In this series, we’ll look deeper into some of the projects on Behance.net that were especially admired in our community. Martin Oberhäuser is a Hamburg, Germany based information and interface designer. After working with various large agencies and freelancing, Oberhäuser founded the oberhaeuser.info design studio in 2011.  Oberhäuser’s passion for data visualization is apparent in projects that range from encyclopedia infographics to an app that monitors and tracks online mentions.  We spoke with him about his recent project, nextr, an iPhone app that helps users navigate German public transit by providing intuitive, essential information and directions.

What was your inspiration for this project?
My inspiration was initially personally motivated. I use public transportation services in Germany pretty frequently and I was never satisfied with the available transportation guidance apps. I felt like there was a lot of room for improvement, especially for heavy transit users like myself. Most people I know that use these apps are familiar with the public transportation systems in their cities. They only need quick access to some important use cases, for example “when does the next train depart from the station closest to my home?” So I focused on this user group and provided this easy access combined with the ability to drill deeper for more information if necessary.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
I decided to play around with some initial ideas and concepts for a more intuitive app. After a while I came up with a structure based around the current user position on a map and easy access to nearby stations.

I approached my iOS developer Marcus Wermuth with this concept and some initial layouts and asked if he’d be interested in and capable of developing the app. Fortunately, he was excited to work with me on making this concept a reality. Of course, we had other running client projects and had to earn some money, so it took us a while to reach a working prototype, and then a fully functional app.
This project continues to be pretty challenging because we are working with real time data and geolocation. The real challenge, however, was to initially achieve the right amount of simplification—asking “what information is really relevant for the user and what is our main target audience?”

Did anything interesting happen as a result of the success of this project?  (fans contacting you, job opportunities, blogs picking it up, etc).

We used Behance as the main tool to advertise the launch of our app and the reactions have been phenomenal. A few hours after we published the project many blogs were writing about it and it soon became the second best selling app on the German App Store. We are also getting many interview requests from blogs and tech magazines. I can’t say exactly how big the impact of Behance was, but it definitely played a big role.

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In this series, we’ll look deeper into some of the projects on Behance.net that were especially admired in our community. This time, we spoke with Bureau Rabensteiner, an Innsbruck, Austria based graphic design studio. Their designs range from thermo sensitive business cards to branding bakeries. We spoke to them about their recent hotel branding project for the Trofana Alpin.

What was your inspiration for this project?
The Trofana Alpin was the very first hotel in the winter sports resort of Ischgl (a small village in Austria). The hotel is family-owned and builds the foundation of the von der Thannen family history and tradition—a fact that turned this project into something personal and very close to our hearts.

Can you describe your process in creating this project?
The client emphasized their family history and how everything started out with a humble Bed & Breakfast. We were also provided with a number of historical items related to the von der Thannen family history, like an old photo archive. After rethinking the project we came up with a branding concept that referred to the origins of their family business. We redesigned the look and feel of the brand with a focus on the von der Thannen family’s exemplary ability to balance tradition with modern convenience and understated luxury.

Did anything interesting happen as a result of the success of this project? (fans contacting you, job opportunities, blogs picking it up, etc).
Yes, many people have contacted us, for very different reasons, because of our projects on Behance. Some have questions concerning type, papers, photography etc., while some very nice ones simply get in touch to tell us how much they like our work. Ultimately though, it turned out that Behance is a really good platform for receiving serious requests.

We were also lucky to get an immediate feature on Design made in Germany an important German design blog. Also Page Online, one of Germany’s graphic design magazines, featured us within an article. We are really thankful that a lot of other bloggers helped us by sharing our work in recent years. That was more than we could have hoped for.

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