Thanksgiving Behind-the-Scenes
24 Nov

Thanksgiving Behind-the-Scenes

The 11p commercial team is always up for a challenge. We feel very comfortable designing custom illustrations and icons, but we’re always thinking… “How can we take it a step farther?” How about three-dimensional illustrations with motion?

Admittedly, we were inspired by all the great designers out there already pushing the envelope. Designers like Gail Armstrong, Adé Hogue, and Julene Harrison.

We love the tactile quality of working with paper and the opportunity to bring designs off the computer and get physical! We also value the addition of motion to our work. Even the simplest animation can add a considerable amount of life and energy to an illustration. Check out this article by Hoodzpah Design for more on that.

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, we saw this as the perfect holiday to experiment with these concepts. Below is a behind-the-scenes view of the process we followed to create our Thanksgiving social media posts. Since this is our first project using these methods, there are lots of lessons-learned, but we hope you enjoy the playfulness and energy of the final product. It combines all of the items that bring happiness during a spicy Maryland Thanksgiving (some of us root for teams other than the Ravens and that’s OK 😉 ). Happy Thanksgiving!

Mood Board

We took inspiration from one of the most treasured Thanksgiving Day traditions – The Macy’s parade!

Initial Sketch

Final Vector Layout

Behind-the-Scenes During Shoot Day

We used a Cricut machine to cut most of the float shapes and then added fold lines to create extra depth.

Some Detail Shots

Final Static Image

Final Animations

Hello Summer Wallpapers
19 Jun

Hello Summer Wallpapers

Summer is here and you know what that means – it’s time to get outside to soak up the sun, enjoy steamed crabs, take a dip in the pool or feel the sand between your toes.

But when you can’t be outside enjoying the beautiful weather – bring summer to life on your screen with these cheerful wallpapers designed for your computer, mobile device or Zoom meeting. Below you can find downloads sized for each application.

After clicking the button with the size you want, right click and select “Save Image As…” to save to your device.

Click to download desktop version
Click to download mobile version
Click to download Zoom version
“The Great Indoors” Coloring Book
15 Apr

“The Great Indoors” Coloring Book

EXPLORE “The Great Indoors” with your kiddos! Download our one-of-a-kind coloring book filled with fun ways to bring typical outdoor activities – INSIDE.

After clicking the download button, you can save the PDF to your device.

Click to download

Coloring is a great stress reliever for both kids and adults! Check out more cool coloring options below:

Moving Away From the Screen : Can It Improve Our Designs?
03 Apr

Moving Away From the Screen : Can It Improve Our Designs?

With the age of technology, we are able to do so much more and reach so many more people in literally seconds. But does all of that time in front of a screen start to have a negative impact on our creativity and thoughtfulness? Can moving away from our screens change and improve our designs?

Can adapting to a screen-less approach have a positive impact on:  
  • Our Time
  • Collaboration
  • How We Listen
  • Perspectives
  • Creative Solutions
  • Engagement
People computers = the key to designing interfaces

Yes, most of us are designing for screens, but our users are not spending most of their day interacting with screens. They are interacting with real world objects and people, so shouldn’t we be doing the same while designing those interfaces?

Challenge your design process or your team to try new ways to problem solve and discover. We don’t need our fancy programs to design, we just need brain power and a problem. So let’s stop clicking and start thinking!

Getting away from the screen – what to do instead:

Research and Discovery 

Product Audit – Take the time to discover everything about the current tool/new project from speaking with the stakeholders.

Kick-off Meetings – Get everyone in a room for a whole day – or more! This is a useful strategy for business, development, content, and design.

Competitive Analysis – Go to real locations of similar and non-related businesses and ask all the questions you would normally discover from website competitive analysis.

User Interviews/Research – Use IDEO Methods (IDEO Method Cards are tools that we can use as designers to research our users, products, and potential projects). Talk to real people.

Personas – Team scrapbooking for real people you’ve met in your research. Pull faces from magazines or other papers.

 

Determining Scope and Priority

Include all team members in the planning effort (yes Devs, you too)!

User Journeys/Scenarios – Get everyone’s perspective to create User Journey Stories on a white board. Make it a team discussion!

Requirements Document – Make more than a designer’s checklist…. Get everyone’s perspective on what will happen and when. Your requirements start to form your product’s culture. Who/What > Action > When.

Prioritization and Timeline – Don’t start by using a fancy online system like Monday or Jira. Ask everyone for input on prioritizing tasks from the Requirement Documentation.


Structuring Your Project

Conceptual Models – Go to the same places your users go when interacting with like-products or in similar environments like the one you’re creating. Are there any common concepts the users may be used to, like a shopping cart? Can and should these be relayed to the screen?

