We here at the AIM have gone a little sticker crazy lately. Its an easy and arguably smart thing to do. Stickers have legs so to speak. For a relatively small amount, you can get a batch of 500 to 1000 stickers printed in a very short amount of time (less than a week it turns out). You can fit them in your suitcase with ease (unlike a box of T-shirts) and bring them with you to distribute at events like we did recently at SXSW in Austin. You can casually hand them out to people you meet, leave them on a table for people to pick up (or throw away) or stick them around town and document via photography as AIM design team member Justin Kirk did. Seeing them perpetuated on laptops the way we used to for skateboards and surfboards is how the stickers grow legs. We nerds take these back to our cubical farms and ride the ‘geekboards’ all day long meeting after meeting thus exposing others to our super cool way of life manifested as individual expression in the form of a collage of mass-produced stick ons.

Days prior to the event, AOL announced that Open AIM would go even more ‘open’. In doing so, the design team was asked to explore logo options for the program. In the end, it was decided that there were some clever ideas that would make great stickers. And so… stickers we made…

<AIM>
Inspired by Julie Bethke, this design represents the use of an ‘open’ tag with the word AIM inside of it thus implying ‘Open AIM’.

Sticker and mark design by Tom Osborne (me speaking in third person). Mark inspired by Julie Bethke.

Skatewing
By taking a bite out of the traditional AIM bubble (creating an opening in it) a new form takes life. Most people think this looks like a hawk or skatewing. Cool how it takes on different meaning based on your own perspective.

Mark design by John Clarkson. Sticker design by Tom Osborne.

Come On In
Taking a cue from storefront neon signs, this design displays the word ‘Open’ in neon style lettering inside the AIM bubble shape to welcome in people to the Open AIM program.

Sticker and mark design by Tom Osborne.

Pixnay
One of our newest experiences is Pixnay, a vanity competition pitting profile photos in a head to head competition. This project was brilliantly conceived by some talented interns this past summer. Post your photo and take your chances of becoming ‘Hottie of the Day’.

Sticker design by Valli Ravindran.

Come see us at the next big conference where we’ll be sure to have some stickers to give away.

Special thanks to Gian Cruz, Alisa Schadt, John Clarkson, Mike Macadaan, David Robinson, Chris Dargis, Greg Cypes, Andy Wick, Robert West and Jill Carillo for ideas and contributions along the way.

Originally posted on design.aim.com on April 17, 2008.

Inspired by a DIY mask in the likeness of famed designer, typographer and instructor Wolfgang Weingart the AIM Product Design Team recently banded together to make our own variation of the Weingart mask.

The original Weingart mask was found on Flickr uploaded back in 2005 by laughingmonk.

What originally seemed like a fun little way for one of the gods of typography to watch over our little design team…

soon became a way for us to individually express our status in a way uniquely ‘AIM’. Each person added their own little touch for our first display of these at our inaugural design summit back in December ‘07.

That’s how we ’say it’, how do you?

Originally posted on design.aim.com on April 8, 2008.

It’s never easy to say goodbye but when two members of our design team decided it was their time we made the best of it by doing a collaborative design project. Our way of saying goodbye became a variation of layer tennis where typically two designers send a layered photoshop file back and forth battle it out through design. Instead of doing that we took an additive design process starting with one person and making its way through the team with each person adding their own personal mark to the design. We started with photographs of the team shot by designer/photographer Elsa Kawai. Designers added various things from inside jokes to simple styling. When Kevin Lawver first heard of this he said something to the effect of “that’s not tennis… that’s hackeysack.” And with that, Design Hackeysack was born! A collaborative, addititive design process and the end results are nothing short of amazing as seen in these designs. The sequence shown here isn’t an exact representation of the design from person to person but it does illustrate the concept through the layering found in Photoshop.

Contributing designers include Valli Ravindran, Justin Kirk, John Clarkson, Meghan Cesario, Benjamin Bennett, Lee Costic, Vince Farquharson, Rob Coburn, Gian Cruz, Jody Thomas, Justin Howard, Julie Bethke, Alisa Schadt, Jayna Wallace and myself.

Originally posted on design.aim.com on March 26, 2008.

A meeting of the creative minds from AOL and AIM design teams. Good times, good eats and some Lego Serious Play. Event held in Washington, DC.

In July of this year I joined the AIM application design team who were already well on their way to being ready for the public release of AIM version 6.5. One of the more exciting contributions I was able to make prior to launch was to help give names to our 20 new color themes. We didn’t want to settle on obvious color names so we solicited name submissions from those interested in participating from within the company. For each color combination we received approximately 10 names varying from expected names to some that were really out there. I narrowed the list down to about 3 per color and ran them through our legal team to check against copyrights and ethics. Several of our favorites were dropped along the way due to inappropriateness and conflicting use elsewhere. In the end, I’m pleased with where we ended up. Here’s the full list of names. You can find them by installing AIM 6.5 and selecting a new color in the pull down menu at the top right of the Buddy List. Hover over a color to see the name appear in a tool tip.

