In 2008, almost every website had a "beta" tag next to its logo in the header and was inspired by the Web 2.0, Flickr-ish design language. If you wanted to prove yourself even further as a real player in the web game, you had to add a "hosted by mt" (Media Temple) badge in your footer.

It was a period of Flash to HTML/CSS transition, and I was a designer and a part of the core team at Saturized Studio. Saturized was the first serious and well-established digital design agency based in Novi Sad, Serbia. Mainly focused on Flash development, Saturized won several recognitions and awards (FWA was one of them) and attracted many international clients.

I have had the opportunity to work on projects for big names and agencies. Google, Toshiba, and 20th Century Fox are some names that reached out to Saturized for cooperation.

In 2008, Facebook had already started dominating the social networking space. MySpace was fading out, Twitter was taking off to the stars, and Last.fm was there to show your favorite bands or discover the ones (a year or two later, Apple tried to steal Last.fm's crown with their Ping social media platform — you remember this one?)

My Saturized colleague and friend Goran had an idea and vision for a new social network platform. Zoran had a strategy, and I was there to put identity, user experience, and interface design together.

The social network was called Historide, which already implies its purpose — to ride through your personal history. The idea behind the platform was to create a safe space, similar to a vault, where you could add significant events from your life. The network would then serve as a time capsule for you to revisit these memories later. Of course, a social media component was present, which allowed you to share your events with others.

The platform encouraged users to create events based on memories, old photos, and diaries from before the Internet and social media.

As I browsed through my project folders and checked Historide's PSD files, I was blown away by how well-structured, defined, and developed this project was. Folder structures, layer organization, naming, UX prototypes made as animated GIFs, sprite PNGs, notes… damn! I have a feeling that would be a project for itself these days.

Tools like Figma and features like components, developer exports, or inspectors did not exist back then. We only had Adobe Photoshop CS3, and that was it!

Macromedia / Adobe Fireworks was an excellent tool for web design. It handled both bitmap and vector design well. Preparing, slicing, and exporting components was easier and faster, but for some (still unknown to me) reason, it never became a "default app" for designing web interfaces.

Adobe introduced a wonderful feature in early Photoshop CS versions known as Layer Comps. This feature is still available in the latest versions and has been a real game-changer at the time. Layer Comps enabled us to have multiple states in the same PSD file, which was incredibly helpful. It allowed me to keep several pages and UI states in a single file. Moreover, I used layer comps as a versioning system to effortlessly navigate through revisions and make desired updates without creating and documenting numerous files.

Nowadays, design tools guide users on how to structure and prepare assets, making it unnecessary to overthink or explore additional options.

However, when we developed our GUI library for Historide, there were no available UX/UI guidelines or some proven and established rules and practices on the Internet. Each studio developed its design methodology.

Looking back at Historide's PSD file containing UI components, I believe we had a good design methodology because even though it is 15-ish years old, it looks and feels similar to today's standards.

Historide was an excellent product, but the reason it never gained popularity is quite evident. When we launched it, the Internet became easily accessible to everyone, and people didn't want to spend their time discussing the past. Instead, they preferred to share their present with others, and Facebook was the platform for that purpose.

Our time-traveling platform was online for a short period without making a significant impact. However, it made us stronger and more experienced as a studio. We tested our strengths and limits this way and proved that we could easily jump into similar projects for our clients in the future.

On a personal level, this project was a design goldmine for me. I learned a lot, and some of those lessons are still present in my workflow today. Additionally, Historide added much value to my personal portfolio, which I launched in 2011, and found its way to an incredible person who reached out to me. That's how I started working with HUGE INC.

…. and that's pretty much it. I would like to add that 2008 was a great — I could say a special year! Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak and Lil Wayne's Carter III were burning hot. "Emo music" slowly started transitioning from distorted guitars into distorted electronic music, later known as Dubstep, and I've put together my first Hackintosh based on Intel Q6600.

I want to tackle one more thing that somehow inspired me to put this story together. And that's Apple's Journal app. That app sneaked into my iPhone. I don't have an idea when and how. I guess one of the iOS updates introduced it. And guess what - I love it.

Journal really knows how to put together important life events for me by combining vital information found on my device. The app will combine a couple of nice photos and videos, including date and time, location, and people, and create a nice title for the post. I can provide more info or notes if I want, but even if I don't add extra details, the post/event still looks great!

This somehow reminded me of Historide, and I can see the Journal app as a one-stop place to explore my life from the past in the best possible way. And since I've used the word -life, somehow, I think there is an opportunity to bring the iLife brand back to life. Imagine merging the journal and the photo app into one — to me, that screams iLife.

Nenad