Working with FreakedOut was a great experience, made better by the circularity of the project: We'd initially suggested the idea and functionality of Joomailer several years ago. They ran with it and created a fantastic tool that integrated with Campaign Monitor, another email marketing platform.
FreakedOut were recently approached by MailChimp to create a version of the plugin for their platform. One of the requirements was a sexy interface, so FreakedOut got in touch with us.
The brief was simple: make it like Joomla 2.0. Make it seem like what Joomla's admin interface should be. An OS X interface compared to Windows 95.
We think we succeeded!
Our central tenet was to simply evolve the existing Joomla admin screens. We've always had problems with some of the aesthetics of the admin section and some of the usability - but our brief only allowed us so much room to fix these things.
We created an admin interface that contained more whitespace and subtler table stylings than is seen in the existing Joomla interface. We also started introducing contextually appropriate buttons to certain elements that aren't typically present on admin screens.
Further, we developed a look for data presentation which ensures relevant data stands out on the admin panel.
Here's a quick gallery of our work on the Joomailer interface:
{yoogallery src=[/images/stories/blogs/joomailer/] width=[100] height=[100]}
We were thrilled to work on this project and even more thrilled with the outcome.
If you're running a Joomla site and need to engage with your clients, this is the plugin to have.