This past year was more of everything for me; more freelance, more games, more talks. Just more. It has been eventful and exciting but also challenging. Our co-working space Spilhuset saw a lot of good people outgrow their offices and we struggled to find the right tenants. Northplay was busy with activity but we struggled to keep up with costs of running a growing studio. I worked with amazing people on some really worthwhile projects and was invited to speak at an all time high amount of conferences— but balancing and planning these things did lead to periods with more than desired stress-levels. …

When David Barnard wrote me an email asking me if I wanted to work with him on his apps at Contrast it didn’t take me long to accept. Most of the freelance work I do these days are relatively short commissioned projects like branding and app icon work with a few exceptions of a novelty UI here and there.

It has been a long time since I last worked on a big interface project that wasn’t one of our own games at Northplay. Why?

Well, I think I have largely fallen out of love with contemporary ui design for apps. I fled to games because I felt like I was designing the same interface over and over again. Here was this opportunity to return to app design and put out the sort of work that I think is fun. David & Lukas are incredibly talented and the design work already done by Will and Tim was a solid foundation to innovate upon. Weather Up (previously Weather Atlas) just released and so I can now talk about some of the things I’m most proud of. …

In early april (on my 34th birthday 🎉) I announced that I was working on a project I have been thinking about forever: A book celebrating app icon design.

I’d like to update everyone on the progress I’m making. I think it would be interesting to be transparent in the process of creating something like this. It’s going to be a journey and I’m already learning a lot. I imagine doing a few of these during the course of making this— however it may end. This is the first entry into this series. So let’s start with the beginning.

I bought the domain appiconbook.com years ago and have been waiting for the right time to launch the project. But let’s face it, there’s never an ‘ideal’ time to launch these side-projects that live in our minds. Sometimes you just have to begin and start breaking down the project into actionable bitesized doable-in-an-evening tasks. So after all those years of it rolling around in my mind, that’s what I did. …

Last thursday I posted some recent work to dribbble— 10.000+ views later and we could be starting a revival movement. The reaction to this particular work was so strong that I felt I had to share some thoughts.

See, I was recently commissioned to come up with a redesign of the calendar and note-taking app Opus One and I was excited to share this particular bit of work— not only because I really liked how it came out, but because it represented the sort of work I have always loved doing: Themed UI carefully crafted to create a memorable experience through textures, lighting and dimensionality. A UI that is fun, takes cues from the real world for context and aims to be delightful, simply for the sake of invoking a feeling in the user.

In other words; a skeuomorphic design. …

This year has been busy for me in more ways than one. It was filled to the brim with work and sustained efforts in my little game studio Northplay. It saw the conclusion of the multi-year project of selling our appartment in Copenhagen and relocating the family to a house in the city of Køge. I made freelance work. I collaborated with talented people and I traveled and gave more talks. I launched several side-projects and expanded on existing ones. …

And Learning to design for augmented reality

This one has been a crazy ride for us. On the eve of the iOS 11 launch we’re releasing our second game as Northplay. Conduct AR! started as an experiment with ARKit, seeing if we could do a port of our original mobile game Conduct THIS!

We couldn’t.

So we threw out everything and started from scratch.

The impending deadline that was the launch of iOS 11 was only a few months away and we were just about to take our first step learning to design for AR. Everything we had assumed was wrong. …

✍️ by Michael Flarup first appeared on 📐 applypixels.com

Creating a logo is design distilled. You need to make this little piece of branding that forges a connection with the people who come into contact with it. I find that challenge immensely fun. You get to be the storyteller of a brand. You get to help shape many people’s perception of an entity. You get to make a difference for someone– all with the use of your creativity.

A lot has been written about logo design and it’s no coincidence that a lot of the tips you’ll encounter from professionals sound alike. There’s some universal qualities to good logo design that span different approaches and styles. I have been designing logos for my own projects and for clients for 15 years now and I’m often asked about my process and what I think makes a good logo. …

A place for speakers to share talks and for event organisers to find them.

I have experienced first-hand how giving talks is a great source of personal and career growth. I can hardly count the number of adventures I have been on because I said yes to speak at events.

I have also organised a few conferences and meetups in Copenhagen. In many ways you could say that I have been “on both sides of the table” when it comes to giving talks and arranging events.

It has always struck me how difficult and opaque this whole process is both for speakers, would-be speakers and organisers. I think we can do a lot to improve the process of presenting talks and connecting with other speakers and events. …