35 comments

  • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

    So proud of my team @nounproject. Can’t wait for you all to try Lingo.

    22 points
  • Philip WeberPhilip Weber, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    “Yay! Another subscription service I can pay $10 a month for!” - No one ever

    Sorry, I had to get my cynicism out.

    I started playing around with Lingo, and it looks like a good tool. The pricing model for teams is significantly more appealing than for individuals. I could see it providing a lot of value to a team of designers at a product company. Maybe even an agency.

    I find myself consistently jealous of the tools that developers build for themselves and use. An open source, version controlled execution of this concept could become a standard way that designers collaboratively organize and share assets. I suspect this model will have niche adoption at best. Our tool set evolves so slowly, because the second someone creates a new idea, they try to turn it into a recurring revenue business.

    18 points
    • Andrew LucasAndrew Lucas, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

      Yeah, all software should be free, I mean it's not like it's hard to make, or that people need to eat. Rather than posting negative comments, why not try building an OS tool and giving back to the community in a positive way?

      15 points
      • Philip WeberPhilip Weber, over 7 years ago

        Another problem that the design community faces is our discourse. Comments are generally extremely supportive and complementary. I clicked on the first thing I found on Dribbble and these were the comments: "wow", "awesome", "very nice". It's nice to want to send positive thoughts to people whose work you enjoy, but we lack much substantive discussions.

        Look at the average Hacker news discussion and you see much deeper analysis. You also see a lot more comments that come off rude or cold.

        Designers are empathetic people, so constructive criticism can be hard to give because we imagine the pain it could cause. I'd personally. prefer to see designers get tougher skins and have much more in depth conversations in online meeting places.

        If designers could build there own OS tools, it would be a very different landscape. However, they wouldn't really be designers anymore (with the exception of some incredibly smart, talented, motivated unicorns that are out there).

        15 points
      • Tony GinesTony Gines, over 7 years ago

        Good software doesn't need to be free, but the subscription model is a little hard to swallow lately.

        6 points
    • joe andersonjoe anderson, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

      I don't get it, the product is free for individuals. Teams can afford to pay for this especially on the company's dime. It's crazy that Sofya and her team even poured years of their lives to provide such an awesome service like the noun project (for free). They've already given a lot to the design community.

      Now imagine if they had more money, how much more they could push the industry forward. As a creator, it's important to remember that real people make the things we use, including this free designer news website. I know it's the norm to not pay for software just like its the norm for designers to not create products people pay for. We need to use our skills to create better business models, sustainable products, and offerings for users, so that creators like Sofya can build even more new ideas.

      If we want our toolset to evolve faster, we need to support the people that are putting themselves out there to bring change. The community constantly talking about a tool and sharing it with others is much more powerful than you think.

      7 points
    • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

      Our CEO wrote a piece about pricing models I think explains our position quite well.

      https://medium.com/@sofyapolyakov/why-users-should-want-to-pay-for-services-they-love-30ddc7d52a95#.lr192s9e4

      0 points
    • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, over 7 years ago

      while it is true that creating a tool like this consumes resources and you can't just live from nothing, I also understand where this is coming from.

      I'd put it differently though. It is not the fact that it is a priced tool, its the fact, that nowadays people rarely make something to purely solve a problem for the community, but instead they think about how they can make more money by milking the designer community.

      I said it several times before, it has become a bit of a cycle. The young designer/developer starts out in the industry, makes some client work or does work for themselves, like making a web project for this gaming guild, after a certain time they get very frustrated because their vision and craft are not appreciated by the people they work with and after all, what we as a community portrait always makes it look like all we make is perfect things, even though that is not the least bit true. So they decide to "make a product", because that is always more motivational in the long term and they get to make decisions by themselves and only have to deal with direct end customer feedback. And oh surprise, because all you hear nowadays is how you need to make something that is authentic to yourself, they interpret it as "you need to make something that you already know about", so they target themselves, designer/developer. And so it goes on.

      The thing is though:

      • no money in it == evolving slowly and kind of crappy at some small points that will start to add up, but its free and it mostly will evolve organically
      • money in == evolving quickly and will be mostly well done, besides the things that it'll miss, those will be added in a patch along the road, but it will be determined by the market and the flow of money and attention.

      As soon as there is money involved, you will need to get it back somehow, unless you work on donations.

      0 points
      • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

        From my experience, our team is extremely passionate about solving problems for our community, which isn’t just designers. We are problem solvers at the root of everything and I hope our work speaks for itself, in Noun Project, our Iconathons, and now with Lingo.

        Lingo has just been born, and through research and design process we will see it evolve to solve our community’s needs first, one of those needs is being reliable and sustainable.

        And if you aren't using any of Lingo’s sync features, you can continue to use it, unlimited, for free. :)

        – Geremy

        1 point
  • Tom WoodTom Wood, over 7 years ago

    The video is fantastic though.

    10 points
  • Thomas Michael SemmlerThomas Michael Semmler, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    I just want to remind everyone, that the tool is not solving the "real" problem, even though it might be great. Every way of organizing your visual assets is adequate, as long as you are consistent with it. And if you don't stick to it, this tool won't help you either.

    4 points
    • Niki YuNiki Yu, over 7 years ago

      Yeah, I agree with you. Any kinds of tool only a external assistance, I still thought all problems boils down to a matter of willpower issue.

      0 points
  • Andreas BrixenAndreas Brixen, over 7 years ago

    I noticed that not all elements behave. I added a rounded square with drop shadow from Sketch to Lingo. When I imported it back onto Sketch it looked like this: Screenshot

    3 points
    • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

      Andreas,

      Thanks for finding this bug. I'll create a ticket for it.

