best thing – for the user or recipient of the design.

Let us all hope that Apple takes a look at the concept video and decides to at least be influenced to a better notification system in the future updates of the iOS systems!

On his iOS wordpress blog you can read more about each of the scenarios like lock screen, application overview and more.

Mancx.com is a new service on the web that lets you trade information with others. Mancx vision is to make any and all information available at the right price.

I’ve been working together with the Mancx-team as the art director during the process of conceptualizing, prototyping and visualizing of the gui. My work has consisted of creating and delivering photoshop files to the developers and assist them in the development process. It has been a fun and exciting time (and as always, struggling at some times) and the time has finally come for Mancx to push the big button and welcome users to their site.

I would like you to check out the site and place an ad if you’re in need of information that you don’t have today.

The design for the “Home” page for a user at Mancx:

One of my last thing I did over at Freespee before I left for antrop, I made a facelift of the website. Since I work at antrop from the 1:st of february I was not around yesterday when Freespee launched the redesigned website together with info about the €1.1 million raised funding from Inventure.

Given that the new website has been launched I thought that I should give you some insights from the work! As the CEO Carl Holmquist tells in a blog post the main focus for the update of the website was to communicate better to and with the visitors.

The design was much like the previous one, but had some changes here and there, not to the least the information provided via the website.

A whole new site structure was designed and a focus towards three different areas of business was created and displayed.

Take a look at the website or read more about the funding and new website over at TechCrunch or Arctic Startup.