Information Architecture – Get out the cards! Time for some classic IDEO card-sorting. There are so many amazing hands-on ways to discover a hierarchy that makes sense for your content.

Error Handling – Pick up the phone OR go offsite to better understand how businesses and people handle errors in the real world.

Structuring and Language – Time to make another stop! Head out to where your users would interact with the content of your product. Finding any familiar/unfamiliar language? What kind of process do user’s go through when coming to these locations?

User Flows – Break out the sticky notes! Create a tangible, yet visual way to organize all of your content, pages, and features. Get the team in on this one!


Drafts, Sketches, and Wireframes

Navigation Design/Wayfinding – Go to locations that typically have strong direction-based environments. Think of places like IKEA, a popular trail, malls, etc. Note the way yourself and users navigate through and around the location.

Brainstorming Session – The more brains, the merrier! Don’t slump back into your cubicle quite yet. Share all your findings and hear what your team has to say! You might be surprised by what you’ve missed along the way.

Thumbnail Sketches – Sharpen those pencils and get to drawing. Don’t be precise! You should spend 30 seconds to a minute on each sketch. Include the whole team on this one! You’re not the only one who can make boxes and arrows.

Wireframes – Sketch, Illustrator, and XD, OH NO! Grab your graph paper and pencil to cleaner lines and more accurate positioning. This is a time for some epic iteration. Share with your team, try and grab some real users. Just keep drawing!


Creating the Final Look

Use All 5 Senses – Use all of your senses! Everyone knows what Christmas smells like and everyone can picture the feeling of crunching down on a leaf in the fall. How can you take advantage of all of your user’s senses to create a well-rounded brand?

Mood Board – Go hunting for inspiration, no not on the internet. Find actual objects to represent your brand’s look and feel. Go into it with some key words and ask your team if you hit the mark.

Typography – Don’t just pair fonts… Take images of existing fonts from real life. Compare them to our mood board of senses! Do they fit in? What type of fonts match the best?

Style Guide and Mockups – Bring in the Developers and determine all of the elements you need based on your wireframes. Bring print outs of your wireframes and have coloring sessions with your brand colors to determine final look.

WRITTEN BY
Halie Wickiser

Halie Wickiser has worked as a Senior UX Designer at Eleven Peppers Studios for over a year. She has over five years of UX and UI design experience creating intuitive and user-centered applications.

Extra Spicy Valentine Cards
13 Feb

Extra Spicy Valentine Cards

Really spice things up this Valentine’s Day with one of our printable cards! Whether you want to bring the heat or tell them that you’re meant to be, these messages will have your “special someone” feeling all the love. Enjoy!

We’re releasing one design today and releasing two others tomorrow morning. Check back at 7am on February 14th!

Click to download print-ready card
Click to download print-ready card
Click to download print-ready card
The User-Experience, Experience
26 Jun

The User-Experience, Experience

I remember graduating from college in 2014 and while Graphic Design was a hot commodity at the time, there was another fad I remember starting to emerge in full force– User Experience Design. While I was aware that this was something that has always been around, there weren’t *many* positions open for it and the title itself, was still a little taboo. Now, thanks to major tech giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google, we have a mainstream idea of what UX is and the importance it brings to any company– big or small.

If you’re interested in breaking into this lucrative field, I’m here to give you some tips as to what that experience is like and what are some of the best practices to stay AHEAD of the game:

There is no “one way” process. Depending on the needs and goals of the project and your stakeholders, it’s important to know that there is no “one way” of starting a UX project. Sure, you’ll outline needs/goals and conduct User Research– but when it comes to thinking through user journeys, will it make sense to create a User Flow or a Task Flow for this project? What about both? and yes, there’s a difference. Point is, what I’ve come to learn is that there is no specific way, and this is OK. It all depends upon the stakeholder needs, budget, timeline and of course, the users needs.

It’s all about how you think. Do you know what is going to set you apart from those wireframes and mockups you spent all week churning out? Your design thinking behind them. If you’re able to identify a problem, come up with a solution and defend those solutions supported with evidence in a succinct way, you’re already more than half way there. In the beginning of a project, UX managers are actually not all that concerned with your solution just yet, but more so how you got there. If you’re able to explain your rationale and show how it falls along user goals and needs, you’re bound to be successful!

Storytelling is your secret weapon. It’s important to be able to frame a situation/task/problem to someone who isn’t as familiar with design thinking or terms– which may be 90% of your stakeholders. Putting a “human face” to the analytical data makes it easy enough for everyone to put complex design ideas and decisions into perspective. It’s also a great way to understand existing scenarios and test the potential of any others. You can even kick it up a notch and use rough sketches and illustration to Storyboard. This can give you and your colleagues a low-level visual of the idea of each frame of the customer’s journey, but supported with a high-level narrative. This is a great way to keep iterating until every task is accounted for!

