Getwear has launched. It’s an online designer jeans store, a new site made in the bureau art directed by me.

Select from a wide range of models or make jeans according to your taste in the Constuctor. Add embroidery, distress, draw flowers with a pumice, – or merely choose another style of back pockets. Buy the jeans for yourself, then put them on sale in the store. The best jeans get the most votes and end up on the front page, other visitors buy them and you get a cut of money.

The best feature is Custom fit. It’s like having a personal tailor, except that you take the measurements yourself. The site helps you though: it guides you with instructions, pictures and videos. Then you add your special requests and order the jeans. Getwear will change your jeans free of change if they don’t fit perfectly.

Also, we’ve designed the shopping cart right: you specify the delivery address right there and you see the real total below. Not some mythical “subtotal” value that will change after they add delivery later, as they do in other online stores. The real total, straight in the cart.

Try it here: getwear.com.

This was an incredible project. The task was great, the client relationship was great. We’ve used all the best work principles and we’ve followed the plan rigorously, even if it meant sacrificing some of the ideas. And we are content with the result. I sincerely wish Getwear all the best.

The project is another illustration of how pictures aren’t everything. Even after every possible screen have been done in Photoshop, after every possible page has been marked up in HTMLs, we had had meetings several times a week and had exchanged mail like crazy. There were a lot of questions and decisions. The design questions and design decisions.

The time after everything has been almost done and when everything is almost ready for a launch is the time when most of these decisions are made. It’s the time when you want the designers to be there. The clients who end their relationships with designers and think of design as “finished” before this crazy time are making a big mistake.

The words “SOPA” and “PIPA” make any Russian speaker smile.

“SOPA” sounds like an euphemism for жопа (zhopa) which means “ass”. The word not only names an actual part of the body, but also describes a really bad situation. E. g. “we are in жопа” means we are screwed, we are doomed, we are toast. Or “this UI is жопа” means the UI is a mess where it’s impossible to figure things out.

“PIPA” brings up associations with a diminutive for “penis”. The word “пипка” (pipka), which used to mean a pipe for smoking (and has actually derived from it), now means just about anything small that sticks up. A mum can use it to call her 1-year-old boy’s penis. But it would be odd. And “PIPA” is technically a big pipka. This makes no sense, and that’s funny.

And even if you ignore the possible meaning, both words sound plain stupid. You can’t call laws like this and hope they will pass.

Today Apple has reinvented education. I’ve missed the event. Slipped off my mind. What could be interesting about an education event? iPad discounts for students?..

Oleg Andreev is right:

Today’s Apple announcement is just one more achievement of the human civilization, in addition to iPad, Android, Windows XP, World Wide Web, printing press and alphabet.

Now I want to go back to school. Everything they’ve shown today is just so cool. There’s always no time to watch iTunes U, and now it gets 100 times better. It’s unfair! And I’m scared that Apple does everything. Where are the others? Where is a single competitor? Wake up already.

After I’ve seen a missed call on the list, iPhone removes the red badge off the Phone App icon. But I don’t always have time to return a call at that exact moment. And later I simply forget to. So I end up not returning some of my calls, and people probably think I’m a bad person. We all mark mail as unread, I’d like the same for calls. But it could be odd. Especially if you could mark a call as “missed” when in fact it wasn’t. Or if it was a call you initiated.

In any case, there must be a way to “postpone” a call. Whenever you see someone calling or you’ve missed a call, just press “Remind in an hour”, and in an hour the phone asks “So, do you want to call John back?” It must be integrated with Reminders for syncing and location support. “Remind me to call back in the evening when I’m home”. On iPhone 4S this is seemingly solved by Siri. But what should the ordinary people (i.e. users of iPhone 4) do?

Made a new promo mix during the holidays (in Russia we have holidays after the New Year). Listen to it here:

I’ve wanted to make a techno mix for a long time, and finally it’s done. The player is still under construction, but it mostly works fine.