We took the last year to really engage in our new surroundings and focus on our clients. We learned a lot about ourselves and our future in the past year, and while there have been many ups and downs we are confident that Helium is ready for its next incarnation.

Starting in March, Helium will no longer be a client-based service provider. Instead we will begin the transition into becoming a creative studio. We don’t have all the details completely ironed out yet, but I will be sure to update you guys while we embark on this new journey.

To all of our clients, it has been a pleasure working with you and getting to know you and your businesses. We cannot thank you enough for supporting our venture! Unfortunately, we will no longer be taking on any new clients, and our current clients have the month of February to tie up any loose ends. After that, any work for clients will be decided on a case by case basis (never say never)!

We have some really innovative projects and opportunities in the pipeline, and we can’t wait to release them to the public! We have been hard at work for over a year trying to make this dream of becoming a creative studio into a reality. Look forward to great things in our next chapter as we release new apps and creative projects!

Believe it or not the posters on the site are all real, and like most of Capitol Hill’s advertisements they really catch the eye. Once I saw this really crude looking poster in downtown Seattle and I ripped it off the pole and took it home. Here it is posted on my fridge:

I have no idea who the band is or anything, but the artwork is redunk. And yes that is a hand made Adam Lambert magnet on my fridge.
Check out hilltopshocker.com for a good laugh!

As most of you know, I work full-time outside of Helium as Creative Director of Guppy Media here in Seattle. Guppy went to NY to exhibit at the show, and we even rented our own booth. Outside of Ad:Tech, it was exhilirating to be in New York.

The city is alive with an amazing energy and there is inspiration everywhere. The people of New York’s attitude in general and about hurricane Sandy was incredibly inspiring. They have a pick up and move on attitude that seems to be automatically instilled in them from birth. Even at the show, people worked all night to make sure the show kept moving despite the flooding. People even had signs that read “Our booth was flooded by Sandy..” and other apologies for Sandy-related mayhem.

Although the hurricane left some still-visible evidence of it’s destruction, the show still had to move forward, as did the shopping. Everyone I passed on the street had their own look and personal style and it was really refreshing to see. I feel motivated and reinvigorated after seeing a city with so much drive.

Peep out my Instagram for more photos from my trip which I’m still adding bit by bit!

So many apps came out this year that helps the novice designer create really cool and amazing gif animations on the fly. My favorite of which is called Flixel. There is also GifBoom, and Gifture. These all basically work the same but some are better than others. All of these allow for you to create gifs on the fly using multiple photos, video, and an erasing technique. They rock!

Enjoy some gifs from my collection found on tumblr, google, and other random places!

Joshua and I had a really interesting conversation with Shaun Libman [frontman] about Lady Gaga’s wardrobe malfunction at the 2008 Fame Ball show in Chicago. There was even a beautiful awkward pause. I’m a total fan-girl and it’s sad, but like I said, it was one of the most interesting nights ever. I spoke to Clair England and told her how amazing I thought she was and asked for the band to never break up. At that point I was drunk. She promised that would never happen, as did Luke.

A few weeks later they made the announcement that the band’s last show would be June 16th where it all began, the Vera Project in Seattle, WA. They spoke about how they all needed to pursue other things, and blah blah blah. None of it matters to super-fans like us. I’m terribly sad to see such an epic band die. If only they would have never changed their name from Natalie Portmans Shaved Head. Maybe then they would still be rockin hard core.

I don’t know how to react to seeing each member doing their own thing through out this beautiful city where we all live. What do I do if I see them at a coffee shop, like Joshua did with Dave at the Diva Espresso in Greenwood? Are the fans suppose to just move on with our lives as if their music meant very little? I would hope that the members of Brite Futures never forget the fans, because I know we will never stop listening.

Tori Amos: Night of Hunters – This album grows on you like no album you have ever heard before. Tori takes classic pieces and transforms them into her very own special gem. Each song tells a story of lovers, family, and lost friends. It truly is an epic adventure told through they keys of Amos’s grand piano.

Brite Futures: Dark Past – If its a Monday morning and the five hour energy you took is doing nothing for you, then put on this album and dance in your office chair. Brite Futures is formally known as Natalie Portmans Shaved Head. Although they changed their wicked awesome name and dropped a member of the band, they still have sick poppy beats that will simply drain the negativity out of any day. To me, every song is a hit.

Le Tigre: Live EP – This EP is a pure diamond of a gem. Since Le Tigre went on hiatus in 2005 nothing has been going on with the group. This album has high energy funk riot grrl classics that will really get you going. Every song is a bit different from the original, which kind of helps release some of my Le Tigre cravings. Although its the same songs, it’s so lovely to hear that Le Tigre are still working to put out new things!

Miike Snow: Happy to You [Deluxe edition] – This album is visually stunning. With each song comes a very interesting point of view tied in with crazy stories of divorce, the end of the world, and aliens. Every song is its own entity and can move you with a sense of miraculous inspiration. Nothing compares to this groups uniqueness, and their high quality song writing and production skills.

