The sleek new design of Xbox One games

by Stephanie Carmichael, GameZone, Posted May 24th 2013 1:40PM

Larry Hryb, aka Microsoft's "Major Nelson," has revealed what game cases will look like for the new Xbox One.

The picture shown here is the box design for Forza Motorsport 5, which Microsoft Game Studios announced at the Xbox Reveal show on Tuesday. Turn 10 Studios is developing the racing game, which is the latest entry in the long-running Xbox series.

What do you think of the new style? It's amazingly elegant and sleek, especially compared to the old model. Below is a look at the Forza 4 case.

Tags: design blog xbox, designblogxbox, forza motorsport 5, game case, gamezone, microsoft, microsoft xbox 720, microsoft xbox one, Microsoft-Game-Studios, new xbox art, sleek, the new xbox 2013, thenewxbox2013, top gear, turn-10, turn-10-studios, xbox 720, xbox fusion, xbox one, xbox one disc case, xbox one game art, xbox one game case, xbox one pre own, xbox one racing games, xbox one release game, xbox racing games, Xbox-Live, XboxOne box, xboxonepreown

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Facebook acquires Hot Studio design team

Facebook today announced that it has acquired Hot Studio, a design agency based in San Francisco and New York, to build new tools for brands and businesses on the social network.

According to LinkedIn, Hot Studio has 114 employees. Hot Studio developer Bill Fisher said on Twitter that this is the largest talent acquisition Facebook has ever made. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hot Studio had been working with the social network on a few projects over the past few months, and Facebook says it recognized a fit between the two companies.

In a note on the Facebook Design page, Facebook Director of Design Margaret Stewart wrote:

“Hot Studio has a sixteen-year history working with some of the world’s biggest and best brands.  They have an intricate understanding of what businesses need and a flair for building tools and resources to help meet those needs.  And this is what we’re bringing them here to do – build amazing tools that help the brands and businesses that use Facebook.”

Hot Studio calls itself an “experience design company.” It creates digital products and services for a range of clients, including SFMOMA, Gilt Groupe, People.com, Cisco, Warner Music and Gap.

Hot Studio says it will complete all client work in the next few months before it closes down and joins Facebook. Employees from Hot Studio will eventually join Facebook’s product design, communication design, research, engineering and content strategy teams.

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Facebook tests design and wording changes to encourage users to post more

Facebook appears to be testing a number of changes to the News Feed publisher box aimed at getting users to post more frequently.

Some users are seeing stats beneath the publisher about how long it has been since their last update or about how many friends have recently logged in. These additions could lead users to feel a small sense of obligation to post more frequently.

We’ve also seen design and wording changes that seem to make posting a status more about personal expression. For example, instead of simply saying “What’s on your mind?” within the publisher, Facebook is testing a version that includes a user’s first name: “John, what’s on your mind?” The social network is also trying a design that brings a user’s profile picture closer to the publisher to create what appears to be a speech bubble. These slight changes could have an effect on how often users make status updates or what type of thoughts they share with friends.

Facebook regularly tweaks the site to optimize engagement. It’s interesting to see the company place an emphasis on getting users to post status updates as user behavior seems to be shifting toward mobile photo uploads and inactive sharing through Open Graph. However, if News Feed becomes filled with more activity stories — Spotify listens, Pinterest pins, articles read — and doesn’t include more personal updates, users might not feel the same connection with their friends or the site. With Facebook introducing Sponsored Stories and promoted posts to the feed, it is important for users to still regularly see relevant and interesting stories from their friends. It is also likely that users who make more updates are more satisfied with the site. When users make posts and receive feedback, they feel rewarded and are likely to value Facebook more highly.

Image credit: the first two screenshots are from Techie Buzz.

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Facebook hires: product design, engineering, recruiting, more

Ryan O’Rourke of Groupon joined the Facebook design team this week, and according to Facebook’s Careers page, the company seems to have hired a few engineers, marketers and other staff. The company’s LinkedIn feed shows that an engineer, fraud specialist, analyst and a few others were hired since our last post.

