Enabling Connection and collaboration with musicians
The Lutefish platform creates a community for musicians to connect and explore with the Lutefish Stream, a device that allows them to play together live even when they aren’t together. With the Lutefish Stream you can connect with several musicians to collaborate and jam from up to 500 miles away with the highest-quality 48k audio and ultra-low latency so they can play in-time together.
Along with the Lutefish Stream, their musician-focused community is where one can find and reconnect with bandmates based on interest, genre and ability. They’ve also created features that help support musical pursuits such as posting and finding gigs and other events.
Initially, I was approached by the Lutefish team to create custom icon illustrations that would match their pre-established brand. They needed nearly 100 different individualized icons for all of the instruments and genres they featured on their site. After completing that project, I was asked to assist in creating their user documentation in collaboration with a tech writer. This involved various technical illustrations of the Stream device. Along the way, we also decided to create and introduce a cartoon-ized version of their mascot, Lou the Fish.
While the team had already created a realistic representation of Lou with AI, it was my job to translate that concept into a cartoon that could be easily animated and worked into the User Guides. Once I had an approved illustration, I broke him down into moveable parts so I could quickly and easily change his pose and expression. I also created several other characters that are featured within the guide, representing Lou’s bandmates.
The result was a fun, yet easy to follow instruction guide that allows user’s to understand concepts such as audio latency and how to properly connect all their instruments to the Stream.
Icon Design
My first project for Lutefish was to create a series of custom icons of nearly 100 instruments and genres. The icons needed to be compatible for both very small, and very large applications. Outlined versions of the icons in user profiles indicate which instruments and genres they’re most interested and/or proficient in. Colorized versions are intended for larger posts about musical gigs and events.
Technical Illustration
My first task when creating the User Guide graphics was to create technical illustrations of the Stream to help users orient themselves with the device. We built off these illustrations to also show users how to connect their device to the internet, link it to their Lutefish account, and hook up their desired instruments.
Illustrations were required to be consistent, clean, and accurate to the technology.
Character Illustration
The idea behind the mascot was to create an approachable, older-garage-band-rocker with a chill vibe who just wants to spend time jammin’ with his other fish buddies. We gave him a slightly edgy vibe with a spiky dorsal fin with a nick taken out of it, a pair of orange sneakers, and a typically chilled-out expression like you’d expect from someone who maybe imbibed on a little too much seaweed in their youth. Part of the appeal of the Stream is that you can collab from home, which makes it an especially enticing product to parent’s who can’t leave the kids alone, so we gave Lou a cute little guppy son.
Lou takes users through different troubleshooting scenarios, like what to do if they don’t hear sound, or if they can’t get the Stream to properly connect. Lou adds humor and relatability to the user experience, all while adding a fun element to this and future materials.