      We've found Sketch to import vector content from the clipboard strangely sometimes, and we’ve been sending bug reports as we see them and working with them to make integration as seamless as possible. :)

      Thanks again!

      – Geremy

      2 points
  • Kris KimKris Kim, over 7 years ago

    This is great. It's already getting in my workflow. Now let's see what's going to happen to iconjar..

    2 points
  • Nice ShoesNice Shoes, over 7 years ago

    Hmmm, I'll stick with Bridge.

    1 point
  • Martin BetzMartin Betz, over 7 years ago

    I tried Lingo and here is my quick review. Please note that I just use it alone, not with my team:

    PROS

    • one symbol per asset, but multiple file types (png, svg, jpg)
    • nice info and tagging
    • you can easily move assets between groups

    CONS

    • All assets in the app's archive, this locks you into the app as you cannot export your collections or browse them otherwise
    • Mandatory online sync - As a single user who syncs his devices and hence assets with ChronoSync, I see only disadvantages to the app's requirement to log onto Lingoapp online: I share my library with a company and I have no clue what they will do with it

    If you are like me and prefer simple and no-lock-in solutions, Lingo might not be the best choice. For me, the 5 bucks for iSmartPhoto were really worth it as it helps you manage your folder-based assets in a non-obstrusive way - and also has tags and a decent search functionality.

    0 points
  • Bady QbBady Qb, over 7 years ago

    Sounds promising, downloaded it & tried it. Decided to stick with Icon Jar mainly because of the layout that make it easy to organize icons (even though I think this app is not only for organizing icons)

    0 points
  • Todd BenningsTodd Bennings, over 7 years ago

    Cool app. A feature request of mine for Sketch would be to help me to maintain and manage symbols and type styles.

    0 points
  • Jon MyersJon Myers, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    Thanks for sharing. I am a current paying subscriber of the Noun Project local Mac app, which works fairly well for the most part. It's a useful app I'm happy to pay for.

    I downloaded Lingo.

    I went back to the site to try and find some information on how to actually use the application in terms of suggested worksflows and the rationale behind the organization and hierarchy of information in the right panel.

    Didn't see much. Just a lot of feature blather. Search, drag,

    The hide and seek onboarding of digging through the tiles and thus, pop out panels to discover functionality - while the instructions are jammed tightly in there with a lot of distracting tag junk, image icons (jpeg, png, etc.) and control noise all around is very, very frustrating and jolting.

    Organizing assets is not that fun - it's work and a time consuming task.

    You have to immediately get to the point or I think you lose a lot of people.

    This is one of those products that I want, will download - and forget about it - due to confusing onboarding and the perception of the work involved.

    The business proposition of the product in terms of monetization is geared towards sharing and teams. The marketing messaging is mainly focused on individuals. "Your assets" "You"

    The organization of the product itself in terms of "Resources" "Teams" - - - "Groups" feels equally confusing.

    Finally, we mainly use IconJar (lots of manual work like Lingo, so not that much), and Dropbox for organizing assets. The pain of "where" is exaggerated a bit.

    The biggest pain point we have in terms of organizing assets we have is not organizing, images, illustrations or icons. That's fairly straightforward.

    The biggest pain point in asset management is managing the massive amount of UX/ UI elements we have tucked away in Sketch files.

    I want something that can ingest the file and organize the assets in a Sketch file in that visual assets management library.

    Hope that was useful feedback.

    I like TNP team and the work they do. I'd like to see Lingo evolve. This just doesn't feel ready yet.

    0 points
  • Raluca PartenieRaluca Partenie, over 7 years ago

    If anyone from Noun is reading this. Please, a Windows version.

    0 points
  • Joel Cook, over 7 years ago

    Do the files need to live locally on my computer? Currently we save everything on the company's server.

    0 points
    • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

      Hey @joel-cook!

      Lingo keeps a version of each asset you have synced to your mac so you can drag and drop it on or offline. Teams can have lots of kits, and you can toggle the kits you want synced or the kits you want to leave in the cloud at any given time. We plan on improving all of this in the future as Lingo grows.

      I'd love to chat about how your company's workflow can be incorporated. Send me a quick email at geremy@thenounproject.com.

      1 point
      • Ismail JadunIsmail Jadun, over 7 years ago

        Does it watch folders or is it copying files over to Lingo's own folder (as well as uploading them to the web)? I already have my assets organized in folders and don't want to just duplicate them and use up hard drive space.

        0 points
        • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

          Hi Ismail!

          Lingo has a copy of the asset. We are working on ways where you won't necessarily have to store ALL asssets on your drive, but for now it will have to use up some space.

          Storing your visuals in Lingo is also more than just somewhere to keep them. If you have multiple file types ( SVG, PNG, JPG ) of a visual, all you need is one in Lingo. It can generate different file cuts on the fly, effectively saving you drive space.

          If you'd be interested in chatting more about how this process could work for you, send me an email at geremy@thenounproject.com.

          0 points
          • Chris Aalid, over 7 years ago

            Can there be a setting to NOT do that and just watch folders for files and leave the files in place when they are used in Lingo? Pixa, Pixave, Bridge, etc, all have this option.

            I want to use this but I don't want to have huge amounts of duplicate files on my Mac.

            0 points
            • Geremy Mumenthaler, over 7 years ago

              Interesting idea Chris,

              One thing that makes Lingo different from the apps your suggested is the Syncing, which needs specific resource management. We hope to improve this as Lingo evolves so you don't see “duplicate file” sizes.

              I recommend trying Lingo with some of your most repeated content for now ( Logos, Icons, UI Elements ).

              – Geremy

              0 points
              • Chris Aalid, over 7 years ago

                I'd love to pay like $99 for Lingo and use it essentially as a personal Bridge replacement with the Sync features.

                1 point