In the video, I am going to compare Affinity Designer by Serif and Adobe Illustrator from a company that everybody knows—Adobe. All these differences are also the same for products like Affinity Photo compared to Adobe Photoshop. I want to show you some basic differences that make me more creative. The live preview is one of my favourite features in Affinity because I can see what I'm doing during the process. Affinity seems to be faster and smoother, too.

To be fair, I used the same document size (1920x1080) for both softwares with the same objects and the same colours (PANTONE+ CMYK Coated).

So, I am looking forward to the launching of the Serif's Affinity Publisher app, which would be an alternative for Adobe’s InDesign.

Take a look at the technical benefits from Affinity Photo here.

+ADOBE MAKES A MESS

My last experience with Adobe after a while—I love simplicity and I am a perfectionist, so these few lines are about my own continuous frustration and I understand if you disagree or don’t care about this kind of thing.

Unfortunately, we need to use some of the Adobe’s apps sometimes. In my case, it was InDesign. The alternative from Serif—Affinity Publisher is still not here, so I downloaded and installed the Adobe Creative Cloud. I wanted to install just one app I needed and I was really shocked what a mess Adobe’s apps made in my well-organized and clean system, especially, when I compare it with Affinity, where one app is for vector and one for raster – that’s all. Thumbs down, Adobe.

Thank you for reading.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

IDEA

In October 2015, when I saw the first iPhone 7 concepts without any idea and often with a poor visual aspect, I decided to create my own concept based on the realistic hardware components and think about the design and functionality as an unit.

I am a detailist and I dislike these unreal and ultra-futuristic concepts with poor design. They are usually based on the hardware specifications like Android phones. They are all about the number of cores in processors, frequency, memory, megapixels or 4K displays which is totally useless on these small devices when compared to big computer screens that often do not have even half of it.

These people don’t understand Apple’s philosophy of the simplicity because it is not about the difference, it is about the feelings and making things better.

FOCUSING ON FEATURES, NOT ON SPECS

I am focused on feelings, our story behind using this device in every single day. I wanted to reimagine iPhone as a product without loosing the same intuitive user’s experience as we've known. So I came up with a 3D Touch Home button with integrated Touch ID, pressure volume and power buttons or Apple Sim feature. All these features were designed in harmony with the form and components. That was where I started with a deep brainstorming.

The whole natural design process was based on my own imagination, practical functionality and thinking similarly as Apple because that is close to my design language, too. I also used real parameters, materials, components or some real and possible patents that could be used this year.

CAD

I started with 3D modeling using CAD software, which is, for me, as an industrial designer, the best way because I always want to have an accurate models. In this case I used Rhinoceros for the whole modeling.

The first thing I did was unibody construction. The next step was hardware, but first of all, I started with the research about how the hardware works and how its parts look like. I visited the Apple’s website and ifixit.com, where I found a lot of informations that I needed to understand how components work together, where and why they join. For me, a big Apple and technology fan with experience in industrial design, it was not a problem, but it took some time.

I like how the Apple design team makes iPhone thinner and thinner in every new design generation, so I wanted to do that, too. Then I decided to get rid of the 3.5mm Jack. I was really satisfied with that symmetrical look with a smooth speaker and microphone holes that create a sleek texture, but then I needed to develop some earbuds as an alternative to current EarPods, so another brainstorming began. After the unibody construction with all hardware components, the display component was the last one and is even more curved on the edges than it is on actual iPhone 6 or iPhone 6s. Completed 3D model of the iPhone was done in early December.

PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIO TECHNIQUE

The next step was exporting the 3D model into the Maxwell Render Studio—physically correct render engine with a great photorealistic results and helpful features. Before that, I created some basic materials as an aluminum, regular and sapphire glass or plastic. Then I tested it on the exported 3D model and compared the colors and textures with the real Apple products and, at the end, I re-edited it.

When all materials were created, I decided to render animations first, so I prepared a simple scene similar to a real photographic studio, where on the background was one big light for smooth white backdrop.

In Maxwell, I always work with a real- world cameras. In this case, I used a Fujifilm Finepix J150w and J100 with 35mm Focal Lenght and telephoto lens, which I love because it is close to the orthographic view. These two cameras with different Focal Lenght were used for all iPhone renders.

All animations were set up directly in Maxwell Studio and were composed from more than 1300 single images but only 1000 were used for production. By the way, the animations are without any post- production, so they represent the raw power of Maxwell Render. I know that quality is not the best and it would be probably better if I used any render farms or better hardware, but it was not possible. As I wrote before, Maxwell is physically great CPU engine with lot of great features but it is a little bit slower compared to other unbiased renders on the market. This task was carefully set to achieve the best results in a relatively acceptable time. It took about one and a half month overall, I guess.