• Orange/Silver: Love, AIM
• Pink/Silver: Superstar!
• Purple/Silver: Royale
• Green/Silver: Ooze
• Olive/Silver: Mulligan
• Light Blue/Silver: Calypso
• Navy/Silver: Boot Cut
• Chocolate/Silver: Hooptie
• Gray/Silver: Maverick
• Gold/Silver: Big Money
• Orange/Black: Smashed Pumpkin
• Pink/Black: Hot Little Number
• Green/Black: Venom
• Light Blue/Black: Skinny Dip
• Gray/Black: Gothica
• Purple/Black: Grape of Wrath
• Olive/Black: Kabillionaire
• Navy/Black: Midnight Storm
• Chocolate/Black: Well Done
• Gold/Black: Bling Bling

What’s your favorite?

What’s a “smiley” you ask? Have you ever typed the following key combination to lighten the mood of an email or IM conversation, “:-)”? Well I have. I usually shorten it to just the colon and end parens. Sometimes its the only way to let someone know that you mean well in a text conversation. Every now and then I’ll a do a “;)” which is considered a wink. Without such antics, text can be so lifeless.

You may have heard the term emoticon which is a mashup of the words emotive icon. I actually haven’t done my etymological research on that to verify, but that’s what I think it should be . This term refers directly to and is synonymous with what we have known to be called the “smiley”. It turns out that this week marks the 25th anniversary of the first use of the smiley which was apparently born on a listserv at Carnegie Mellon by research professor Scott Fahlman. In following up on that blessed event, I was recently contacted by Josie Roberts a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to help prognosticate on the future of the smiley. For more on that conversation, be sure and check out the Trib article yourself.

Chances are that if you are reading this article you already know how to create your own smiley using AIM. But not all of us can be so fortunately saavy. To see how you can create one, refer to the image attached to this article and look for it in the font bar of your IM conversation within AIM. Just click the little smiley face to reveal.

While we here at AIM think the 25th anniversary of the smiley is an important event, not everyone else is as impressed as witnessed by this line of the article:

“Freshman Paul Richardson, 18, of Louisiana, was more excited about International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which shares Smiley’s birthday.”

What are your thoughts on the future of emoticons and smileys? Leave a comment and let us know. Yar!

-Tom aka “Harpoon Harry The Horrible”

This article was originally posted on http://design.aim.com

We’re looking for a good Interactive Media Designer to join the AIM Product Design Team. If you or someone you know might be interested, please contact me. Here’s more info on the position:

Interactive media designer will be responsible for rapidly designing, prototyping and engineering innovative applications for the AIM brand.

Job Responsibilities

Work with small team of passionate and creative engineers and designers to prototype next-generation software and applets for the AIM organization.

Design and implement novel visual design solutions to desktop and web application interface problems.

Push internal toolkit and platform technologies in relevant and trend setting directions. Identify areas where the AIM/AOL platform can be improved and communicate ways of improving the platform leads.

Skills Required

Qualified candidates must have at least 2-3 years experience with interactive media design and possess the following characteristics:

Extremely disciplined, meticulous, and wildly creative.

We recently helped to launch a new Social Media Blog to talk about all things having to do with AIM and social media. It comes by means of aggregating a few previously existing blogs namely the AIM Buddy Blog, AIM Pages Blog and some of Joe Loong’s long running Magic Smoke. The premise will be to inform AIM users of new features, known bugs and running discussion points as well as looking at the landscape of social media and its impact on the community space. I’m proud to say it was designed by the AIM Product Design Group’s very own Justin Kirk master of pixels and style sheets.

Originally posted on http://design.aim.com

Today marks Elsa’s last day as an AIM Product Design Team member. She’s been a tremendous asset to our little team and AOL/AIM at large. Internally, we said we would shed no tears today, but I think maybe a few sniffles are probably acceptable. We’ll remember Elsa for her funny personality, her quiet wisdom and her unmistakable charm. Along the way, her creative mastery has been seen on People Connection, AIM Today, UnCut Video and much, much more. She’s not only taught us how to expand our creative minds but has shown us how to do it. We are so lucky to have been on Elsa’s path of life and wish her the best of luck ahead. To honor our dear Elsa, we’ve used some of her design work on People Connection to assemble a tribute. From her wacky ‘wit’icisms on Twitter (she calls it “Twig it”) to her crazy little Oddzballz, this is all (or at least much) of the enigma of the Elsa.

-Tom

NOTE: originally posted to the AIM Design Blog.

This desktop wallpaper design was largely inspired from a brief conversation I had with Bert Arians, an AIM tech manager, while in the lunch line today. He was explaining to me how he felt that many people confuse “community” with “social networks” and how they are not necessarily synonymous. He described to me a meadow full of flowers where a community of bees networked from flower to flower. To be honest, I’m not sure I understood the analogy completely but for some reason the conversation stuck in my head and served as good inspiration when I needed it. So for that, I thank you Bert (but I may need you to walk me through that one more time).

In addition, I wanted to design something that evoked Spring and what better to do so than cherry blossoms, bees, pollen and springtime colors. Ahhh chooo!

Download the Pollen Nation wallpaper for your desktop:
Large (1600×1200)
Small (1024×768)

Thanks to the following people whose photos were available for remix via Creative Commons: tanakawho, *vlad*, bulletproofbra and TeraRoop11. Font used: Helvetica Neue.

-Tom

Update:
Bert just informed me that “bees are social networking with each other; flowers are the communities”. Now, I’ve got it. Thanks, Bert!

NOTE: originally posted on the AIM Design Blog.