Speak on Steem proposal update: Rebranding, Heavy Dark Mode, Search bar and much more

Greetings!

I welcome you today, to this space where we will know everything new in Speak on Steem. Today we bring improvements that will completely change the way you consume video content on Steem, we will take you straight to the future, with a total redesign of our brand and the website, and we will prepare you for the incredible features that are to come.

Speak on Steem has revolutionized the way we create content in Steem, we have opened a world of possibilities to all the communities and projects of the platform to allow the integration of video that communicates in a different and more human way.

Today we are about to make that experience even better, our main focus was to bring an initial version of IPFS to allow the original video content to be possible in the ecosystem, for this, we put all our effort into developing the fundamental elements of the website in record time.

Today, our IPFS node stores more than 50 GB of video uploaded by users. And more than 300 publications a week, already include a video specially created for Steem. The challenges of the future will be to start expanding to external users, and a fundamental part to achieve these goals is appearance.

This report will be divided into two sections, the work done in the graphic design part, and the development work. We are very excited to be able to share today the biggest aesthetic update that Speak on Steem has experienced.

The brand

The success of a brand depends on how recognizable it is in the social collective, the design of an easy-to-replay symbol, with well-defined colors and striking shapes, are aspects to consider when achieving this goal. The redesign of the logo consisted of trying to build a symbol using characteristic elements of the project.

As a first step we collect all the relevant information and develop simple symbols that will be linked to the project, in addition, we compare these elements with graphic elements of competent brands, then the results obtained. We also evaluated certain colors, since the previous palette had little visual weight; the objective was to use a modern and electric color, which made good contrast with dark backgrounds.

Playing a little with the shapes and concepts we developed several simple icons that include the eye of the visitors, sound waves, and the Play triangle. Taking these graphic elements into account, we begin to create different proposals to evaluate their functionality and development of the implicit concept.

Having a fairly defined symbology. The next step was to try to combine them that looked good and above all that it will work in web format, the previous proposals had an interesting concept development, but their functionality on the site was low. The idea of the symbol is to represent the content visualization with the Play button, initially we used the sound waves as part of the symbol, but we realized that this was overloading the design.

After several tests, we developed a much cleaner and more functional symbol, having quite thick and striking elements that work perfectly in the small versions widely used on the web. This was the result:

With this quite acceptable result, we proceeded to create the universe and iconographic of the brand, in order to have different versions that work in different scenarios.

We also develop versions that implement the project name for a perfect logo for reproduction in social media content and printed advertising material.

The logo makes use of the Nunito Sans font, a free-to-use font present in Google Fonts. Correctly defining these rules and colors is essential for the development of a functional and striking design. The next step was to develop a sketch of the user interface to be able to proceed with the development, we used Figma as professional editing software for this work.

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Enhancing Speak on Steem

Dark mode is a feature that has become a trend in recent years. Most platforms and operating systems today offer a dark mode allowing users to choose between a clear interface or an interface where black predominates. This, in addition to the customization it offers, also has multiple benefits such as reducing eye fatigue when spending time looking at the screen, reducing energy consumption, improving the battery life of users' devices and protecting OLED screens from burnt pixels.

At least 49% of the global population prefer dark mode compared to 18% who prefer light mode according to TeamViewer. The trend is clear, that's why we have decided to make the dark theme, the default theme of the users of the platform, however, this can be reversed, in a clear way if the user wishes.

This is how both interfaces are seen, which can be chosen by each user, thus allowing to further customize the experience of using the website. Next we will review in more detail the changes that the entire interface has undergone.

The preview of the publication is essential for other people to decide to enter it and see your content, we focus on redesigning the preview cards to the maximum to prioritize the most important and offer key content that makes more people enter your publication. A modern card inspired by very successful platforms such as YouTube, but empowered with the benefits of Web3.

Always visible rewards, effects before reproduction, reorganization of information, visual and hierarchical order and identifying labels of the type of content were the specific modifications made to the publication cards. A fundamental feature that will help curators is the identifying label of the type of content that will help you distinguish content. IPFS from YouTube, and normal Blogs.

The next things we will talk about will be the upper sector of the site that was improved to adapt to the new design philosophy. The advertising carousel. Now it uses rounded edges and does not occupy the entire screen as it did at the beginning. The Navbar includes the new logo, improvements in the buttons for viewing them, the button to switch the light and dark mode and a search bar that will allow you to find your favorite authors or video content.

For example, if we look for "How to" all the videos will appear, which in their title or body have this combination, which will make finding tutorials and useful content especially easy.

You can also find your favorite users, writing a username that is close to the original username of the person you are looking for, it does not need to be 100% the same, just have certain similarities and you will have results with the matches closest to your search.

We have considerably improved the profile of the users achieving a modern and fairly complete aesthetic, we have improved the navigation menu to make it more striking and less inclusive, we added the cover photo and organized the profile information a little.

With this aesthetic we can compete with modern platforms, based on social content, a network design, quite important that will make the interaction much more friendly and effective.

The communities also followed the same path, implementing the cover photo, relocating the action buttons and highlighting in very striking colors the relevant information of the community, such as subscribers, pending rewards and language.

The video player has also taken considerable improvements that make it easier for viewers to interact with a content. More striking buttons important information available, for IPFS content we have a tool in the upper right corner that allows us to change the GATEWAY if it fails.

Other areas of the website have also been improved, to improve the usability and fluidity of it, spaces, aggregate, elements, modified, site navigation resources have been optimized to follow a uniform and modern design pattern.

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We have enabled the BETA subdomain of the project to upload changes more frequently and test them together with the community, this will also allow us to maintain more direct contact with people interested in the project.

The BETAS will be published here:

• https://beta.speem.watch

In the same way, the main and stable website will be published at the usual web address:

• https://speem.watch

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Here you have it, important changes in the design that will allow us to prepare for the future and will be the vanguard of video content creators who decide to use web 3 as their home. We are very proud of everything we have achieved today and we will continue working for you.

Thank you for joining us today and happy start of the week to everyone.