PREPARATION AND EDITING

While I was waiting for the renders, I draw some 2D elements in Affinity Designer, which is a vector software that has an ability to replace the Illustrator. I was thinking about texts and created something like a concept for web layout that is on my website right now and I also created iOS interface. Another thing I did while waiting was joining rendered images into the video file in Time Lapse Assembler. There were 10 short movies at the end. Later, when all animations were completed, I imported them into the iMovie and found the right music.

I was focused on the static rendering, preparing the scenes, camera angles and post-production.

The post-production was done in Pixelmator, which is an intuitive macOS image editor that offers a solid performance. Thanks to the channels, a great Maxwell feature, the editing of the raw renders was really easy. The channels easily separate the object itself from the background. Then, more or less, post-production was applied on every static render, most often it was a color balance and cutting from the background.

IT WAS ALL ABOUT THE TIME

When I was finally finished with the post-producion, I saw the first rumor on February 2 which said that the anthenas lines would be exactly the same as they were on my concept.

I was really angry and it forced me to create headphones that would be awesome. I was thinking about it before but now it was all about time. I needed to create it as quickly as possible but also complete a web layout for the iPhone. I remember having lunch and sketching some proportions on the paper, it was a quick brainstorming process. When I came home, I immediately started to drawing it in a 3D and rendered it later. For this render I used Sony DSC-W170 camera with 55mm Focal Lenght. The last step was post- production, so I used exactly the same process as I used for the iPhone before.

The webpage layout was designed as an original Apple’s website. It was difficult and I had to think about the smallest details and not forget thing like features description for people with impairment—Touch ID for blind people. I used the same colors and fonts like Apple uses, plus, I put something from my own language, which is similar, as I wrote before. By that I mean some visual elements like icons or illustrations.

OPTIMIZATION WAS IMPORTANT

When all of that was done, I decided to export it in small pieces because the document size reached 42 000x1440 pixels, which is too much, especially if we are talking about a file size on the web. For smooth loading on the website, it was cut to the 12 single images. I started with the smallest and then I gradually increased them. It means that when you open the concept, it should be loaded quicker and while you are exploring it, the content is loading during the scrolling. So this is another detail behind the process which needed to be solved.

ALMOST DONE

When the vector graphic was created and exported, I still needed to do one more thing. The Reveal video needed to be edited and extended with Touch ID animation, which was created as a vector in Affinity Designer and then assembled in iMovie. Next big thing and issue for me was choosing the right song. I tried to use more than 10 different applicable songs that I found on the internet. After a while I finally chose one and adapted the video for it. I also chose some audio effects to highlight motion of the iPhone.

Full concept was online on February 22.

So I spent a lot of time and energy on this concept to make it perfect even in the smallest details. I was extremely concentrated from the beginning and every small thing, included things that are not even visible on the concept, have been carefully created.

Thank you for reading.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

EVERYONE LOSES AIRPODS

Some people on Twitter sharing this idea and most of them probably haven't seen my concept at all. They're just sharing one picture that shows Airpods on the back of Rose gold iPhone.

I was thinking about that before I draw it. I knew that these earbuds are small objects that could be lost and the chance is probably two, maybe three times bigger than it is on the current Earpods but it’s a little price for our comfort and inovation.

How many times you had to disentangle your headphones before you put them into your ears? The problem is that we only stored it in our pockets because we usually don’t have any reason to store it in a package or a case in which they came with. And this is it. This is the problem. This is why these airpods could change the rules. You need to store it in your case because it is also a charger and if you don't, your Airpods would be dead, so you need to put it into the case and case is not an object that can be lost easily. If these headphones were real, the case would protect them and if you think you would lose the case, then you can also lose your existing wired headphones the same way.

ONLY TWO HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE

The first thing you need to understand is how many actions they support which have effect on the battery life. Let’s list them:

1. receiving audio

2. playing audio

3. bluetooth sync between earbuds

4. volume settings

5. stream audio from microphones

6. always active touch controls

7. sync battery status to iPhone

Second thing is how small are these devices. Their dimensions in bounding box are 33.5x17x17 mm. The earbud is similar to the existing Earpods, so you can imagine it, but let’s compare it with some well-known objects.

So these are the reasons why I think this is a realistic result in my design—two hours of battery life while playing/streaming music on medium volume. In any case, I still think it would be an awesome device and the right step to the future.

Thank you for reading.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message.

EARTH, MOON AND MARS

These three wallpapers were specially created for the concept. Now, after the iniciative from fans, you can download it on your iPhone. Even more, I created another two important giants, Pluto and Sun.

All wallpapers are available in parallax versions. The parallax version allows you to set up the wallpapers in Perspective view. Wallpapers were updated for iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max screens.

All wallpapers capture a realistic view of objects in our solar system.

Moon

iPhone SE

iPhone XS

iPhone XS Max

Thank you for reading.

If you are have any trouble with downloading or you have questions, feel free to send me a message.