Ryan O’Rourke, Product Design – formerly of Groupon, he announced on his Facebook profile that he would be joining Facebook’s product design team.Lin Yuan, Software Engineer – former intern at Yahoo.Tara Stewart, Fraud Specialist – former student.Jason Fernando, Analyst – former senior research analyst at Beroe, Inc.Johnny Yu, Associate, Site Integrity – former customer support engineer at Cisco Systems.Kevin Lyle, Recruiter – former recruiter at Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center.Immigration and Tax ManagerEngineering Bootcamp and Training Program ManagerSoftware Engineer, Research Tools (Contractor)Manager, Business Operations Data AnalyticsManager, Marketing Business OperationsInternet Marketing AnalystRegional Logistics AnalystPhysical Security Manager, Data Centers (Forest City, N.C.)Developer Support Engineer, Arabic (Dublin)Developer Support Engineer (Dublin)Partner Engineer, Payments (Games)Global Business Manager (New York)Analyst, Platform Operations, European (Dublin)Recruiter (Singapore)Technical University Recruiter (Seattle)Technical SourcerUniversity Strategic Sourcing SpecialistUniversity Strategic Sourcing Specialist – DublinAnalyst, User Operations (Austin)Security Specialist – ContractAssociate, Ad Operations (Sydney)Client Partner (Hamburg)Client Partner, Retail (Menlo Park or Seattle)Client Partner, Retail (New York)Agency Account Specialist – U.S.Administrative Assistant, Public Policy (Brussels)

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

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Facebook for iPhone 4.0 Update Ports New iPad App Design and Features

Facebook for iPhone users now have access to all the new features for in the official Facebook for iPad app that launched this morning. Now available in the App Store, the 4.0 update includes a major redesign of the navigation system that facilitates quick switching between features, and the ability to access third-party mobile apps.

The new features can also be found on Facebook’s mobile sites m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com, which can both be accessed from Android phones that have yet to receive native Facebook app update with the lastest changes.

The update to Facebook for iPhone’s 91 million monthly active users and 51 million daily active users gives developers a huge new distribution channel for their mobile web and iPhone apps.

One of the worst things about the old Facebook for iPhone app was the grid screen navigation. If users wanted to switch between in-house Facebook apps such as the news feed, Photos, Messages, and notifications, they had to exit their currently used app to the grid screen, then dive back into another app.

This process was both cumbersome and sometimes caused users to lose their place — something especially annoying when one went to look for new Messages or notifications, saw they had none, and wanted to return to the previously used feature. The slowness of switching apps through the grid screen contributed to Facebook spinning out Messages as a standalone app, and preparing a dedicated native Photos app.

Facebook for iPhone 4.0 reduces the friction of app switching through a slide-out navigation menu that is accessible from any screen and houses all in-house and third-party app bookmarks. Users can open the navigation menu, but then easily close it to resume their previous activity.

Similarly, a floating top navigation bar gives persistent access to Messages, notifications, and requests. When their icons are clicked, an overlaid screen slides up from the bottom and slides back down revealing the previously used app when a user is done.

The navigation menu also houses a revamped search feature from which users can find friends, Pages, apps, Groups, Events, or any other Facebook property. It replaces the tabbed search that clumsily required users to choose what they were searching for first, and didn’t include live links to apps.

When users click on the bookmark, search result, or news feed link for a native iPhone app, that app is instantly launched if already installed, or the App Store is loaded so users can download it. Bookmarks to web apps on Facebook’s new mobile app platform are launched within Facebook for iPhone’s internal browser, and users merely need to confirm their login — they don’t have to reenter their username or password.

Despite Facebook confirming with us that it would remove the Places check-in feed from its smartphone apps, users can still see the locations of friends through a renamed in-house app called Nearby. As before, users can view the checkins of friends as a feed or as photos on a map, as well as add their own check-ins.

The app does lack some of Facebook.com’s newest features. There’s no way to subscribe to someone’s public updates or edit your Friend Lists or Smart Lists. Facebook has also removed the ability to filter the news feed by Friend Lists, which previously allowed users to select to only see updates from a subset of friends. Hopefully these features will be integrated soon.

Facebook for iPhone hasn’t received such a major redesign since its launch years ago. At first, some users will surely be grumpy about having to relearn how to navigate the app. With time, though, we believe users will grow to appreciate the streamlined navigation and ability to access their web and native apps. By becoming an app portal and reducing navigation fatigue, Facebook for iPhone’s 100 million MAU milestone could be right around the corner.

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Facebook Hires Team From Sofa, a Dutch Development and Design Company

Facebook has hired the team of Amsterdam-based startup Sofa, and will incorporate it within its design group. The talent acquisition does not include the Sofa’s software products, which include Kaleidoscope for tracking differences in text and images, Versions – a Mac client for Subversions which offers code version control, Enstore for managing sales and accounting of physical retail stores, and ecommerce platform Enstore.

The Sofa team will move to Palo Alto to work at Facebook HQ, but its products will remain live and supported. “We were just blown away by the Sofa team’s work, from their Mac and web software to the interfaces and brand identities they created for clients,” Facebook director of design Kate Aronowitz said in a statement. “The more we got to know them, the more we realized that their passion for working in small teams and iterating to find solutions to hard problems matched our own culture. We can’t wait for them to join the team.”

