My Contribution: Will design app interfaces/elements for free.
 

So I fell in love with the n900 and I want to make sure that other users and myself have a great experence with it.

I'm an experienced flash developer and an avid photoshop user, so if anybody is designing apps and needs some interface design, I am willing to help out for free.

Just let me know specs and requirements and if you have any reference material that would be great.

My Maemo Portfolio:

Here is some of my Maemo Work

http://maemo.org/profile/view/joshuamaverick/

Personal IP Icons

Xournal Icons

maemo Mapper Icons (latest work)

WordPy App Icons

jMav smokeyLight Wallpapers

Personal Photo Frame Icon

Personal GPRS Icon

My company Maverick where I do Flash/Design as Interactive Director


Joshua Richards

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

If anybody would like some help just drop me a line here or email me at jrichards (at) mav-media (dot) com

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

LOVE the site (if mav-media is indeed your site). I especially like the use of the Gotham typeface. It's such a good one eh?

I wish I had an app for you to help on, but I don't. One word of advice: take the initiative rather than waiting for orders. I find that there's not terribly strong leadership among projects (and sometimes great difficulty to convey an idea through words), so if you have a killer idea don't wait for approval to start working on it.

We're all suckers for beautiful (and functional -- ie. elegant) interfaces at heart.

We're lucky to have you!

}:^)~

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Hey! I just noticed that you're a fellow Torontonian (area code on site)!

We're going to have to have a Canada meetup and some point.

}:^D~

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Ahaha thanks man, (that's actually my company's old site, new one is even better if I do say so myself). Are you planning on getting an n900 and switching to wind mobile?

Anyway, if the leadership is lacking lets start the brainstorm on apps! I'm starting to read some documentation on developing for maemo and mobile in general. Maybe we should approach it on a needs basis? People's info comes through, we get devs/designers to work on them?

I'll be there for the meet up for sure, hopefully it ends up being in the GTA.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

We need a menu app thatreplicates the slider icon menu of the iPhone, or similar to the one in this thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=26877

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

So the app needs to show all the apps on the phone, and allow "page changes"?

Doesn't maemo 5 currently have the "more" button on the app menu? Correct me if I'm wrong I'm new to all of this. I could definitely whip up something similar to your original but with a bit more eye candy.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

The menu does, but I like the icon slider that the iPhone has.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

The app menu on Maemo 5 is a bit weird; the first page of apps is static (no scrolling) with a "More" button on the lower right corner. Once you click on that, all the rest of your apps are on a big menu that you can kinetically scroll vertically.

You can also drop app icons ("shortcuts") onto any one of the four "desktops" that you can switch between. Each of the four desktops can be a mix of contact icons, browser bookmarks, desktop widgets, and app shortcuts.

I would love to see some of those ideas ported back to the N8x0 tablets, with a bunch of finger-sized app icons that can be kinetically scrolled through.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

do you have a video or image example, i don't touch apple junk lol

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Just to add a bit of idea.. can we get an option to see a tree-view of the app menu that can show what's inside the folders to ease configuration\app placement (something like the Finder on OSX)?

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Okay so we need a developer, and I need to know what kind of visual elements this will need.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Hi,

QuickClip is a really nice and useful application but has an awful (imho) desktop logo which makes me want to uninstall it!! Maybe you could help?

NB: I'm just a user of this application. Brent Chiodo seems to be the author.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Some time ago I asked for some UI help here. Maybe you're interested :)

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Saturn, I can help out with this, I'll pm Brent Chiodo and see if he's interested.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Hey Conny, what exactly do you need me to work on here? I'm just stepping into the developer world here, so I can only really offer design in photoshop and send you PSDs or PNGs, or whatever format you need.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

If I could figure out how to PM here...

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Hmm, yea... looks like was posting without reading ;) Mockups could be helpful too, but I guess it would make more sense to actually change the code and see how it behaves. Dam, we really need better development tools which support better separation of code and UI :(

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

I'm still working on the Proteus project. (https://launchpad.net/proteus) This separates the functionality of the software from the UI and from the data format and even machine type. It will use a theme to specify a UI that will then apply to all your apps. The Nokia tablets are the primary platform for now.

I would love to have artistic people work on a UI theme. Unfortunately, I am also working full time now so progress is very slow and I can't do the UI until the c++ is further along. So if there are any c++ devs with a math bent who are looking for something to do that could really change things, think about this. As soon as I can create a UI theme I'll come back here for help on it.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

The link that Saturn gave you (http://maemo.org/profile/view/brentdc/) was to a maemo.org profile (which is different from a talk.maemo.org profile!) so you can't PM him via the forum using that link. However, I notice his email address is public on that profile...