User Needs vs. Stakeholder Needs. While the needs of both users and stakeholders are incredibly important, you’re eventually going to find those needs conflicting. A great way to prevent those needs from clashing in the first place is to always keep them in the loop. Stakeholder participation can help remove any obstacles early on while user research could assist stakeholders in putting the goals and needs of the product into priority/perspective. Aligning your user research with stakeholder goals is crucial in product success and overall effective communication. Happy stakeholder + Happy user = WIN/WIN!

Always be ready to learn. Now that the supply of UX design has reached the demand, there is no excuse for not keeping up with the latest news, resources, toolkits and programs relating to UX. A genuine interest in the topic, outside of work, is important to have. We now live in a time where free, downloadable UI toolkits and Podcasts with industry experts are within our fingertips. So, be ready to continuously learn! This field is always evolving and it’s really important to stay on top of it all– from design programs to emerging experts, I’ve learned that while I am able to understand a lot of what I do on the job, it’s also important to learn the theory behind it all. This is something that will always resonate no matter what stage you’re at in your career.

So… to help you get you started, here are a few of my personal favorites to get those wheels turning:

Recommended Programs / Plugins:

Sketch (Industry standard! You know Sketch, you know them all!)

InVision Studio

Adobe XD

Framer

Sketch Craft Plug-In (Easy to update designs for InVision prototypes in real time)

Recommended User Flow programs:

Primary

Miro (formally known as RealTimeBoard)

Recommended programs for Development collaboration:

Zeplin

Figma

InVision Inspect

Recommended YouTube channels:

AJ&Smart

Jesse Showalter

The Futur

TED

Recommended Readings:

Nielsen Norman Group

Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

Literally anything on Medium, but I do love the articles Tiffany Eaton writes (Product Designer at Google)!

Recommended Podcasts:

99% Invisible

The Hacking UI Podcast

Product Breakfast Club

 

WRITTEN BY
Ashley Philip

Ashley Philip has worked as a Commercial Designer at Eleven Peppers Studios for over three years. She has over six years of experience in graphic design and is currently pursuing a Master’s in User Experience Design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Ashley has a profound interest in solving user problems with a focus on the development and design of products themselves. 

Celebrating Women in Tech Through the Years
09 Feb

Celebrating Women in Tech Through the Years

In recent years, it’s been noted that we need more women in the technology field. The truth is, women have been involved in technology for decades. Unfortunately their stories haven’t made it to the forefront of our history lessons. To encourage more women to join the ranks of these pioneers, it is vital that we recognize those who have forged ahead and made advances in the tech industry. We need female role models in order to inspire young women to dive into technology at an early age.

Below is a brief history and timeline of women over the years who have shaped and impacted the tech industry. From designers to mathematicians, these women changed the world we live in with their innovative spirits and groundbreaking inventions.

Ada Lovelace – 1800’s
Recognized as the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine” design by translating lecture notes from French to English. During her work, Ada discovered many errors and realized the machine could be used for more than calculation. In 1843, she created the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine – thus creating the first concept of a computer operating system.

 

 

Edith Clarke – 1920’s
Known as a human computer, Edith Clarke was the first woman to earn her master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She invented the Clarke calculator which computed electrical systems equations 10 times faster than existing methods and worked on the construction of the Hoover Dam. In 2015, Clarke was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

 

 

Grace Hopper – 1940-50’s
Admiral Grace Hopper was a huge believer in change and fought the phrase, “We’ve always done it this way,” her whole career. Prior to language-based computer programming, computers used binary code. Enter Grace, who took on programming in English which sparked the development of the common business-oriented language (COBOL) that is still widely used today.

 

 

Katherine Johnson – 1950-60’s
Ever since she could remember, Katherine Johnson loved math. It was this love that eventually lead her to NASA where she worked on crucial missions including the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. At NASA, Katherine calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency back-up return paths for numerous missions. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and recently NASA renamed a facility after Katherine to honor her efforts.

 

 

Susan Kare – 1980-90’s
Graphic designer Susan Kare is responsible for developing some of Apple’s signature graphics. Although the graphics look simple, they are incredibly difficult to design. Think about it – she created a way to communicate different technologies via pictures, making them crystal clear to each user. These innovations are still used as icons to this day. Susan was honored for her efforts with an AIGA Medal, a prestigious award in the design world.

