Jigsoar Blog

10 Jan

0

Now you see me, now you don't!

21 Nov

0

A sneak peek at a few delicious default themes

Work on Jigsoar is continuing ahead at full steam, now that Gerwin is back from his little trip to Holland the interface is really starting to come together.

My job at the moment is to design a bunch of default themes for our users to choose from when they start up Jigsoar for the first time, which they can then use as-is with their own content, or hack away at the HTML and CSS to morph them into their own creation!

Our aim is to initially launch with around a dozen beautiful and modern themes, each one vastly different from the last. We're hoping to cover as many bases as possible with the default themes - some will be simple and ripe for customization, while others will be an elegant showcase of what Jigsoar is capable of (which is anything)!

Without further delay, here are a few snippets:

Until next time,

Benjamin Humphrey | Jigsoar Designer

14 Nov

5

Jigsoar icon update

I made some more progress on Jigsoar's interface and element icons today, having got the basic shapes completed for around half of the 48 or so icons that we will have by Jigsoar's launch in February.

The full set will contain multiple sizes: 16px, 24px, 36px, 64px, 128px, 256px, and 512px. You can read more about the icon design goals here.

Here's a little teaser of them at 24 pixels. What do you think?

We're really excited by the progress of Jigsoar's interface design. The icons are a small but important part of the overall feel and user experience of Jigsoar's interface which is modern, simple, usable, but still unique in its own way.

Hopefully the consistency achieved with designing our own set in-house will improve usability considerably, and we can't wait to share the full set when it's ready as a royalty free download for you to use in your own projects.

Cheers,

Benjamin Humphrey | Jigsoar Designer

11 Nov

0

Designing Jigsoar's icons

For Jigsoar, we wanted to make sure no corners were skipped, no details lost, and the entire interface to be extremely consistent and user friendly. Rather than use a free icon set, or buy one, we decided to design our own icons in-house.

The total set will be around 40 icons by the time we're finished. There are 15 or so for the interface itself, and the remainder are large-size icons for each component that a user can add to their site - such as a blog, an image gallery, text area, search field, Facebook widget, or an e-commerce shop.

We wanted icons that were simple yet elegant, versatile, not ambiguous or too attentive, and scale well. To match the interface, the icons are fairly sharp and angular. Here's my first sketch of a few:

As you can see, they're fairly standard. Here's a shot of my first draft set turned digital. Currently they're more pictograms than icons, but once I have all the shapes down, converting them into mono-colour icons with transparency shouldn't be too difficult.

I believe we are planning to release these as a free vector icon set once they're complete and once Jigsoar launches, so stay tuned - you might be able to use them in your own project next year!

Cheers,

Benjamin Humphrey | Jigsoar Designer

11 Nov

1

Welcome to the Jigsoar blog!

Welcome to the official Jigsoar blog, launched today! Here we will be keeping you updated on the progress of Jigsoar's development, showing sneak previews of the software itself, the design of the interface, custom icon design, and more.

First, a little about us. Jigsoar is actually three years old. It's been on the web powering dozens of sites for a while now, and finally the time has come to refine the software and open it up to the public. This blog, and the splash page you see at www.jigsoar.com are both running on Jigosar.

Our small team is made up of four outstanding chaps in their 20s and 30s based in Dunedin, New Zealand. We have two developers, Ben Bishop and Gerwin Van Royen, one designer, Benjamin Humphrey, and the Project Manager Israel Butson. Combined we have vastly different backgrounds: everything from community management and client relationships, to programmers, print designers, and user interface design.

We're extremely excited to finally get to the stage where Jigsoar is ready for mainstream consumption, and from now until February we are going to be extremely busy fixing bugs, refining the interface, and testing the software.

We are confident Jigsoar will be the best in its field, and we're happy you're along for the ride. We'll be running a beta testing program in January, so make sure you sign up at www.jigsoar.com and we'll get back to you around then.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+!

Cheers,

The Jigsoar Team

10 Nov

0

Jigsoar Press Release

Dunedin-based web development company Loop Solutions today announced its Jigsoar web publishing software for launch in February next year, and has opened invitations for beta testers to the public.

The service aims to compete in the global market of website creation and publishing, making it easy for both designers and developers to build their own feature rich websites. Jigsoar also provides managed hosting with unlimited bandwidth and storage space for users.

Jigsoar has been under development for the past three years, and February 2012 will mark the first time the service is available to the public in a finished state.

Interested users can visit the current placeholder website at www.jigsoar.com, which features a countdown timer and a sign up form for the beta invitation.