Ignacio Giri

New Theme

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:00:00 -0300

Just made this theme a few months ago, now it’s updated and I’m trying to sell it to who ever wants it.

Theme SOLD.

Thanks Steve.

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:46:00 -0300

It’s almost 8 years since I got my first Mac. Which I bought without even see it till I got mine in my hands. I was between Sony Vaio and iBook G4. The Mac was cheaper, so I got the Mac. One of the best decisions I ever made.

It was a beautiful experience, I had no knowledge about how beautiful it was since I turn it on for the very first time.

I have never went back to PC anymore. Ever.

3 months after getting the iBook I saw the iPod Nano keynote from Steve, and again, bought the device without knowing it for real (just photos). It was amazing, even more when I also got the iPod Shuffle the same week from my boss on those days making Spam to Hotmail.

But I been creating websites since I remember. I wasn’t doing any kind of design while on the PC. That changed completely when I grab the Mac. That User Interface was so inspiring and making my own stuff looking like crap — I have to learn how to make this beautiful things, and I’m still learning.

Thanks to that, I got $4000 dollars and I bought myself and iPhone 1G and iMac late 2006 (which I’m using right now).

Been working as a designer thanks to Steve and his work. When I wake up everyday and I see my Apple products, I can’t never get bored of them, I can appreciate how pretty they are each day of my life.

But it’s never enough, then I got the iPad 2. I love it! And I’m sure that I will continue getting more Apple products in the future, I share the same thoughts about excellence and perfection. I feel that.

Steve was and it’s going to be always a huge inspiration to me. He was and it is a big part of my life.

Thank you.

Theme for DJs

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:45:00 -0300

This design got inspired by several sources, think Daft Punk, iPad, Mac, Dribbble, Magazines, and personal taste.

Includes the following pages, you can click on each image for full-size preview.

Home
Post Page
Media Page
Tour Page
Gallery Page
Full-Width Page

This is going to be available soon as Wordpress theme via MintThemes.

MintThemes is a small company based in Toronto, Canada working to design and develop the most useful and good-smelling WordPress themes.

New home for Sortfolio

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:19:00 -0300

Today I read a tweet from @37signals saying:

Sortfolio deserves a better home. Make us an offer. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2899-sortfolio-deserves-a-better-home-make-us-an-offer

And I thought to do something about it. I don’t have any money to buy Sortfolio. But I can get them a new home! Why not?

So, here is:

And you can see this new feature that can work great.

Let’s see how the story ends for this great website for us the web designers.

If you want to know more about this, just send me an email or twitter.

Execution is everything: Connect.me case

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:42:00 -0300

UPDATE April 6th 2011 - I started to build this project no matter what. Front-end is almost done :)

Today I’ve done lot of video conferences with some very interesting people. Day after day I notice how many opportunities I’ve missed out on because I didn’t execute them.

While chatting with Davy Kestens, my friend from Belgium, I explained to him that even though I’m only 25, I have this feeling that I’m terribly old. I feel old because of all the opportunities I didn’t take and all the bad decisions I’ve made in the past.

I’m a huge fan of TV Shows. I remember watching an episode of Fringe that talks about the fact that all decisions you make determine who you are. That’s common knowledge. However, nobody tells you how to change course when you realize you made a bad decision somewhere along the way.

Today, I suddenly became extremely frustrated when I saw a huge amount of “connect.me” buzz on twitter. Why? 2 months ago, I had exactly the same idea. I designed the User Interface and I even thought of exactly the same domain! (Sadly, I didn’t pursue the project and didn’t register the domain name)

Check out the design I made, pretty awesome huh?

Friends tell me that I should good about this because it shows that I have great potential. But to me, it’s an incredibly frustrating to realize that I wasn’t able to execute this project because I don’t have the team, the money, nor the available time to pursue my ideas.

Time after time, I see people starting up websites I came up with years ago and who are now making millions with it. I had the idea of Groupon 2 years ago!

