Clean and simple designs are the hardest to design !

It’s awesome sometimes to make a very clean design, because you want something simple to display the product and focus on the product.

How do you do this ?

Well.. the answer is simple and totally unsatisfying: Through a whole lot of work !

Yes, because if you opt for a design like this and want it to actually be a great design, and not something to be laughed at, you have to work on all those little details that may mostly elude you, if you’re used to working with more complex designs, and big roundy things.

You have to do something like Apple.. they put a lot of work in their designs and that’s why they are great !

So, forget about those bulky designs !

You have to put up some real work now and don’t go like “you know.. I don’t think anyone will notice that, I don’t think that is too important..” because you’d be doing it wrong !

Why ?

Because, if you don’t take every single small detail into account, your clean design will Fail. Yes, people may not figure out what is wrong with it, or why it doesn’t appeal to them very much, but at a subconscious level they see the mistakes and get the feeling that it isn’t right, something’s missing, something doesn’t really work there, etc.

So, if you’re ever facing a simple, clean design, make sure you add more time on your schedule to finish it. 

Oh, yes.. and this is from experience… you’ll see on the new version of cif2.net and remember: It’s your own way of saying iExist ! 

The fastest thing on the web !

Bravo ! You guessed it right, it’s cif2.net .

You know why ?

Because, for example, working on Red Tweets was the fastest, coolest experience ever ! 😀 Really, trust me. I was the Lead Webdesigner of a well known company for a whole year, so I know what I’m saying ! Making websites has never been more fun.

I talked to April ( @socialapril ) and Peter (@peter_at_rbr ) and we managed to finish the final details of the Red Tweets – Twitter Directory, the first twitter directory that chats and plays music. I helped them “move their stuff” from blogspot to cif2.net and the thing is: I was amazed !

Really, I’ve finished moving the old redtweets to cif2.net in about 6 hours, with all it had there and I’ve also remade some of the Graphics. Can you imagine that ?

I’m telling you.. if you want speed, CIf2.net is the key… and it also looks really good 😀

Cif2 is all about Innovation and it seems this time it even surprised me !

I’m definitely making it my way of saying iExist ! 

Cif2.net was very hard to design

And it still is. I’m working on cif2.net’s front page today… I think it reached the 11th version already and I usually finish a website’s design in 3 versions.

This is crazy, but I really want to find that stable version that we will love 😀 Now I understand Deviant Art.. they also change their interfaces a lot. I hope that won’t be the case for cif2.net, because I don’t like the idea.

Of course, we will change the theme of the website, but the layout will have to remain intact. We will have many events and celebrations so we’ll need to have a great layout on which we can easily add and remove themes.

It’s going to always look fresh, which is a good thing. Now the problem is to figure out how to make it work with all sorts of different themes, because colors are very pretentious.

Wish me luck 😀 

Cif2.net teams up with April Todds and Red Tweets

Red Tweets

Woo-hoo ! It’s on, baby ! Cif2.net teams up with April Todds ( @socialapril ) and her project, Red Tweets, to deliver you the first Twitter Directory that chats and plays music !

Oh, yes ! This is the spoiler we’re giving you today.

The project has been in the works for some time, we’re 3 people that will update content on it and we’re looking for one more, who I want to recruit for the initiative 😀

I’m looking forward to this project and I really believe in it and it’s potential 😉

See you soon, everyone ! 😀

Florin Muresan
The CBO
www.cif2.net 

We’ve had our Happy Cif2 Halloween

Well, I guess you’ve seen the Halloween theme, Free Ghosting or Free Hosting ? that we’ve had here.

I was expecting more accounts to be made, but didn’t push the issue further, since it’s still in Beta and there are still changes that we have to make before any Launch of the Official version of cif2.net

The event was interesting, people said they liked the theme and the Tagline: Free Ghosting or Free Hosting ? is the new trick or treat ! 😀 still, accounts weren’t made, so it’s not that much of good news.