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Sorry for this..
Here is the direct link if you want to PM him: http://talk.maemo.org/private.php?do=newpm&u=15761

On the right side of the profile page there is a link below "Websites".

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

No apology necessary, I emailed him, so I'll PM too.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Does anyone have any samples of other icons that go in that position? I'm working on the new icon, but I want to make sure I fit the feel of the rest of the icons on the device

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Actually, if one doesn't exist yet, should we put together a design package with reference material for icons etc.?

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Well, the N900's UI will use the new Nokia's s60v5 simple and glossy icons, like these in this picture:
http://i29.tinypic.com/2mo33hu.jpg

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Looking at your site, it seems pretty similar to my Flash skills (though I am mainly UI, and not a lot of actionscript (apart from a bit of copy & pasted code from Google :p)). I've only done it for little personal things, and never anything big, biggest I did was a Flash portal for the PSP three years ago when they were popular, after the PSP got Flash. How could I use this to help with Maemo? I've never thought I could, as SDKs, APIs, everything else that I thought was vital, well... scare me :o. I've done nothing professional, only advancing from learning very basic Flash stuff when I was in high school four years ago. What would you guys recommend I do?

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Hi, didn't know how to help; so zipped all icons I've found in /usr/share/icons that are for the status bar and attached it here.

Hope it helps.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Haha, same man, never took a flash/coding/design course in my life and now, its more or less my career. I went to FITC this year in Toronto, and some Nokia guys came for a presentation discussing how "soon" actionscript 3 will be supported to build whole apps. I'll see if I can dig up my resources.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

I did some icon work for Xournal, a cool app by anidel (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...928#post331928) not the BEST icons, but you can see that I do have some knowledge in what I am doing.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Damn, I should pull my finger out, I could be doing stuff like that... time to step off the bench and enter the word of development! 'New thread' away! :D

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

And so I... bumpster!

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Okay, my icons on Xournal are complete, so if anybody would like any help, please let me know and I will do what I can!

Thanks

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Sorry to hijack a thread, but me too. Budding designers here to be hired for free! Who can resist? :D

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

I also design widgets now lol

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=33

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Can anyone fix this front end? :p

Seriously though, I think it's great that we're seeing more people eager to lend a hand. Coding is one thing, making the code asthetically pleasing is another. Some have mucho talent and can do both but it's always good when you've got someone dedicated to the task.

I dabble a lot with graphics but never dove in with the theme-maker app for Maemo in the past. I've got an interest in learning to code and although drumming up a theme would be more familiar to me I'll probably let that sit, unless I need a break from reading/learning.

I don't know what icons are licensed by Nokia in Maemo 5, if any. Maybe until a project comes along you could consider working on icons used in many general areas. This would include something for tools, disk, new, delete, different file types, etc. Lots of endless ideas there.

Another thought would be to create some backgrounds and develop some ideas on themes. You could post some backgrounds and based on popularity choose to build themes around them. Granted, there are gobs of images out there in the 800x480 format, but handcrafted with a potential for themes should be popular, considering we all want to be unique and special and show off our new gadget with a custom "phonetop". There are tons of themes used on other platforms that people will even make money by selling- plenty of ideas to start the creative juices flowing.

I'm sure you can come up with other ideas once the masses have their shiny new toys, and yet you'll likely be in high demand at that time.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

I like the background image set idea...

The N900 has a very unique desktop.

For best effect you need 4 800x480 images that flow together on their short edges, in an endless loop...

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Opps I edited this post instead of replying, still getting used to my new powers Joshua please repost what you had said here.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

joshua I just wanted to let you know I could use icons for my new Fremantle for Diablo theme. I can't use the real fremantle icons because they are not open source. I you want to work on something similar that will look good with my new theme that would be great. Also if you want to work on themes for either Maemo or Mer I would be happy to help you out. Theme Maker is nice unless you want to put your themes in repo and downloads.maemo.org to do that you have to take your deb from Theme Maker tear it apart and rebuild it write. I can help you with that if you want as well. Also Mer is looking from people to help with not only themes but all parts of the UI. If your interested in helping with me send me a message or come in #Mer on freenode IRC server.

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

Awesome, I am very interested. I was planning on working on an icon set anyway, as it seems alot of people aren't too happy with the default ones on the n900, so first step for me is to get some inspiration and reference material. Just some links to some icons that we like and think would be suitable. Next would be a list of the icons I need to make.

This should be an interesting experience.

On another note, how do I get karma :S?

Re: My Contribution: Will design front ends for free.
 

joshua.maverick: make sure you are signed up for maemo.org (a separate process from talk.maemo.org) and that you have put a link to your t.m.o. user profile into your maemo.org profile, and then wait a few days. Your posts and thanks here will be credited as karma on maemo.org.