Siteleaf is Coming
For the next month at Oak, we are redesigning and rebuilding Siteleaf, a product of ours that we've wanted to reapproach for some time. Siteleaf has become an invaluable tool for managing site content for us and our clients.
We write about design and cocktails.
A message from Zeus Gorham Munkist
Hello. I'm Zeus Gorham Munkist. I consider myself an ordinary man. I put my pants on one leg at a time. I like walks on the beach and enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the morning. Let me tell you a story about how my ordinary life changed forever.
Working Not Working wins a Webby award
We are excited to announce Working Not Working has won a Webby, taking home both the Webby and People’s Voice awards in the Professional Services category.
Congrats to Justin and Adam for leading the best network of freelance creatives!
Execute Podcast
Execute is a new podcast by Josh Long and Drew Wilson about people who execute on ideas immediately when inspired rather than following the normal rules.
We were lucky enough to be their first guests in this new series, and chatted about the making of our latest product Gazette.
Listen to the episode over on The Industry or download it on iTunes.
Introducing Gazette
I love reading what smart people write. I hate trying to find what smart people have written.
Normally I discover great content through Twitter when someone else makes the discovery and shares a link. Other times I visit some of my go-to smart people’s websites to see if they've written anything new recently. This isn’t the greatest of systems for enjoying web content. Some people’s solutions to this is to subscribe to RSS feeds of their favorite sites. Up until this point they were probably using Google Reader (RIP) in some form, which set the stage for what people think of when they think of RSS readers—a continuous stream of new content, separated by source, with unread counts, favoriting, folders, tagging, etc. Of course countless other services came out that improved upon and evolved this idea, but most of them remained in the same sandbox.
That’s why we created Gazette.
Introducing Blue
Today we are excited to announce the launch of our first iOS app: Blue.
Blue provides 36-hour weather forecasts relevant to your location in a fast and fun interface. Swipe up to see each hour represented in a beautiful, colorful gradient visual: whether you're in Fiji, or simply at work.
The unique hourly colors are generated based on three variables: temperature, humidity, and sunrise/sunset times for your current location. Temperatures are shown in either Fahrenheit or Celsius (controlled by your iOS region settings), and icons provided by Symbolset (a new set soon to be released) help reinforce the weather conditions.
Oakweek Los Angeles
To kick off the new year, team Oak packed up and headed to Los Angeles, trading the concrete jungle for the Hollywood Hills. We explored the unique culture and enjoyed the weather while working on some challenging projects, making for a rewarding and fun week.
A coast to coast flight ended, and with our gear loaded into a rental we pushed into an unseasonably chilly night and the first of many traffic-filled L.A. drives. Upon arrival at our Airbnb house for the week we were given a quick tour and then wasted no time slipping into the hot spa and enjoying a panoramic view of the city at night.
One of our goals for the trip was to experiment with building an iOS app from start to finish in one week. We decided to make an app inspired by a widget we had previously made for ACORN, our internal status board. This process included wireframing, design, branding, testing, building a marketing page, lots of learning, and finally submitting the app to the App Store before hopping on the plane back to New York (more on that soon).
Welcome Sawyer
As we kick off 2013, the team at Oak is excited to welcome front-end developer, designer, and all-around hustler Sawyer Hollenshead to the family.
We first got to know Sawyer last year when he served his RIT internship with us, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have him officially on board.
As a Pennsylvania dairy farm kid growing up, Sawyer has a penchant for exploring the outdoors and an appreciation for the calmness of the solitude (as seen in his inspiring photo blog). He is the mastermind behind Organized Wonder, a creative network where you can share and discover the best talks, documentaries, interviews, short films and various other videos scattered across the web. Previously Sawyer worked at Wander, Mozilla, and Dumbwaiter.
Welcome Sawyer!
SkyFonts Launch
At Oak Studios we love type. As such we were thrilled to design a consumer-facing site for the newly launched SkyFonts service offered by Monotype Imaging, a leading global provider of fonts and related technologies. We collaborated with the team at Monotype to design the site using their existing branding, while their capable programmers handled the development.
The SkyFonts service is a first-of-its-kind, revolutionary font rental system that makes it easier to find the perfect typeface for any context by allowing users to try or rent fully functional fonts. As of today’s launch SkyFonts already provides more than 8,000 fonts through its online platform and associated iPad app.
Movember
This November the team at Oak is taking part in Movember, the annual month-long moustache-growing initiative to raise awareness of men’s health issues.
Throughout the month we (along with our friends at Working Not Working) will be trying our hardest to grow questionable facial hair and raise money to support the Prostate Cancer Foundation, Livestrong, and other Movember programs.
Follow our daily progress and cheer us on by donating to the cause: