Work / ScrnShots
ScrnShots is a social community for screenbased designers to share and organize screenshots of inspirational design. The social network was conceived and built by Orange Peel Media.
The Problem
ScrnShots was built because of our desire to share and organize design inspiration with others.
Very early on, graphic designers are taught to keep a folder of inspirational design of which they can draw upon when they are in need of inspiration. Similar to graphic designers, we had been keeping hundreds of screenshots on our computers, but were having issues organizing and sharing them.
The Approach
The idea for ScrnShots was to create a digital inspiration diary focused on screenshots of web and software design that would encourage communication and discussion between designers that are interested in discussing current design ideas and trends.
The Solution
Since ScrnShots is directed at designers, the site design was critical to it's success. Simple and elegant design became paramount, because the purpose of ScrnShots is to show off other designers’ work, and make their work "pop". A dark background and minimal graphic elements were used to bring as much attention to each individual screenshot as possible.
ScrnShots was built using the Ruby on Rails framework and integrates with the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
Orange Peel Media also developed desktop screenshot applications for both Mac OS X and Windows XP, which allow users to upload screenshots to the system with extreme ease.
Since launching on May 6, 2008, ScrnShots has averaged approximately 6,000 pageviews per day, and received reviews from Tech Crunch, Read Write Web, Mashable, WebWorkerDaily and Sitepoint, and has even been featured on the homepage of Delicious.