• Local Reviews Tab: In addition to your photos, +1′s and YouTube videos, there’s now a place for all your Local reviews. Highlight your favorite restaurants, or hide the tab completely via settings. After scrolling down, you can find it on top right of the menu bar.
• Easier to Edit Info: The About tab now consists of separate cards (Story, Places, and Links), each with its own prominent edit link. As always: you can share specific fields with specific circles, or keep them just for you. And a new bonus, now those areas are highlighted with a google color: red, blue, yellow, and so on.
• Bigger Cover Photos: And also a better aspect ratio. Cover photos are much larger than before (they can go all the way up to 2120 pixels by 1192 pixels), and they display in 16×9 when fully expanded. This way more images can be used as cover photos, and there’s more room for your selection to shine.
• Round Profile Picture (over the cover): As Facebook redefined logo sizes to be square, now Google adds its own twist with making the logo hovering on top of the cover image by making it round – so you have to be careful with logo placing.

Everything’s rolling out gradually, so check back soon if you don’t see it yet. Now, to business! I updated the Google PSD Template to meet the new standards, both for cover pictures and circled profile pictures. You can download the (zipped) Photoshop Header Image Templates here:

• Google+ PSD Template
  

After years and years of using Adium as my primary IM app, I moved my AIM and GTalk accounts to Messages. And since I already set up Messages with my iPhone and iPad, it is a breeze. I use all the IM services, not only with clients but with family and friends. I have to say that so far so good. After a couple of weeks I have gotten used to the bigger UI (still not liking Skype that much) and the ease of sending SMS messages to my contacts with iMessage from my mac.

All for minimizing. Instead of using two apps for those services – yes, I’m still using two but only one of them requires install, since Messages comes preinstalled in Mountain Lion – I only need to install one. And I get to turn it on/off when needed.

And, I am not using Twitterrific that much either – doing most of my tweeting from either my phone or using the Sharing buttons from the Notification Center. Also, decided to uninstall Growl and use the built in Notifications system and it works just as well. However, I am not uninstalling Twitterrific as I have several of my projects accounts signed in through there so I don’t have to  sing in/out every time I want to tweet and check the replies online from a different account.

Feels liberating, you know? All those uninstalling and deleting… And makes my Mac lighter (though I have over 350GB free memory – but still).

Now we welcome the new year and we are starting with a brand new look. Here’s the story behind how we came to this version of the logo:

The history behind this new logo is close to our hearts. When we started The Foodies’ Kitchen, Kristen (Helga’s little girl) was just 17 months old. Now at age 4 she is a very important and active part of our kitchens. Kiki, as friends and family call her, loves being in the kitchen… especially helping out with her very own whisk.  So, when we decided to brainstorm for the new logo we knew that kitchen tools (the whisk) had to be part of it.  Now, our little foodie helps us out more and more every day, to the point that she’s choosing some of our recipes – specially the flavors around cupcakes and assisting with the sprinkles.

For the site’s icon (that doubles also as bookmark icon for iOS devices), we wanted to keep it along the same line of design from the logo, but given that it was going to be seen at a much smaller size, we kept the name out of it and decided to feature our whisk more.

Along with the new logo, we have a new WordPress theme in place. In this case is a theme by elemis. With this theme we can give our users a faster site with less plugins to load, a more efficient search engine (now powered by Relevanssi) and a responsive theme – which means that you will be able to look at the full site whether you’re on your desktop/laptop, tablet or phone. Also,  we are using the Jetpack sharing tools, so the users can share the posts through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, but also email the post and print it right from the site. No extra plugins needed.

After changing the site, we also changed the look for our Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Flickr profile pictures and cover pictures to match the new look. You will also notice, that all the cover pictures are the same. This is because we offer a Desktop Calendar every month, so now we are going to feature that picture as the cover picture around all the social media profiles. It is important to be consistent with the new look all around the site.

Twitter

Google+

LinkedIn

Pinterest

Now, for Facebook, we also updated our Facebook page to match the new logo and images, including the icons for our three applications: Pinterest, Twitter and FOODILY. We wanted to integrate all the social media services that we have our profiles set up.

Facebook

All around, we did a complete revamp of the image. The refreshment resulted in new fans and a new force behind The Foodies’ Kitchen.

The project included logo development and a site that would fit their needs: an online visual catalog of their products, a look to their nursery and location, as well as a friendly contact form for interested clients.

For the Logo, we wanted a logo that would not work for online viewing but also would translate well to printing for both business cards to shipping boxes.

After careful study of their product portfolio, we decided to do a vector close-up of the Croton shrubs – that same logo detail would be used as the site’s icon.

For the site, giving the changing times and different devices used to visit websites, we decided that we would work with a WordPress installation that would be responsive. After deciding on the Avada Theme at ThemeForest, we worked together to work through the details of the site to match their needs, including the online catalog.

