IntuitiveDesigns

We are very thankful with Most Inspired blog for featuring us in his post about Weekly Top Standards. They say about us: “From the typography choices to the fabulous illustration work, this is one classy site!”. “Fabulous” and “classy” are nice compliments that we will save in our little box for beautiful words, the one we open when we feel down and in need of motivation. Thanks!

We are happy to announce that Koldobarroso.com, a web site dedicated to Koldo’s illustration and art work, is now online after several months of meticulous work.

We have been designing and developing web sites together for the last 5 years including more than 50 projects, created and maintained, two big music web sites and Koldo needed to have a web site for his illustration and art work and now it’s done. We believe this is the most complex and elaborate web project we have done so far.

The web web site originally started in November 2007 as a mere blog. Because we knew building the site would take a few months, Koldo decided to start a simple blog because he just had the urge to write. For the temporary version, we used a template that we originally designed a couple of years back. For the last few months, Koldo have been showing the development of the final design that you can see today in order to demonstrate the creative process. He will still be posting more about it in the forthcoming weeks, and he will also be updating the portfolio and blog regularly.

We wanted to add that it was our intention from the very first day to do this web site the most personal we could. The whole design and illustration is full of important and influential things in Koldo’s life and work. Nothing here is circumstantial. The main illustration in the top header, for instance, it’s full of references to his own life and persona. This web site makes him feel like home. We hope we can reach other hearts, make good friends and know all the beautiful and creative people floating around this world like us.

The story starts when I re-discovered a song from my childhood by chance: “T.S.O.P” by Mother, Father, Sister, Brother. It’s a song that became very popular in 1974 and was nicknamed as “The Sound of Philadelphia”. In the U.S. it was the soundtrack for the TV show Soul Train. OK, so I remember how much I used to like this song and how wonderful these kings of funk and groove themes with trumpets used to be. So this morning I googled the soundtrack for Lou Grant, one of my favorite TV shows ever, and I arrived at this web site: www.televisiontunes.com.

I spent about five minutes on the site, they have a list of lots of popular TV series, and all the way through I have a funny feeling, some kind of Deja Vu like, “I’ve been here before”. So Naomi looks at my screen and she says, “But… OMG, they totally ripped our design!“

These people stole our design shamelessly. Our first reaction was to laugh really hard because I was in front of this design for five minutes which was literally stolen from us and I didn’t figure it out. OK, I admit I can be really dense in the morning. So we looked at it carefully and we noticed that they basically copied the CSS coding and just took out the parts they didn’t need. They ripped off the menu bar, they ripped off the background, they ripped off the font style, and they even dared to rip off the image of the arrow button that I created for Intuitive Designs!

This is the old design of our web site, since we changed it just a few days ago as you may know. Lucky for us. But it gets pretty disgusting to browse the internet and find people who steal your work. It happens more often than we would like. I wonder how yucky must be for famous people to turn on the TV or read a magazine every morning and find crap about themselves…

Once again we have to say what our philosophy is about being ripped off: life is an unique opportunity to celebrate our own individual identity. Each and everyone one of us are one of a kind. Each and everyone one of us can create our own print and that is a gift that shouldn’t be underestimated. By being ourselves and leaving our own footprint we make this world richer. It’s a celebration of life. Everyone should enjoy taking part of it and sharing their own goods with the rest of the world.

Here I leave an idea for their next design in case they want to have a different version of their most presumably ripped of illustration.

It’s time for renewal at Intuitive Designs! We have just released our new site redesign, the 6th version we’ve had since we started the firm more than 5 years ago. This year our lives have been changed by important events and the design of our site needed to be in accordance with them.

One of the most important reasons for a big change is that because we are moving this year from Spain to the Seattle area, we wanted to get our business defined better and be prepared for the changes we’ll face. 2007 was a year of recognition for our work from both clients and other professionals and we feel really grateful for that. We are positive that once we are re-located in the U.S. things are going to be on track for Intuitive Designs, so we want to be ready. During the last months we have been doing a strong revision of our business goals and achievements and have redefined the shape of Intuitive Designs.

For the new designs, we decided to just be ourselves and nothing but ourselves. We have ended up with a design that we think doesn’t have a lot to do with most of the web site designs you see around. It has been influenced mostly by things that we love not only in our profession, but in our personal life as well. We have been influenced by vintage advertisements, retro decoration, fashion, music and other sources rather than what a lot of people are doing in web design today. And this is the result.

This new design is meant to be more clean and minimalistic, while focusing on the important stuff. This is something that is integral to the way we work and the way we feel about our profession. We also wanted to transmit the feeling that we are passionate about our work and projects. We are interested in working with people on a more personal level and felt that it was important to share more information about ourselves as individuals and how we work as well.

To build this new web site we have also fully applied our philosophy about web design in extreme detail; harmony, cleanness, functionality, simplicity, proportion, geometry, sincerity and honesty, expression of our feelings… These are some of the main pillars for this and all of the works that we are involved in. We really hope that we achieved it and you can sense it when you look at it.

In the former version of Intuitive Designs, we decided to use an analogy with something that could be compared to web design as a service, something we would love in a personal level. So we used this idea of being cooks, because both of us love to cook in our spare time. The idea was pretty fun and worked very well visually, but it didn’t quite represent the most important message of Intuitive Designs today. A message that would really define the basic spirit of the firm. And the message today is this: “Here your vision becomes reality”.

This is all we want to tell. Our passion is to get an interesting project and work together with the client in order to achieve the best we can according to it’s needs with creativity, illusion, and enthusiasm. That is the reason why we are in this business and we are not really interested in doing this any other way. Helping projects, visions, dreams and illusions become true is the best wish we can have granted. We believe that’s all we know how to do and all that we want to do.

We are currently looking for a few good contract developers to help us out with various tasks.

About Us: We are a small web design and illustration studio that has been in business located in Madrid, Spain since 2003. We are passionate about our work and hope to find other people that share our same philosophies to work with.

We don’t like monkey work and don’t expect to work with code monkeys either. We would like to work with a bright person that helps bring solid solutions to the table that we haven’t thought of. Ideally, we will be a good team together if you are passionate, motivated, a self-starter, a good communicator, friendly, and someone who has an interest in learning new things and growing as a professional.

Skills Needed:

1. LAMP
2. Javascript (enough basic knowledge to program basic effects and ajax with frameworks such as Mootools, jquery, or prototype)
3. Clean xhtml output - no tables where not necessary or divitis please
4. Ability to code custom applications when necessary

Other Considerations:

We also work extensively with several popular CMS’s. Ideally, you would also have experience or be interested in the possibility of working with these CMS’s in this order or importance:

1. ExpressionEngine
2. Wordpress
3. Drupal
4. Textpattern
5. Joomla

We are looking to work remotely online with developers located in the U.S.

If interested, please contact us with the following information:

1. Some examples of projects you have worked on or are working on.
2. A little bit about yourself.
3. Your hourly rate.