Desktop goodness
I forgot to mention it earlier, or link to it, but
I also created a handsome desktop wallpaper for
Kiwi. Feel free to give it a download and dress up
your desktop with our favorite flightless bird.
He’s a great companion while you sit and enjoy
yourself Tweeting with Kiwi!
Download it here
Kiwi design
Say hello to Kiwi
I am really excited to tell you all about our recent work with YourHead Software on their Twitter client, Kiwi. Here’s a quick rundown of what Kiwi is and what makes this little guy so special:
YourHead Software today is proud to announce the release of Kiwi 1.0, a themeable Twitter client for Mac OS X. Kiwi is a full-featured Twitter client that supports multiple accounts, groups, searches and rules/filters. Kiwi also gives users the power to change the look, or theme, to match their desktop.
You can read more about Kiwi on kiwi-app.net.
Design
We worked with Isaiah on developing a polished app icon (above) as well as toolbar icons, user interface, themes and more. It has truly been a unique and exciting project from the get go.
One of the biggest challenges was designing our flightless friend above. I’d never drawn a kiwi, and not living in New Zealand I’ve not seen many of the fuzzy little guys. So I started with a good deal of research...
Everything I researched was absolutely adorable. The kiwi has to be one of the coolest birds I’ve ever seen. So fluffy and cute and that beady little black eye and long beak show so much personality. I hope that that personality shows through in the icon as well.
Themes
I also worked with Isaiah on designing the themes that ship with Kiwi. I designed them from scratch using just HTML and CSS and a whole lot of love. We worked on incorporating all of Webkit’s bells and whistles into each of the themes. Some themes focus on pure usability while others are designed to be fun and different. Myself and Ollie Levy are currently constructing Kiwi Themes, which will be a site where you can download more themes for Kiwi as well as upload and share your own.
In addition to the theme designs I made it my goal to give each theme a personality of its own through a unique icon design for each one. Here’s a few samples:
Check it out
If you’ve not already tried out Kiwi, please give it a go. You’ll really enjoy it. If you’re into theme design, be sure to read through the API documentation and signup for the Kiwi Themes newsletter so you’ll know when we launch and you can upload and share you Kiwi themes with the world!