Curator

Many, many improvements and fixes! If you have experienced any issues there is a good chance we have fixed it in this version. Sync, export, import – all better!

We love to hear what you think of Curator and how we can make it even better, please get in touch @Curator or feedback@curator.co
Let us know if you have any feedback, and as always we are grateful for a nice review in the App Store. It really helps!

The week in review

– We are Putting the finishing touches to the upcoming new release that will see Share and Collaboration going live

– More prototyping for a possible desktop version of Curator with a lot of ui/ux considerations. What makes sense when taps become clicks, how will use-cases differ on desktop compared to mobile? A lot to consider and we might reveal some of the considerations along the way

– The “Save to Curator” Safari extension has a new improved workflow

– User research: we spoke to three graphic designers this week. Small, medium and large organisations with their own processes, methodologies and requirements. We also met with a couple of teachers at London design schools (fashion/graphics) to discuss students workflow and how they go about presenting their work, and it’s all feeding into how we develop Curator

– Tap to open the cell then tap on the ‘Note’ button in the lower right corner.

– Tap the ‘Make a note’ field to write your note.
– From here you can also share a cell by tapping the ‘Share’ button at the bottom left of the note, please see below.

Download Trello

Whether you’re managing a team of freelancers, writing an epic screenplay, or just making a list of stuff, Trello makes sure you’re organized and on top of it all.

Why we like it:
• What can you not do with a stack of card you can pile however you like (beside moodboards and presentations!)
• We use Trello to keep on track with our day to day support request, weekly planning, as well as our long term objectives

It’s been another busy week in the studio and we are closing in on the next major release. Here’s a quick update on what happened last week:

• The ‘Save to Curator’ Safari Extension is nearing public release after some great feedback. A big ‘Thank You’ to all our beta testers!

• We met with the founder of an international graphic design studio and learned about their internal workflow and how they present ideas to their clients. They shared valuable insights into their need for simple yet powerful tools.

• Prototyping a ‘Publish’ feature. This would allow Curator users to publish Boards to pages on the Curator website, but ultimately to your own website.

• Investigations into the feasibility of a Desktop version of Curator. We are exploring various workflow alternatives, use cases and technical hurdles to overcome. Will we be able to make Curator work on the Mac?

• Further content reworking and tweaking on the website.

It’s been a busy week in the studio and we are hard at work on the next major release. Here’s a quick update on what we have been up to:

– A new version of the iOS app was released to our beta testers introducing; Sharing and collaboration, Bigger boards, individual Pinterest pin import as well as a number of bug fixes. Want to help us test?
Register to be part of the beta program.

– We also started beta testing our brand new ‘Save to Curator’ Safari Extension. Which makes it a snap to save websites and images to Curator from a computer.

– The blog has been updated with more creative resources, inspirational references and historic app release notes. There’s a lot to check out!

– A number of user interviews gave us some amazing insights into their respective workflows. We met with a design-focused PR agent, a world-renown tattoo-artist/art-director and an award winning international architect, quite a mix!

– This idea got us to improve our user research and support funnels in Trello.

Open a board and tap on an empty cell, tap the ‘Text’ icon and you are able to write a text note.

If you want to make a note related to an image or a website you have added to Curator you can do so directly on the cell, please see How do I add a note to an image or web cell?.

Back in October we invited Loris&Livia to our Creative Process talks at the V&A—along with other creative practitioners.They told the story of Tipsy glass, how they evolved the hunch of an idea into a product, marketed and sold worldwide.

Loris Jacquard mentioned on the night: “TIPSY started as a small local project at Bar Alto in London and is now sold worldwide. But what makes us really proud is that although we are now talking of mass production, we managed to stick to our original concept which was to make each glass truly unique.”

The original Picardie tumbler, made in France by Duralex.

Their presentation focused on how through countless experiments they managed to find their own unique production process and keep total control over it.

Tipsy, by Loris&Livia

Last week, Loris&Livia produced their 10,000th glass!

On this occasion Loris&Livia were interviewed by design magazine Disegno for their pre-Milan Design Week issue along with Viktor and Rolf, Jasper Morrison and Jonathan Olivares. The article goes into the Tipsy details and anecdotes; it is an inspiring read for anyone interested in small batch, designer-led production.

The original first edition of Tipsy, commissioned by Bar Alto

Interview and article in Disegno issue 8.
Loris&Livia website; you can buy Tipsy from here and here.

Last week, Jerome spent the week at the design university ALBA in Beirut with the 1st year Master in Interaction Design and Art Direction, working on narratives, mood board, story telling and photography. It was a direct hands-on exchange based on Curator and Jerome’s past experience in helping creatives and brands tell their story online…

The week long workshop was based on short intense sessions lasting 10 to 45 minutes. The aim was to introduce the students to techniques and methodologies, exploring their limits with an extreme emphasis on audience empathy.
Topics included:

– Brain-storming and brain-writing: How to kickstart the creative process, finding a topic and analyse it.Working on concise definitions of ideas—expressing visual concepts verbally

– Mood boarding: collecting images, classifying and organising according to various criteria (aesthetic, meaning)

– Picture research: how & where. Exploring the internet and the not so obvious places to find images that will help the creative process. Selecting sources and the right images to help convey the message. Exploring the offline: library, second hand bookshops, found pictures, etc.

– Brief-writing: including a series of sessions where the students had to write a brief for their picture researchers when directing a project (film, photography, branding/identity, etc.)

– Editing: building up a narrative, assembling a story from diverse images, selecting and refining choices

– Presenting: voice intonation, body language, context of the presentation

While Curator is enabling a modern, mobile way to collect, organise and present visual stories, the idea behind the workshop was a back-to-basics approach. We decided to have the students use the Mac’s Finder to organise and present their work. It was interesting to strictly limit the tools available to produce the presentations and gave us all a lot of insights on how to work better with simple tools. It also highlighted possible new directions for Curator to integrate the traditional workflow on desktop and laptop computers.

Big thanks to the Alba University for their invitation and their kind welcome—we had a great week working with interesting students with bright ideas a great dedication.

• Added Evernote and Google Drive as import sources
• Improved sync
• Fixed an issue which affected users updating from 1.5
• PDF export at high resolution now handles text cells correctly

We love to hear what you think of Curator and how we can make it even better, please get in touch @Curator or feedback@curator.co