I always believe that you have to try things, to actually try many things, if you wanna get somewhere. If you fail, if you make a mistake, or it doesn’t really go as planned, that’s great ! What ? Yeah, that’s great ! Because now you have something to learn from. Living in disappointment is a waste of time, energy and potential, eventually of life. You’ve made your mistake, learn from it and move on.

Not everything you do will reach it’s target, so if it doesn’t : learn from it, try to make it AWESOME next time, or leave it be.

Anyway.. it’s important that April Todds made her account on cif2.net and aaa… I’ll announce something in about one hour about it 🙂 See you soon !

I’m the CBO, cif !

And I’m also a Founder of CIF2.net which is just awesome 😀

We’ve had a meeting yesterday and have discussed all the ideas we’ve put up in the last 5 to 7 days ! I wasn’t as active online as I used to be, because I was down in my mind’s lab and I’ve come up with a lot of creative ideas for branding, marketing and direction for the Cif2.net brand.

The other Founders, Teodora and Calin Vingan (the CEO) have also made their awesome contributions and I almost didn’t sleep all night, thinking about these.

Now comes the tricky part.. We have to start putting all these ideas into practice and get CIf2.net out there to the whole wide world. Yes, we’re doing that. For starters, besides the International version, there will be a CIf2 in France, in Austria and in Romania.

And there are more things to come.

All in all, I am the CBO, and I’ve never felt happier regarding my profession and the direction my life takes ! 

The world just became a bigger place 😀 

Branding – Taking the brand from your mind to the other minds around you

Ohoo… what’s this all about ?

It’s about managing to explain all of your creative ideas to the others. Do you think it’s easy ?

Well, I find it to be one of the hardest things to do. The whole idea you’re having for your product might be so great for you and for the people in your head, but for the people in the real world you have to do some serious work to make them understand what’s going on in your head.

Stop thinking from your perspective !

Creating a brand in your mind won’t help at all ! You have to unleash it, you have to bring it into the real world. Put all those ideas on paper and see for yourself that suddenly, they don’t seem like too much if you were to just read them, without knowing all those premises from your mind.

Well, well …

The best thing to do is to start writting down your ideas, as concentrated as they are. Then, simply start “breaking” them into smaller pieces. Divide et Impera. You will do this in a Top-Bottom way and it will help you sort out most of the ideas you have and reach out to the details. As you may know, details are very important.

You may not like what you get. If that happens, do some other things that day, then go somewhere inspiring (like Italy :P), listen to Opera, or read a creative book. Then the next day get to work, all coffee in your hand and start writting again. You can organize the writing as you want on a blank, white piece of paper and even draw on it, *stick-figure*-style .

It might really help organizing your ideas and bringing them to a better form, which the others will understand and love. 

Social Media Tips: Organize for faster results !

It is very important that you update all your social media accounts if you want to do some good Social Media PR-ing and also to increase brand awareness.

But you might find out that you have too many accounts already and logging in and out, following/unfollowing, wrting individual updates and […] Man, it started to sound like too much !

I’ve been in the Social Media field for more then a year now, mostly Twitter and Facebook and doing effective work on them for different businesses. Before this, I used to promote a band on Myspace, but let’s face it, Myspace is dead ! 😛

So big deal I’ve been socializing for so long ! Well, it actually is, because I’ve learned a lot and one of the most important lesson was that if you want to do effective marketing on the Social Media, you need to give it A LOT OF TIME ! Yes, and there is no shorter way here .

You may try all sorts of tricks, all sorts of nothings like Click Here and get a Santa Clause 14 ” Figure with Jennifer Aniston in a sexy dress, but come on ! That’s old.. there’s marketing 2.0 AND marketing 3.0 nowadays and foolish tricks won’t work anymore.

What to do then ?

Well, it’s not the End of the World or anything. It’s just that you’ll have to dedicate a lot of time to Social Media. And it gets better. If you organize your stuff a little, you can make much better and much more effective marketing, losing less time.

That’s true !

Come back on Monday and I’ll tell you of some free Top Apps to help you in your Social Media crusade 😀

See you then !