Though I know, that’s not important. I realized that I need to “do” stuff, instead of blaming around. Over the past few years, I worked in order “to survive”. And I know that is not getting me anywhere. I’m going to change my mindset based on a great quote I heard in the movie “The Social Network”:

If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook…

That’s pretty much why I’m writing this blog post, just doing things and stop blaming around.

I want to focus on building web applications that truly help people. To be honest, I don’t get enough satisfaction from designing general websites for clients. I want to work on really great projects on my own. Sadly, the client work is currently the only way I am able to “survive”.

I’m well aware that great connections and networking with the right people will help me access the resources I need in order to execute the projects I wish to do in my life. There is a small chance that I’m able to do this on my own, but execution is everything and what I need to most right now is an amazing partner that can help me out.

Either if you are an investor, a coder, designer, marketeer or just someone who wants to build great things with me…

simply…

CONNECT.ME

The gap between designers on Dribbble

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 03:31:00 -0300

This is was the original subject I wanted to publish when I thought to write about Dribbble. But it was better to tell my success story before to not misunderstood anything.

Like I said in my previous post, I’m a huge addicted to Dribbble, I’m trying several ways to succeed on that community getting new followers everyday. It’s really really hard, believe me.

But I’m not doing it in the correct way because is not working. The gap between me and successful designers (players) is HUGE.

I might not be a good designer after all. I have my problems like troubles with deadlines and that kind of stuff, but I always tried to maintain the highest quality on my work and improving everyday being more professional.

When I see the awesomeness work from designers like Trent Walton, Cameron Moll, Matthew Smith, Meagan Fisher, Tim Van Damme, and others called the “Stars”, I can’t avoid to think that I suck. No matter how hard I try, I suck.

They have 67% more followers than me, they post a shoot and automatically they get 30 likes and 10 comments in 5 minutes. And I’m always following they work as well.

What’s popular on Dribbble today? Certainly not me.

To be popular on today you will have to design Icons, Illustrations, iPad/Phone UI, or what I found most unfair… to have already >2k followers.

So it’s always the same, the hidden popularity contest is always between the same people. It’s really hard to grow in this community. You will have to play smart.

Wait, I’m not saying that they don’t deserve that, not at all. In fact, they are my idols and I get a lot of inspiration from them. I’m just concern with what I have to do to reach that level of being that influent on the web and this particular community.

Ok, let’s ask them personally. I went to Dan Rubin, one of the “Stars” and asked him this simple question: What I need to achieve to succeed in this business?. He was very kind and he sent me back a great email with tips of how be like him. One of the tips was about to blog about my struggles, this is one, so here I am.

He also said that the gap only exists in my head:

“I’ve seen from you on Dribbble, I’d easily put your work on the same level as the Rogie Kings and Andrew Wilkinson of the world. Your shots appear next to people like Jason Santa Maria and Jesse-Bennett Chamberlain, with no inherent difference.”

I was VERY flattered to hear that from him. But there still a lot of work to do.

This is a game, and I’m playing. Maybe I’m not too smart, maybe my work is not good enough, but I’m playing and I won’t stop until shortening the gap.

My story with Dribbble

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:19:00 -0300

Hello guys, I’m here again. This is my story with Dribbble and my conclusion.

I been an addicted to Dribbble since it went out. I did everything to get my invitation around 10 months ago. I designed a microsite inspired by Davy Kestens which he did this gorgeous website, and here is my own shoot that I made in 30 minutes.

After 2 days I got my invitation thanks to Andy Clarke from Stuff and Non Sense - What a great guy, awesome designer - Thanks to that I got tons of traffic into my website. It was a totally success. I’m part of the very exclusive community of designers, now what?

I tried to do a smart move and post my first shoot to get tons of traffic over Dribbble. What best than a lovely girl, no one can beat a hot girl. Everybody knows that.

It went all wrong.

Two of the more influential designers from Dribbble criticized my shoot pretty bad:

Rogie: ”Ignacio, I’d definitely reconsider posting shots like this as the risk of offending people in a community of designers that LOVE dribbble is high. I don’t think it’s a wise shot to post. Artforms, to me are one thing, but to offend with a shot that is clearly using sex as a sales mechanism is totally another.