Grimes : Visions – Speaking of uniqueness, Grimes has crossed uniqueness with quality and demands the opposite. It’s a very big contradiction between what most people would consider great music and bad music. You simply will like the album or you wont, but for some reason I just can stop listening to it. The music video for oblivion is a great starting point if your looking to get into something completely different from what you would typically listen to.

Santigold: Master of my Make Believe – WOW. That’s what this album is. I have been overly obsessed with Santigold, formally Santogold (name change due to legal reasons back in 2008). Every beat, every lyric, and every music video will bring you in and never let you go. There is everything from dance music to sick hip hop beats that will really get your mojo flowing out of control. Although this album just came out in the states, I see a very bright future for Santigold, it’s just a matter of if she wants it.

These albums are all amazing, and while I’m designing your graphics, creating your mobile applications, or even creating your website, I am totally listening to one of these albums most likely. These guys continuously inspire me to think better and inspire others.

The best thing for anyone wanting to make an app isn’t money, its time. Rather than putting a ton of money into an app and forcing your team to push it out, creating rational and reasonable deadlines is number one. We are living in the age of the great race where everyone wants everything yesterday. You can tell which apps were massaged to perfection and which apps were pushed out with money and harsh deadlines.

A great app isn’t made in a month, no matter how many people are breathing down your neck! Finding the time to beta test, design the UI, program to perfection, follow the one hundred and one rules the app store demands you follow, creating the concepts, the graphics, the app store profile, etc. will never be done well with a rushed deadline, and you can expect your app to crash over the weirdest things!

Here are some good examples!

Flixel: Flixel is an iPhone app that really does something quite unique. Flixel is an app that allows a user to create a GIF animation by simply taking a photo of something and erasing the part that you want to move. The bad part is that it’s extremely slow and glitchy. When you try to post to tumblr, your gifs do not move, also having to scratch everything off of your image can be quite tedious, and the app has crashed on me several times. With only 2 and a half stars as its official rating, this is the perfect example of a rushed application. It has a wonderful idea, great concept, and good graphics, but it has so many problems that nobody gave a darn to fix because of self inflicted deadlines. Adding just one more month to their process would have sent this app over the edge, where it should be today.

Spotify: I love Spotify, so it pains me to diss its iPhone application a lot! Please go out and download its services for your Mac or Windows platform. With only five bucks a month for unlimited music, its a great purchase. Unfortunately, the app was obviously released and even updated under a rushed deadline. The app is simple enough. You can create a playlist, search for music, share music, see what your friends are listening to, etc. The bad thing is the crazy amount of bugs that are scattered throughout multiple types of iPhones and various versions. For example, the entire view will shift making everything unclickable. Some people report the app crashing after a few songs play. The music sometimes just stops. The app should be a perfect five star rated app, but because of all of its issues, its rated only three and a half stars in the iTunes App Store. It increased since its last update of only two and a half stars. If they would have just beta tested this app for 2 more weeks, that would have kept their rating up and more people would be using Spotify.

Facebook: Facebook for the iPhone use to be terrible. It would crash all of the time, and its buttons would never work. Pictures would load that were not even the right photo, and sometimes messages were never sent. Today the Facebook application for the iPhone has only a handful of bugs, but these are still due to rushed deadlines. The most annoying bug I have seen on this app is when I have a message. Sometimes the message shows up, and sometimes it only acts like its going to show up. You can’t play videos in the timeline at all. The really strange part about this whole thing is that it doesn’t have an official rating at the moment. There is a very good reason for this and its because everyone thinks this app is horrible. There is a total of 250,760 reviews, yet there isn’t an official rating. Sounds to me like Facebook paid a lot of money to Apple for that to happen when they should have paid their developers to take a little more time and smooth out all of the bugs.

So with the right amount of time, the right amount of money, the right idea, and Helium Design Co, I can guarantee that your app will be more successful than Spotify, Facebook, or Flixl. If your interested in our prices, feel free to contact me robert@heliumdesignco.com.

Maybe its just the fact that I use to work at a Starbucks that really has made me a bias coffee shop goer. I don’t really know, but I am certainly in love with this hole in the wall. Its a little dingy, its a little rough, but its absolutly its own special entity. I don’t even mind the long bus ride to get here. The staff is super cute.

The music is typically streaming off of this indie music radio station in Seattle called KEXP. They play really underground, culture filled music that many people can appreciate. Right now they are playing new music from the Shins, and earlier they were playing Miike Snow!

There is tons of art haniging up, and scattered throughout the shop, of which is super special beacause its obviously created by some of the local artists off the street. Its really amazing. They promot local events around the neighborhood that range from tattoo parties, to burlesque shows, to local art shows. I love it. Its not main stream, and thats something that doesn’t come often.

Bedlam has a really cool open mic night on Tuesdays at 7pm if anyone is interested in checking out the place when something is actually going on, but if your expecting the typical, then don’t come. If I had a choice between taking the easy rout and buying a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks by my house or tracking an hour out of my day to get to Bedlam, I would choose Bedlam. I love it here, and its finally starting to feel more like home.

Go there you squares!

The skins are part of YumSkins which is currently in beta testing. If you don’t have a YumSkins printer, you can still visit our collection and download our designs as wallpapers! Click on the image or the link below to get my skins!

Download my YumSkins here: here.