Aside from working within the design team, Sofa’s expertise could help Facebook with a variety of products. Its knowledge of tracking file changes could keep Facebook from indexing redundant data, such as when identical copies of a photo are uploaded. Its experience building ecommerce products could allow Facebook to offer better support to the growing developer ecosystem of Facebook Page ecommerce storefronts.

The Sofa team could even work farther behind the scenes, assisting with development of Facebook’s internal engineering tools it has built to handle the unique complexities of its scale.

This is Facebook’s seventh talent-focused acquisition this year, following personal analytics developer Daytum, HTML5 experts RecRec, hyper-local advertising startup Rel8tion, feature phone app developer Snaptu, social recruiting site Pursuit, and group messaging service Beluga.

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Round Up Of World Famous Restaurant Logos Design in a Minute

Have you ever encountered any city without a restaurant? Even small towns have variety of food corners, taverns, inns. Can you measure its growth rate for real? No! But we can measure somehow the need to establish a brand mark for this business.

What is this brand mark identity?

If you don't know then let me tell you that it is a small piece of graphical representation which takes full responsibly to boost up the particular business. Trying your hands in a restaurant business is no way a bad idea but if you are not a smart business owner then I don't know if you will be able to take your business on the top or not.

Famous foods restaurants like Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Italian etc are the biggest example of managing business smartly. What I mean to say is they have not only launched their business well but has developed immensely useful marketing schemes as well.

Have you ever seen Mexican restaurant logos design?

If you have not then have a search and see why they are considered to be the best representation globally? You will find them very spicy, scrumptious and yummy. Green and red chilies are their specialties and so you will find these two particular things in almost every Mexican food corner's brand mark. Colors that you will find common are red, green, yellow and orange. In short, colors that are dark and present a spicy taste are mostly preferred when it comes to these brand marks.

There are many other Mexican food restaurants that have designed their brand marks using their specialties. Have a search and you will find many brand marks containing tortillas, Frijoles (beans), Tequila, Salsa, Cerveza etc. This is how; they exhibit what they are good at.

Besides the preceding cuisine, there are many other famous inns that are opened worldwide because of the delicious and sumptuous taste they offer. What sparks in your mind when I say Sicillia, Calabria, Puglia, Lazio, Friuli Venezia Giuliaand?

Obviously the centre point of world arts, Italy, it is not only famous for the tower of Pisa, La Sapienza University and Rome, it is known for the delicious cuisines worldwide. It can be considered on top when we talk about the number of restaurants that especially provides Italian dishes globally.

Therefore, there are thousands of Italian restaurant logos worldwide as well that represents their inns in style. What I have found about these brand marks is that they often incorporate pizza in them. Other important objects that are often employed are chefs, forks, spoons and knife. Most of the time, graphic designers and the food inn owner prefer using their name in special Italian style. That's how they like to design their brand mark.

Hence, there are many other famous world cuisines like Indian, Chinese and Pakistani which can be studied if you want to get your restaurant brand mark identity in your hands. I hope the preceding article will be very useful for you to help build your knowledge about corporate identities.

About the Author:
Beverly Houston works as a Senior Design Consultant at a Professional Logo Design Company. For more information on Mexican Restaurant Logos find her competitive rates at Italian Restaurant Logos.

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The Infected game card design

I’ve finally put together the first version of the rulebook and created decks of cards. Even placed order through Artscow to get physical versions of the cards in my hands (3 decks, since I got some extra cards, yay).

The platform for the game is 2 folded: physical version (about 2-3 decks of cards) and online version (through my protohut system where the game can be played in browser). So no, this isn’t your typical PC game. The online version has no rules… since I only provide cards and table. It’s up to the players to check the rules and play the game nicely. Just like having a real board gaming session (I’ve tested playing Battle Lines, Lotr: Confrontation and both worked excellently through the online system).

I have written a brief rulebook for the game. Just 7 pages at the time of writing this blog post, although more will come when I get some pictures there… and when I mention credits for all you guys who helped me to get encounters in the game. I planned doing some videos to show how the game is played, but naturally this won’t happen until I get some serious feedback after tests.

Here’s few bits and pieces from the about 100 different card there is in the game. First we have Alan the captain. Each character (currently 6) has different unique skills and also different leadership skills which they can use when they are leading the group.

And here we have one example of a resource that survivors try to gather during the game in order to make a successful escape.

For art, I’ve used Dreamstime, my own mind and Gimps “old photo decor + change of darkness” filter to provide (hopefully) consistent look for cards.

Even though I know that most likely every single card out of 100 I ordered will get changes, I wanted to get my hands on those cards and physical version is so real that it’s great to make it happen.

Last couple of months have been heavy design work for me, and it’s good to get into this level. Next in the todo list: testing and heavy balancing.

Tags: traitorgame

This entry was posted on Friday, March 11th, 2011 at 12:30 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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