hi there, hope you had a pleasant opportunity on this new-year holidays to rethink your goals, forget business, renew your point of views and redefine yourself to focus on what you believe in.

on this newsletter i'll try to bring up our goals for the first semester, but to prevent mistakes, let's first welcome music:

worthy to be proud posters designed by our member erich brechbühl inaugurates our new category dedicated to music venues – a new little door to gather new waves of inspiration.

not to brag though, but to be the most honored to showcase such fine designs which properly express music and develops im Schtei's identity since 1997 in a synthetic, low budget and solid concept.

like me, if you don't contend with those images you'll end up finding that all the first 100 posters are gathered in a book on sale at guzuu and if you are eager to get your itchy fingers on it and have no clue how to read in german (like me again) fell free to contact erich in person: erich@mixer.ch

probably the greatest request is to reopen to new inclusions again. it has being closed for more than 6 months already and we are all eager for new stuff, so i plan to reopen by the end of this month even if i can't finish the missing view modes on the profile pages and will sure struggle my best to find time to dedicate to them.

as mentioned the first goal regarding development is definitely finish the missing view modes on the profile pages, then i'll look into fine tuning the actual features to get our website as performant and pleasant to use as possible. there is already a list of 20+ items i need to look into which range from ffffound and dropular integration to memory management.

tip: to keep track of the major changes right click anywhere on the website and choose the version number (quick link).

with the structural updates done the road will be open to new features. the most important and massive one is the dashboard – a panel that overlays the website (similar to mac os x dashboard) full of widgets and features like poster of the day, newly added, flickr pool, references to other websites, etc.

another very important goal, following the dashboard, is to develop a content managent system for the members to manage their content themselves. these updates are made manually right now and are preventing instant updates as well as taking out some freedom of our members.

i am facing this as a milestone for our project as it will also enable new directories to be created much quicker, thus giving me the opportunity to invite even more designers to join us.

as you know i work alone on this project and i have to keep doing freelance work for money, so i struggle every day to find time for it, although, as soon as i finish a project i'm working in right now (link) which i expect to happen in mid february, i will take a 2-month break and focus on typo/graphic posters as it is an absolute passion of mine.

this is a base time frame:
. profile view modes - jan/february
. structural updates & fine tunings - march
. dashboard - march
. cms - june

so, what's next?

these are the steps i'll seek to accomplish in the future:
. iphone app
. widgets (for public implementation of poster of the day or a given designer, etc)
. interviews with designers and poster's making of (probably set up a blog for this)
. exhibition coverages
. promotion of contests
. print support for our members
. poster sale

but above all, content solidification – the basis of our existence is being a source for studies, inspiration and promotion of good design, and that will always be priority.

that's it for now, those are the base plans for typo/graphic posters. thank you very much for your patience on this transition and appreciation for our project. hope you are enjoying so far!

andré felipe