Interview — Jon Shaw
Creative Director / Designer / Comic Artist
So, can you start by sharing with me a little bit about your role as Creative Director at Forest Giant?
Well, for me it can be a wide array of things, from working with clients to facilitating design reviews. But really it comes down to trying to make it so each designer on the team can stay positive and stay focused on what they do best. Back before we had a design team and I was one of the only designers, I learned pretty quickly all the things that can suck the life out of you and can take you out of your groove, and I really just try to shield the other designers from those things so they can love and enjoy what they do day in and day out.
Also, sometimes when we work on our own projects, I get to do some design work, which is fun because it’s not my everyday anymore.
Did you start out as a designer?
Yeah — actually I got my start when I was like 14 or 15, making show flyers for bands. I’d use the computer to mess with fonts and type — I’d print, cut and crinkle them up, then tape it on to another piece of paper, and photocopy it. A lot of very DIY-type of stuff. So really my design origin is from the punk/hardcore scene, which is really all about “doing it yourself” or kind of that attitude of “I can do it without you”.
Would you say you are self-taught?
Yeah, pretty much. When I was deciding whether or not to go to school I saw all the coursework was a whole bunch of stuff unrelated to the field I was interested in, I just really wanted to get into it and do it, so I just figured it out. Learning hands-on is how I’ve done it — being faced with a challenge and then kind of having to figure it out at all costs. Really, that’s been my mantra. You can figure it out if you just put your mind to it.
You mentioned earlier how you sometimes design for Forest Giant internal projects. Can you tell me a little bit about the project you recently worked on?
Yeah, our latest project is an app called Quantified. It’s an extremely simple way to track things in your life. It can be stuff like meditation, exercise or hanging out with your family and friends. Just a way to track the things you do and see a visual representation of that.
Where did the idea come from?
Actually, we’ve kind of been thinking about this idea for a while. Dave, our president, started talking about an app like this almost 2 years ago — when he got a Fitbit. With the Apple Watch announcement, we knew how easy it would be for people to access content on their wrist. It was at that point we decided it was time to bring this idea to life.
Can you tell me a bit about what it’s like designing a user interface for a brand new Apple product?
Well, it’s interesting. I will say the documentation for the Apple Watch is awesome. It is very streamlined, I think that Apple must have really learned some lessons from their previous documentation, because for the watch they provide you with not only guidelines for designing, but also a lot of amazing templates to use with your designs.
The experience has been really different — to have so much guidance. There are so many things to consider for the watch that are so much more specific than the phone. The phone is wide open, whereas the watch is very much locked down. But, I personally really liked the restriction. It was good to be forced to take your idea and simplify it to where it only has the important stuff and only displays the things that you need.
What challenges and new discoveries have you had in designing an interface for both iPhone and Apple Watch?
The ultimate challenge is starting with the watch. You have to really think about the fact that you only have 2 to 5 seconds for every interaction before the user puts their wrist down. So it’s not like you can have all this super tedious stuff, you have to get them in and out super quick. Thinking about how to simplify the app and design it in a way that doesn’t take any time to use — that was a pretty tremendous challenge.
Really, starting with the watch, getting that concept together and rolling that into the app, it really made a lot of sense. You’ll notice the UI on the phone is identical to the interface on the watch and I think that really works well together.
There is quite a difference in screen size between the watch and the phone. How did that affect your decisions for design and what was added to the application?
Well, like I said, we started with the watch first. We asked ourselves, “What do you have to see for this idea to work?” And that really boiled down to about 3 or 4 things, that’s it.
The design is simple, yet distinctly unique. Can you share a little about the inspiration you drew from in order to come up with the design direction?
Yeah. I actually had just recently read an article from this classic designer who did the subway maps for New York City, named Massimo Vignelli. It was fascinating how he talked about design and the process of starting a project, selecting a font and a typeface was such an important decision. He didn’t have access to the same technology we have today where you just click a drop down and select from hundreds of fonts. So it wasn’t intentional, but I had just happened to read that before I started designing Quantified and it really inspired me to go back in time to where things were simpler and fonts meant something and the choice of iconography was very informative. It was more of a utilitarian look at design and less of a flashy trendy style.
Something else unintentional, but you’ll notice that the cards in the UI look very much like a pantone card, and I guess that was just a subconscious decision. I tried to keep everything either white, black or a specific color. Really every decision was guided by the question, “Is this easy to digest quickly?” I still think it ended up looking great, but that wasn’t exactly what I set out to do.
Do you have any thoughts or tips for anyone aspiring to design user interfaces for mobile devices?
I think the number one thing I would suggest would be to read the documentation and to embrace the restrictions, as opposed to trying to fight and break outside of them. Apple has setup guidelines and restrictions to make things easier for the users. The restrictions aren’t there to stifle your creativity; they are there to help you create a better product. So I think that’s step one. Read the documentation, all of it! Then think about how to use those obstacles to find a creative solution as opposed to just disregarding them. Embrace the constraints.
Originally published on Forest Giant’s blog.
