Hi! This is A Minute Of Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps. Now, this week I wanna
talk about "The Importance of App Design".
Okay, a few years ago when I started doing apps, one of the biggest problems
I had was finding a really good designer. I mean, it was a...we had a designer with
the Indian company I was with, and he did a really good job with Ear Spy. It was based
on my specs. I kinda' put everything together, now that logo was designed by me, in fact,
the Overpass logo is designed by me. And I always thought it was good because I think,
you know, I'm more of a developer but I consider myself to be a pretty good designer, like a lot of developers do.
And that supposed to be a bridge, by the way, most people don't realize that, It's like the bridge
is going over you. So anyway, when we started doing games, one of the biggest problems
we've had was design. In fact, when we first did...our first games were the Mandarin
Bubble Bath, and all the Language Bubble Bath games, and we had a designer who just went online
and found a..like images that were like open source, and we use this one image on like every single
app, for like the background, and it was horrible and we use the same icon for everything,
and it was so tough 'cause you couldn't do...'cause when you don't have a good designer, you can't
do anything. I mean technically, everything is possible, like I can draw a flow chart
and say how everything is possible, without design you've got nothing. So, and the first big
app that we did, the first big game was Agent X which is an Algebra game, and we got a designer
named Francisco Maldonero I think, in Spain. I found him through Odesk. And he did all this
comic book art which is really really good, however when it came time to actually doing,
he couldn't do like animated sprites, so we went to somebody else to do the animated sprites,
and the first, I've spent maybe I think it was $200 on the first...there's like running man sprite
in the game, and the first designer I went with, who said he knew everything about it, came back with
something that look horrible. I mean I don't think he has ever done a sprite before, right?. So it was more like instead of Agent X
running, it's a sort of like limping along. So anyway, I just had to cap my losses there.
I mean I still pay them, because he spent the time on it. It was more on me
for not seeing how incompetent he was, or not demanding to see work upfront.
But, so we found somebody else who did a passable job, and it took him like 3 weeks,
which is an incredible long amount of time. So basically, our team now has a full-time
designer, in fact, at one point we had 3 full-time designers, but right now we have...we have one.
We have Sandee Chica who's been working with me for 2 years. She does a great job. So everything,
If you look at the Overpass website, everything is done by her, and the reason
I bring this up is because when I look at the app store, I see a lot of apps are very
functional, right?. They're very technically very good, but design is something that is...well I say
is lacking. The hard bit for me with design is just knowing...it's such a subjective thing,
like when I'm working with the client, I can go through and I can map out every process that
their app should do, but when it comes to actual design, and what types of fonts to use,
what kinds of colors to use, and that's for like business apps, but for games it's how
cute should the alien be, how dangerous should the bad guys look and all this kind of stuff,
It's very subjective and it takes a whole another skill set that I just don't have.
It's sort of like, you know, you're giving very vague term, and I come back saying "How
about this? How about this?" and it's very very iterative. So the design is something
that we...when we found a good designer, and when we do find good designers, we try to
keep them as long as we can, even if we don't have anything in the immediate right now to
do, we keep them on because, you know it's such a hard thing, I mean when I go to Odesk
and hire a designer, it's such a mixed bag, you know, people have said to me "Aren't you afraid
that if you have a full-time designer you won't have enough for them to do?" and I think
well that's kind of the fun part is finding stuffs for them to do. So, design...Design is very
important and I don't give enough credit to Sandee and our other designers for all the
work that they've done. So this week, she's been working on a sort of putting together
a catalog of...all of our, well some of our designs. We started a website here called
Overpass Design. So we market all of our stuffs towards apps, you know we're app developers.
We do apps for clients, but most of our revenue comes from our own apps. However, you know,
we have really good designers. Now, let's see what happens if we just put out a website for
Overpass Design. So here you can see a...I'm just looking at the website here, you can
see really nice logo, you know that actually does look like a bridge unlike mine. Some
of our designs work for some of the apps here, you know, Algebra, Study Cards, Ear Spy, Arang
The Ghost, some stuff that we've never...that we've done but never actually published. We've
got so much graphics that we haven't even publish yet in terms of games, and some different
things here. So if you have a second, go ahead and look at it and let me know what you think.
And here's the "Meet the Team". Next week, I'll talk a little bit more about the team, because
I don't give them enough credit as a worth, if you watch the videos you might think that
this is just a one-man operation, and for a long time it was, but it's the kind of thing
we can't do everything about myself, so we do have a good team in place. So that's it
for this week. I hope you've enjoyed it. Again, a very vague theme which is "Design is important".
but you know, your icon...if there's one thing we need to know about ASO and getting
your apps marketed is... You need to have good screen shots. You need to have a good icon,
and a lot of times you need a good designer for that. Now, you could be one of those people
who can do design and code really well, I haven't met many people like that, and I'm
definitely not one of those people, so again a big thanks to Sandee and the other designers
we've hired over the years, and that's it! I'll talk to you next week.
Hey! I really hope you liked that video. Now, I do this once a week so if you wanna
hear more or you wanna hear more about our experiences with the App Store, either Google
Play or iTunes, please go ahead and subscribe to the channel, and please like this video
and leave a comment. I love reading the comments. I love hearing what you have to say, even
if it's just Hello or whatever, and like I say before, if you're not sure what to say
in a comment, like I never know what to say in a comment...I'll make it easier for you.
If you like it, just go ahead and say "Gnarley" which is an 80's term, or if you didn't like
it...just say "Bogus", and if you didn't think anything of it, just say "Eh". So that will
be a big, big, big help. And another thing you could do which I'd really appreciate it.If
you're on the App Store and you wanna try one of our apps, look up some of the Overpass
Apps. Applications either on iTunes or Google Play, and leave a review, and let us know
what you think about it, either good or bad, but, you know, it's a ...we're all trying
to build up in the market so... so that will be a big help. So that's it, I'll talk to
you next week!