Design a Logo for XaRT

[gracehjs]

I think we are on the right track now. But, any colour but blue please. XaReg and XaReg2 are blue.

[mindseye]

@mwenz -

Much appreciated. Just took what was at hand from others "examples-advice" and added some of mine. I'm sure ,between everyone, we have yet to see and will create THE ONE.

@Grace - Tried to stick with the Xara colors for the association factor. What colors would you like to see if I may ask?



mindseye.

[gracehjs]

Here is a template of what I think Xart will look like. This would be the about screen. Feel free to play with it and come up with a nice "splash/about" scrren. I know this is blue, but that can be changed.

[Barbara B]

Oh Grace,

We have a whole world of designers to draw on, lets not limit ourselves to a bare-bones UX. I'm sure someone here (or more likely everyone working together) can come up with something that is functional, even function enhancing and that looks great. Xara helps artists create great art, and I think their tools should be beautiful as well.

Maybe if you can give the designers some idea of the process the user goes through to:

• discover what the program does
• find out can be changed,
• how they choose/select/signal to you that a change is requested ( can a user make more than one change at a time ie check a bunch of boxes and hit submit),
• what kind of feed back they can get to confirm what they are about or will do?
• how they exit the program
• what kind of warnings or advisories they might get
• etc.

I'm going to open a new thread for the app UX. Maybe you can give us a list of the things you need to show and what feedback you need to get from the user to make anything happen.

Lets really work our imaginations here. Does the application frame, chrome interface even have to be a rectangle?

As for colors, Greens, Golds, Oranges could be good. Even for the most common kind of color blind users they won't turn to blue.

http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/ Great resource.

http://www.usability.gov/articles/newsletter/pubs/022010new.html#ColorsthatWorktheBest

I've copied this post to the new UX Thread, Interface Design and UX Thread - How our App Looks


If you are posting about UX design post there. Logo and logo colors post in this thread.

[wizard509]

very cool mindseye. I like that a lot.

[gracehjs]

First of all this will be a standard Windows app, so users are used to things like menus and tabbed sheets. The convention for menus is pretty fixed, usually FILES first (this contains an exit option) and HELP last (the about box would be in help). Newer interfaces use the tabs options and both XaReg and XaReg2 use them. Both divided the options into what are logical groups. Quite honestly I doubt that we can improve much on the format of XaReg2, but I am open t0 suggestions. Looking at XaREg2 will give you a pretty good idea as to what can be changed. We will be publishing a document fairly soon that will spell out the registry options that we are planning on allowing changes to.

[wizard509]

I experimented with the colors of this design. It is my feeling that the design is so strong that it doesn't really need any. I did not look at a different font for the text line "Xara Registry Tool" to see if something would work better at a smaller size than what I have used trying to reproduce mindseye's design. I looked at a circle instead of a square too, but that just did not work, at least not without a radical re-design.
Therefore here are a few of my color experiments attempting to not use blue.

[mindseye]

Thank you Larry...

I will upload the .xar file/fonts for all to play with.

The tagline is indeed an after thought, meaning, I didn't put a lot of thought there.. Just took the tagline and laid it in.

I should have some time to play with the GUI as well.. Do you guys have a flow chart of any kind? OR, can I just get the gist of it from XaReg2?

I d-loaded yours grace. Wondering about the inner workings.. I'll have a closer study with XR2 and see what I can contribute.



Love this stuff.. this is what I do everyday. All types of marketing collateral & GUI for web stuff. It's good to get paid to play.


Appreciate you guys letting me play here as well.


mindseye.



EDIT:

BTW Larry, I'm feeling on the red, but I'm partial to it so probably biased.

[Fred C]

...Do you guys have a flow chart of any kind? OR, can I just get the gist of it from XaReg2?

I d-loaded yours grace. Wondering about the inner workings.. I'll have a closer study with XR2 and see what I can contribute...

Careful! XaReg2 (2.1) is copyrighted.

[Gare]

@Grace—

I think it's not the best thing for a creative person to do, to avoid "blue" just because it's being used on XaReg!

The reason WHY John and Steve use blue is for product association, but here's the deal: Xara's splash screen no longer uses the same blue as it did in Xtreme version 5, and the splash screen designers have not stuck to any particular shade or hue of blue, look:



I detested version 7's splash screen so vehemently that I made my own bmp and substituted it. And guess what? I didn't use the same color blue as The Xara Group does, but perceptually there's some sort of relationship, isn't there?



I've used a color schemer that Frances and I really like called GenoPal and I've included four color palettes in the attached document. Basically, you can't go wrong if you choose a color and then a tint of it for the complementary color, or just pick 2 colors and the contrast will be an intriguing one. GenoPal uses a patneted algorithm that is NOT based on the traditional color opposites and complements.



Mindseye, sorry for the hasty trace of your design!

And I'd love to see how the colours can be used in both the UX and the splash screen.

My Best,

Gary