As a design agency, we are always at the forefront of what’s new in our industry. Design themes and trends come and go, which is why we challenge ourselves to stay ahead of the curve and conceptualise products and experiences we’d like to see in the market.

We’ve worked on many such projects over the years, which help us learn, grow and develop as an agency. Ultimately these ideas, concepts and knowledge filter through to client work in the form of delightful and surprising experiences for their customers.

So this time we asked ourselves; What if we re-imagined jewellery

We challenged ourselves to create a wearable product that would add a new dimension to an existing market. 

A digital companion that will keep you up to date with customised notifications, all while adapting to your mood and outfit.

Jewellery is worn for many reasons — to feel good, to impress others, for aesthetics, or as a symbol of affection or commitment to loved ones. Aesthetically jewellery portrays many meanings but has very little practical purpose.

Design

We believe the physical jewellery market and the fast-growing smart wearable market are not mutually exclusive, and Bangle would create a platform for traditional and digital aesthetics to come together.

Clean, simple and seamless was the goal of the physical bangle design.

A seamless connection between each end of the flexible OLED screen would allow information, interaction and design to flow around the entire device.

Sizes

There are two different sizes, with each size having a magnetic wrist spacer for a custom fit. Bangle would be equipped with a flexible OLED screen, speaker/mic, wireless charging features, and a display dock. All these components enable it to function as a personal assistant, keeping you up to date with notifications and messages, while ensuring the traditional feeling of putting on a jewellery item remains fulfilled.

Jewellery Notifications

Haptic vibrations, along with interactive jewellery notifications, keep you on target to achieve your daily goals.

Notifications would appear and interact with the displayed jewellery style.

Display

Bangle allows information to be displayed around the entire circumference. You can drag information around the surface or flip your wrist to display data in landscape format.

Keep it personal

A glance lets you check Caller ID’s, scan through notifications, emails and messages. Notification information is displayed on the underside of the wrist for a more ergonomic feel. This viewing position also keeps the visible information more personal.

Visual distinction

Jewellery designs would be tailored to match or reflect apps and functions you use throughout your day.

Distinctive visual feedback allows for greater engagement and personality through the daily tasks that are important to you.

Dynamic Jewellery

Digital Jewellery designs would be available to download so that you’ll always match your mood and outfit.

What we’ve learned

With over 5 million views and counting, along with thousands of requests to purchase Bangle, we’ve learned that there is a huge interest for a crossover device which fuses traditional and digital aesthetics.

The biggest takeaway from the feedback we received was the excitement around being able to customise the device to personal tastes. The ability to adapt and share a users personality through visual design was a key differentiator.

The post How internal design projects help us learn, discover and promote appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

From huge corporations right down to entrepreneurs and freelancers, selling products and services in 2020 has never been more challenging.

There’s a constant pressure to innovate, and the ability to conceive and execute successful product designs is paramount to gaining the upper hand in today’s ultra-competitive marketplace.

Many companies like Apple were borne from a desire to create innovative products. Yet the most significant challenge these brands face as they become more successful is how to refine those products and services further to maintain their market position.

Innovation can put immense pressure on even the smallest of players.

Design Thinking can help to overcome those challenges.

What is Design Thinking?

Far from being an industry buzz word, Design Thinking is simply a structured way of solving problems.

Design Thinking takes a product, service or process and looks at it through a human-centric lens. It seeks to uncover the issues a real user could have with a product, generate ideas to solve those problems, and then test them until a solution is achieved.

Surely Most Companies do This Already?

Design Thinking might have been around since the early 1960s, but it’s still an uncommon concept for many businesses.

Very few companies truly understand how to look at product refinement through the lens of a user. Design thinking, when properly executed, can yield considerable improvements to revenue and crucially, customer satisfaction:

“A recent McKinsey study showed that over a five year period, companies who were most skilled at implementing design principles achieved 32% more revenue and 52% more returns to shareholders than their less-skilled counterparts.”

The Four Phases: Design Thinking in Action 

Discovery

The discovery phase is all about empathy and the uncovering of problems. Companies look at products from a user’s perspective and seek to collect insightful data and widen their knowledge of how customers tick.

Definition

The definition phase is all about diving deep into the data and selecting one or more problems with the product.

This phase of Design Thinking is vital: It’s not about the designer’s idea of how the product should be evolved; it’s about honing it from a user’s point of view.

Once a set of problems are established, it’s time to pick the most important one to solve. Ideally, that should be the problem that’s most important from a customer perspective and also the one that aligns closest to the core beliefs of your business.

Development

The development phase involves dreaming up solutions to the problem that has been uncovered and generating ideas to solve it. Repeated rapid prototyping and refinement is undertaken after a diverse team of thinkers has offered up ideas to solve the problem.

Delivery

After final testing, a plan is devised to roll out the updated product for shipment. Many companies release products internally before launching to the general public. Any issues that arise after internal delivery would see a product returning to stage one.

Utilising Design Thinking in the Real World

Design Thinking has changed the fortunes of every kind of company and organisation imaginable. From huge multinationals, right down to charities and public services, this innovative way of exploring and adapting to challenges is applicable within any niche.

Here are a few ways in which a Design Thinking mindset could improve the way your business operates:

Creating a Roadmap for the Future

Businesses in 2020 need to minimise disruptions. It’s a fast-paced, hyper-competitive world out there, and company leaders need to have a solid product launch (and refinement) roadmap in place if they want to succeed.

Design Thinking’s step-by-step nature makes it perfect for planning for the future. It keeps product design and evolution clear, simple and easy to visualise.

Perfect for today’s fast-changing consumer landscape.

