Karen Cheng

I’m going to try something different in this post. Up until now I’ve kept anything personal out of this blog, cause it’s meant to be more of a “professional” blog. You know, to keep people at arm’s length. My friend Amy recently pointed me a short article which says: when you have the choice between doing the scary thing or the safe thing, always do the scary thing. That’s how you grow as a person.

So here I go.

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520 or 90 is an app that helps Seattle drivers decide whether to take the 520 or 90 bridge by calculating time and cost. The first screen you see is simple. When we tested it, people knew how to use it. Looking at it, it seems pretty obvious that it should be designed this way, right?

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Back in 4th grade, I remember the teacher made us do a class exercise to write New Years resolutions. The kid next to me had written down a few, and turned to ask me how many I’d written. As I was furiously scribbling, I smugly announced: 27.

I guess I’ve always been pretty competitive. Sometimes it means I completely miss the point of what I’m doing. I doubt I followed through with any of the resolutions that year – if I did, it was probably by accident.

So how do we fare as adults? What percentage of people would you guess actually stick with their resolutions all the way through the year?

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520 or 90 is a mobile app that tells you which Seattle bridge to take based on time and cost. The 520 or 90 team formed last month at Startup Weekend, and we’ve been hard at work since. The app is launching soon (and I’m not allowed to say when just yet).

Before seeing the final logo, have a peek behind three logo concepts for 520 or 90:

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Startup Weekend is an event where a bunch of tech and entrepreneurial types create a startup from scratch in 54 hours. It goes like this:

Friday night: A bunch of people pitch ideas for startups. People self-select into groups to work on the best ideas.
Saturday and Sunday: Code, design, argue, eat pizza, stress out, write business plans, code more…
Sunday night: Demo what you built and explain how your startup will make money

Last weekend I went to Startup Weekend Seattle and joined the team 520or90.com.

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Seattle Games Cooperative is a group of game developers that meet once a week to discuss game design. Alex, one of the organizers, recently hired me to design their logo. This is the final design:

I’ve always found it interesting how ideas and designs came to be, so I’ll walk you through how I created this logo.

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In a moment of impulsiveness I decided to blow away everything in my old website and start again.