Kemie Guaida: Honorary member of the BatchBook design team
- Posted May 27th, 2008
- Filed under: User Experience
Here’s Kemie!
When building a screen for BatchBook or batchblue.com, there are a lot of things on my mind—user interface design, user experience, visual design, front-end coding, and more. I’m not afraid to admit when I need a little help. And time and time again, I have found that help from iStockPhoto, the wildly popular user-generated stock imagery web site.
iStockPhoto has an enormous user base that contributes photography, illustration, video, and more, making the media available for a fraction of the cost of larger, established stock companies. The end result is a massive user base purchasing from an equally massive database of superb imagery. Luckily, when I need to turn to iStockPhoto for icons, I don’t need to sift through the seemingly billions of thumbnails. I now visit the portfolio of one designer, Kemie Guaida.
While Kemie is an accomplished web designer/developer, photographer, and illustrator, to me she is our resident icon designer. Every time we launch a new feature or need to make an area of a page “pop” a bit, I turn to Kemie. Her style works perfectly with BatchBook’s and her extensive portfolio means I always find what I’m looking for.
You may recognize her work below (these are the icons we use to represent each main BatchBook feature on batchblue.com):
I am a huge fan of Kemie’s work. And like bands I like to listen to or the baseball players I followed as a kid, I generally like to know more information about people who’s work I greatly admire. So I recently emailed Kemie to find out more about her (and let her know I’ve essentially adopted her as an honorary staff member).
Kemie is originally from Mexico and “lived there until a few years ago, when a Swede kidnapped me and brought me to the far north”. She has been in Sweden for a few years, living the web worker life. She originally dipped into stock imagery and iStockPhoto because expensive stock imagery was not compatible with her or her clients’ budgets. She explains, “So I thought I could borrow my dad’s digital camera, upload some photos, and earn some credits to be used for my projects.”
While iStockPhoto has led to increased exposure and additional client work, she cites the free market research as one of the key benefits to contributing to the site. She explains, “Being able to present your work in a market like [iStockPhoto] has really given me insight on to what customers are looking for in terms of style and subject, which has influenced all my work, in and out of microstock.”
This resonated with me because it reminded me of one of the original cases for corporate blogging. By sharing information with the public and allowing readers to comment, you can garner invaluable insights from your readers about what they are currently looking for, where you should focus your future plans, and how quickly to get there. Kemie is doing the same through creating and sharing gorgeous imagery.
I have always focused on making sure BatchBook lets you complete your tasks as easily and intuitively as possible. Adding Kemie’s work has brought an additional focus—better exposing our company’s personality. We know our users are a fun, bright bunch. I think Kemie’s icons give BatchBook that same feel. 
Thanks, Kemie!
Want a t-shirt with a Kemie-inspired design? Vote for your favorite Kemi icon in the comments and we’ll send you one. (She’s got some more here and sprinkled throughout BatchBook).