Bad play. I still mega-respect your design ability however, and want to see more awesome design work and congrats on getting into dribbble.”

Gedy Rivera: ”I totally agree with Rogie. You’re a great designer, Ignacio but this is definitely crossing the line, especially to us ladies.”

Ok, I get it. It was offensive. It was my mistake, I wasn’t meant to offend anybody, it was a bad marketing strategy. Really sorry for that. Let me start fresh again.

So I did that. I started posting part of my work in progress, the best from me and I was slowly getting followers. I must say that this is really cool, recognition and exposure is better than getting paid. It’s an addiction.

It’s a healthy addiction because is forcing me to improve in my designs and trying to take out the very best from me. This way I can be a better designer, getting recognition, learning directly from my idols, getting more followers on Twitter - follow me - and grow in my little business.

The whole process was fun, seeing my shoots getting a lot of views, a lot of comments, everybody was impressed by my work. That makes me happy no more than anything in the world.

I got a lot of work proposals, found my actual partner in my side projects like DesignsVault and the best… the recognition from >200 people.

Today I’m a good player and I consider all this as a huge success, but I’m feeling that the couch is not watching me anymore, so I guess I should keep practicing.

My marketplace story

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 04:41:00 -0300

So here is the story. I saw about 3 years ago myself as a designer in progress. I was doing a lot of designs for Sitepoint (now 99designs). I won my first contest, my first try. Wow, I said, I have something in here, I should participate in more. Which I did and I won more contests as well. It was a nice way to make money, but I was doing it for the feeling of winning between other 50 people. After I found that some people (contest holders) were paying ~~huge amount of money~~ to shitty things. That was very frustrating so I left out from there.

I also was doing a few client work as well thanks for my reputation on there. I was happy, but I found myself charging pennies for my work, so I needed a new way to make money.

I got a few offer to designs templates, and I said, what is that? what am I earning from that? It was like a scam to me. Several designs pretty cheap and the right to resell them? That sucks, not for me.

Since I was (and I’m still) learning new techniques to create stunning websites I went into PSD Tuts, it was great, all the things I wanted to learn from great designers was in there, I was following that blog several times everyday.

And one day, the same group of that blog launched ThemeForest. It was great! What a great idea, just what I needed to create my passive income and do all the designs I wanted without having annoying clients making me pointless modifications and making me to waste time.

So I did a CMS theme in less than 40 minutes. I was thinking in that CMS layout for years, it was great. So, let’s create a hit and sell this into this great website. And it was, it was a hit, got several sales in short time. Like 10 per day.

In total until today I made 512 sales in two years with just 2 items to offer. That’s awesome, the gratification if priceless…… Well, that’s not true in real world, there always a price. I made $7877 US Dollars worth with those sales.

That’s a pretty nice amount of money don’t you think? Don’t want to ruin the party, but in my pocket only went $2939.24. How is that even possible? It was very frustrating. They are earning a lot of money (more than me) with my work, my creation! I can’t allow that.

I was handling that with no problem until I see this. It was my CMS theme improved. I just went crazy, mad, sad, all the emotions together. Anybody can take my creation, make it better and sell it (I admit it, it was much much better), right on the same place.

That same day I started doing the UI for my own marketplace of designs. I was going to increase the earnings of designers and change the policy of the website across designers. I spent all of the time doing the design, CSS, Javascript, PHP, everything by hand. Having no incomes at all, no investment at all, I found my self borrowing money to my brother.

I was trying to get some client work to have money to live but I couldn’t do it, I was all day coding my marketplace, it was very stupid. I wasn’t even good enough coder to making it myself. I needed someone else.

I putted the project on hold until I found the right person to partner with. I went into a few guys to finish to code I had in Code Igniter. It wasn’t well at all, those coders were worse than me. I need someone better.