The site will also feature a sister spanish version, which we will launch soon!

LinkedIn Profiles now have a clickable business name. It doesn’t matter if you have set up your business company’s page or not. For example, you can see on my profile that if you hover over  Asterisco*, you get this little fly-out window with my business information. States number of the business’ employees, my site and (most importantly) a logo.

After you click on it, you go to the company’s page and it might look something like this. Notice you have 2 images: the company’s logo and the new and shiny cover image. In this case, since I am the manager for my own page, I am greeted with this tan box suggesting that I update the company’s followers. Bellow, you find the latest updates. And where’s the About section you ask? Right bellow that. The About section features a handful of information: a small Summary, Specialties, Headquarters, Website, Industry, Type, Size, Founded. This move from LinkedIn is forcing companies to use this much underestimated network in their favor like Job Advertisements and New Hires.

Besides preparing a text about your company and spend the time filling in the blanks, you need a Cover Image. My suggestion is to keep it clean and the same throughout your Social Media channels, specially LinkedIn. Why? Because here you are talking to Companies and possible employees not the general crowd. You want your information clear and understandable.

LinkedIn Cover Image – 646×220 pixels

LinkedIn Standard Logo – 100×60 pixels

LinkedIn Square Logo – 50×50 pixels

To make it easier for you, I put together a PSD so you can get an idea of what your LinkedIn Cover on your Company’s page before uploading. You can download the template here.

Let’s get to it! First, you can easily highlight your favorites, All this means, make it appear bigger on the Picture Mosaic. This gives you a much nicer way to showcase your pictures (only pictures, not albums) in a very nice and sharp mosaic. Note that you need to upload a file that is around 600pixels to make it look nice and crisp when you’re highlighting them. If your picture is low quality, your mosaic can suffer. These highlight settings stay on throughout the albums and their respective mosaics.

Second, you can edit the information from the pictures easily. You don’t longer need to go into the picture’s page to modify the location and date where it was taken, as well as download, make it your profile picture or delete all around. One little thing missing, is editing the description or tag someone from there, but I’m guessing it’s a feature that soon will find it’s way.

And last but not least, you can like and comment from within the Picture View. When you click Comment, you will get a small hover window (like the one you get at the homepage when writing on someone’s wall on their birthday).

So there you have it, the new Facebook changes explained in no time! Now, are you thinking about highlighting your best pictures now? I know I am!

• Space 1: Creative Suite, Macromedia Freehand (just on my Snow Leopard station)
• Space 2: Mail and iWork
• Space 3: iTunes and iPhoto
• Space 4: TextWrangler, Transmit and CSS Edit/Espresso.

But, throughout all the spaces, I would always have Finder, Twitterrific, Adium, Skype and Stattoo. This way if I changed spaces I could still have the same windows open from the Finder or my current chat with a client active without a glitch. I’m telling you, saves some time! Fast Forward to 2012. I upgrade my MacBook Pro, so it now runs not Lion but Mountain Lion. I get Mission Control:

I start working my way through the new system. Ok, it takes a bit to get used to. Not only Mission Control, but little things like iCal getting renamed to Calendar and Address Book to Contacts – but I work it… Except that when I’m switching from Space to Space I can’t take Adium, Skype, Stattoo or the Finder with me. Really a bummer really, I am used to do this for years and it does speed things up a bit. I try going to the System Preferences  panel to look for a little light but no luck. Where can I assign Apps to Spaces? I ask myself…

Then, one night where I was working late I found it! It is now a but hidden… If you right click a Dock Icon with more than one “desktop” space available, you get a menu that has (at least) these items: Options, Show All Windows, Hide, Quit. If you click on Options, you can see that there’s an Assign To item. And there it is: All Desktops. Order is restored in the universe!

Facebook

Google+

Twitter

You can download the (zipped) Photoshop Header Image Templates here:

• Facebook PSD Template
• Google+ PSD Template
• Twitter PSD Template

About a little bit of a year ago, I was approached by the lovely ladies from Cassalingo. They not only needed a logo and brand guide, but also business cards and a site. We did a soft launch of the site by mid August 2012, featuring the Blog section of the site, along with About us telling their story and a Contact us section. The site runs on WordPress, and the most important thing, we are linking not only the site but also Pinterest to it. As Cassalingo is a business focused on home style, Pinterest is a perfect way for them to get noticed. They blog on a weekly basis covering different aspects of design: color, important designers, home styling tips and architecture among other things. Every friday they have the Guatemalan corner, where they blog about Guatemala’s style or history – always tying it up with design.

This site is for a chocolate store in Norway that uses Guatemalan cocoa beans that can only be found in northwestern Guatemala. The chocolate can best be described as milky chocolate goodness with a touch cinnamon and cardamom. We worked closely with the client to make the site a mini tour of the store, along with the mood and feel of the town!