 

 

Megan Smith – 2010’s
First female Chief Technical Officer of the White House, Megan Smith is a huge advocate for women in STEM fields. Before working at the White House during the Obama Administration, she served as Vice President of Business Development at Google and CEO of PlanetOut, a leading LGBT online community. Megan is currently the CEO and founder of shift7, an organization that works in partnership on systemic economic, social, and environmental challenges.

 

WRITTEN BY
Cindy Madden
Contributor at 11P, Wordsmither, Lover of Foods Wrapped in Dough, Proud Cat Lady.

 

 

 

Ada Lovelace. Digital image. Scientific American. 10 October 2017, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/image.
Edith Clarke. Digital image. Wikipedia. 27 January 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Clarke.
Grace Hopper. Digital image. Vassar College. 06 July 2017, https://stories.vassar.edu/image.
Katherine Johnson. Digital image. NASA. 24 November 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/image.
Susan Kare. Digital image. PLOS. 22 November 2011, https://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/image.
Megan Smith. Digital image. NPR. 04 November 2014, https://www.npr.org/image.

Star Wars Takeover: And the Winner Is…
05 May

Star Wars Takeover: And the Winner Is…

And we’ve got a winner!!!

But first, just in case you missed the STAR WARS TAKEOVER on our social feeds, head on over to our Instagram or Facebook account. It’s okay, we’ll wait…

.

.

Did you hear the one about the Star Wars text crawl walking into a bar?

.

.

The bartender yells, “Get outta my pub! We don’t serve your type here.” (Reader’s Digest)

.

.

Just a little designer humor for you…

Okay, so today, we’re announcing the most popular Star Wars character illustration. There were six total and it was a close battle…

So, are you ready?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The winner is… BB8!!!!

 

Now let’s see how that magic happened…

 

We also wanted to share a little behind the scenes footage of our talented designers work.

Music: Williams, J. (1999). Dual of the Fates [Recorded by Abbey Road Studio]. On Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace Soundtrack [CD].

 

Another year, another Star Wars Day gone. We hoped you enjoyed the takeover!!!

May The Fourth Be With You.

 

5 Podcasts that Inspire Creativity
20 Jan

5 Podcasts that Inspire Creativity

Anyone else feeling the winter blues?

Here on the east coast it is oddly not frigid, which somehow makes winter even harder to get through. We keep looking over our shoulders for the “real winter” to get here. Regardless, even with the 50-something degree temperatures, right now it feels impossible to get the creative juices flowing, especially early in the morning, when the sun isn’t even out yet. Where are you sun?

As much of an over-exaggeration as that was, sometimes it’s just plain hard to sustain creativity. We all have our slumps. When we, at Eleven Peppers, hit one of those speed bumps we find it extremely handy to look toward the creative community for inspiration. One way we do this is by tuning in to our favorite podcasts; so here is a starter set that we believe will burst open the figurative imagination-dams and let the brilliant ideas flow.

99% Invisible: Episode 128 – IKEA Hacking
Because who doesn’t love a good IKEA hack? This episode dives into the worldwide phenomenon with guest, Jules Yap (pseudonym), creator of the popular website. The site allows innovators around the world to contribute to an extensive library of “hacks”, share their how-to guides, and trade tips with each other. Although we rarely hack apart and put back together furniture for our clients (okay, never), the ingenuity packed into this podcast is awe-inspiring.

After the Jump: Episode 62 – Sources of Inspiration
Literally a “jumping-off” point for figuring out where to look for inspiration and more importantly, how to harness it once you’ve found it. The show’s host Grace Bonney discusses her personal sources of inspiration. We find that hearing about how others’ stay creative only fuels our own creativity.

How I Built This: Episode 1 – Spanx
If you love TED Radio Hour (see next podcast suggestion) you may love this even more! Each episode features the founder(s) of popular brands and companies. In particular, their first episode with guest Sara Blakely (founder of Spanx) is an inspirational, sweet, yet self-deprecatingly funny depiction of how the mega-brand started from the meekest beginnings. It reminds us that no matter how small our idea is today, we have the power to make it grow.

TED Radio Hour
And of course TED Radio Hour. Each episode combines TED Talks that converge upon a central theme.

The Power of Design: Design is all around us. This episode touches on how design is and can be used to influence personal experiences, thoughts, feelings, and much more. Just remember to use that power for good.

How Things Spread: The various speakers in this episode provide unique views on how things, like laughter or viruses, spread and how those same concepts can be applied to other endeavors. It will really open your mind.

Of course there are plenty more, but we hope that this little “booster pack” will evoke creativity, inspire innovation and remind you that “winter is coming”… just kidding, winter will come to an end, as will any slump you find yourself in.

logo-gray
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!