After long time, I saw a guy that liked my UI design of the marketplace posted on Dribbble, great site, I’m still a addicted to it. He was a Ruby Coder, a pretty well known one. I want him.

I had no idea about Ruby at that time but I offered to partner with me and he said ok. Let’s do it.

So here we are, I launched DesignsVault with the help of Josh. And working everyday on it to make it a good place to designers and to offer great quality stuff to the buyers.

I’m happy, but there is still a lot of work to do, and we can’t do it ourselves.

Join us.

Catchwords

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:15:00 -0300

Catchwords are preset typographic alternates like “the”, “and”, etc. Here are some good examples with good fonts with this kind of alternates:

Brothers by Emigre
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/emigre/brothers/

Council by Emigre
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/emigre/council/

Bello by Underware
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/underware/bello/

Hiatus by Umbrella Type
http://marketplace.veer.com/fonts/UMT0001084#

Phaeton by Umbrella Type
http://marketplace.veer.com/fonts/umt0000447

Cowboyslang by HVD Fonts
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/hvdfonts/cowboyslang/ornaments/

Metroscript by Alphabet Soup
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/alphabetsoup/metroscript/

Verna by Fenotype
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/fenotype/verna/

XXII Mescaline by Doubletwo Studios
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/doubletwo/xxii-mescaline/

Rita by Sudtipos
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/sudtipos/rita/

Lady Rene by Sudtipos
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/sudtipos/lady-rene/

Royal Oak Decor
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/typonauten/royal-oak-decor/

Catch Words by Jeff Levine
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/jnlevine/catch-words/

FF Catch Words by FontFont
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/fontfont/catch-words/

Apple's Mac App Store & OS X Lion: The end of browsers?

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:55:00 -0300

I can imagine me to start using the websites I go everyday using their apps right into my desktop without having to use a browser anymore.

It’s funny that Apple started backyards with the Apps. They have more applications for their mobile devices than their desktop/laptop computers.

Now with the release of Mac OS X Lion, we can notice that it will be like an iPhone/iPad. The experience on the desktop will be amazing. That will transform the way you do stuff everyday.

And that also includes the way you surf the web. My guess is from here and in a few years you won’t use browsers anymore, you will use the applications.

Me, as a web designer, I will start thinking in design more applications and less websites.

What you think?

The browser is your blank canvas

Tue, 25 May 2010 15:31:00 -0300

After a nice and short chat with Jacob Thomas (@jakeup) I was motivated to write my first post related to web design. My passion.

How do we start creating a great web design? Every designer has his own routine. This includes collecting all the assets, reviewing the information from the client and doing a research about the branding/product/app of the website, we are going to make.

After having all these information in our hands we prepare to work on the layout and wireframes of the website. It’s always a good recommendation to start using a real piece of paper and do a sketch with your bare hands like this.

What now? We have to go back to our computer and to our design software. In my case, I use my dear and beloved Photoshop.

Offtopic: I’m not going to talk in this post about how we deal with the art direction of a website.

Ok, in Photoshop, we create a new blank canvas. But what we don’t realize is that it is actually not our real blank canvas. Our canvas is the browser. And don’t forget that we have the monitor display showing the browser with your website in it.

Like an art painting, you can see that every paint goes with a nice frame. There are some exceptions, but that is not what I want to put down here. Because, in web, we have rules. Rules that we cannot deny. Without such rules, GUI design simply won’t exist.

We must understand that the people who will see your creation, will see it from a browser and more importantly, from a bright monitor display or any other device. The device is our frame. The safe area.

In final and shorts words, I recommend you to use a white canvas with a browser as a frame. You can download this Photoshop Browser Template and start creating from there and you will see my point.

And finally, don’t forget to check the Paper Browser.

Ignacio Giri

Thu, 20 May 2010 17:44:32 -0300

Ignacio Giri:

This is my personal portfolio.

First post

Thu, 20 May 2010 17:40:07 -0300

Hello world. I wanted to create a blog 5 years ago. Today I finally decided to do it.