Opening Opportunities

Because Design Thinking looks at problems from a human-centric (user) point of view, it’s often a process that reveals new insights and opportunities within marketplaces that weren’t at first apparent. It’s an effective way to gain a more in-depth knowledge of your niche.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

Design Thinking’s structured approach and focus on finding solutions to user problems means that it can help a company stay ahead of the competition.

In the current market, it isn’t good enough to simply “release a great product”, there has to be a purpose in mind. Your product needs to solve a particular pain point in a way that your competitors don’t.

Design Thinking is the perfect way to uncover what your market needs.

Generate Ideas & Prototype Quickly

Design Thinking allows ideas to flow, and new techniques and iterations to be tested rapidly. That makes it easier to keep product development lean and agile, making your business that bit better at pivoting to stay relevant.

Improved Team Collaboration & innovation

Design Thinking focuses on brainstorming sessions and out-of-the-box thinking. It’s a perfect solution to ineffective meetings and disjointed communication.

Team-based collaboration using Design Thinking processes keeps everyone on the same page and heavily invested in the product being developed or refined.

In addition, Design Thinking is a very powerful tool when it comes to keeping processes both time-efficient and on-budget.

Improved Customer Experience 

Customer experience is at the heart of what makes a brand successful. Every interaction from the products themselves, right down to website user experience plays a vital role in shaping perceptions about your brand.

Design Thinking can be applied to any process that involves a human-centric interaction. It’s not just about the core products themselves.

Better Products & Services

Design Thinking allows for fewer nasty surprises, smoother product launches and less recalls. In addition, your products will benefit from thorough testing and the user-focused development that Design Thinking champions.

Ultimately, better products and services create happier customers, improved credibility and in turn, higher profits.

Why Not Try the Process Yourself?

Companies large and small have been benefitting from the improvements that a Design Thinking approach has brought to their products and services. Maybe your business could reap similar rewards!

The post Using Design Thinking Can Transform Your Business appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

A Design Language for a New Decade

Every few years, a new design trend arises, going on to define the look and feel of that period. Although it’s still early days, a new candidate has recently emerged that may go on to be a staple look for user interface and graphic design as we enter the new decade.

That new design trend is “Neumorphism”.

Neumorphism is a portmanteau of “New Skeuomorphism” and represents a significant shift in the look and feel of everything from website logos to user interface elements.

Neumorphism draws upon the older design principles of Skeuomorphism and blends them with the flatter, material design-based ethos that has been in vogue for the last 7-8 years.

Skeuomorphism: A Brief History.

keuomorphism appeared towards the end of the 1980s, and with help from pioneers like Steve Jobs of Apple, went on to define nearly 20 years of early computer user interface (UI) design.

In a nutshell, Skeuomorphism is a style of design that aims to describe elements of a user interface in terms of their real-life equivalents: The “recycle bin” being the best example, closely followed by an icon of a “floppy disk” to represent saving a file.

This design language became popular because it was a handy way to orient and inform new users in the early days of home computing.
Skeuomorphism lived on until the smartphone era and evolved to encompass the entire look and feel of the user interface, rather than simply elements within it.

Apple’s OS X and early iterations of iOS sported buttons with realistic shiny surfaces and a reading app that featured book-like leather bindings and wooden display shelves.

Enter Flat Design:

Around 2012, UI and graphic design began to change, embracing a more minimalistic, two-dimensional approach with bright, flat colours. Flat design’s popularity blossomed with the release of Windows 8, Apple’s iOS 7, and Google’s Material Design, all of which utilised flat design elements.

These companies had realised that modern users had grown up using computers and no longer required Skeuomorphism’s visual clues to orient themselves to a system’s user interface.

Flat design also lightened the load for mobile devices, because a website’s content could be scaled smoothly for various screen sizes due to the use of simple flat shapes and lack of textures.

The Downside:

Despite massive popularity, the flat design trend is beginning to receive some pushback from designers.

The user experience of interfaces and websites can suffer when three-dimensional effects like shadows are removed, creating “button blindness” within apps and interfaces.

Combine this with a complete lack of texture, and you have a recipe that can prevent less tech-savvy users from successfully negotiating a user interface.

Enter Neumorphism

Neumorphic design is something of a bridge between flat design and earlier Skeuomorphism. It’s a design language that says:

“We like flat design, but we’d like a little of the shading and humanity injected back in”.

That translates to clean modern interfaces, with clickable components featuring dark box- shadows on the bottom and light box-shadows on top. It’s a clever way of making elements appear to push themselves out of the display.

You get your 3D elements back but retain that flat, textureless design.

Only time will tell if this new design trend takes hold. As the new decade unfolds, it certainly seems as though flat design has had its day in the limelight and is due for a much needed revamp.

The post The Rise of Neumorphism: A Design Language for a New Decade appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

This year, things are a little different: It’s the start of a new decade, and there’s an electric feeling in the air. Technologies are beginning to hit the mainstream that would have seemed like science fiction only a few years ago, and the 20s already seem to be developing a unique style all of their own.

Here are just a few trends and changes that are set to influence product design in the early 2020s:

Dark mode

Dark mode is a new trend in 2020 with Android introducing the two types of dark mode named Force Dark Mode and System Dark Mode.

Microsoft jumped in front of Google to the by first releasing their dark mode in its email app, but Google came quickly gained ground and released its dark version mode for Gmail app for Android 10.

Now the big players have presented us with this Dark theme, many designers will choose to use dark mode for their applications or sites, so expect to see more of this tone in the coming year.

Engaging Illustrations and Animation

The emergence of 5G and its higher bandwidth will most likely bring more engaging web designs and user experiences to the fore. One of those is custom animation: 2020 will mark the beginning of a trend for complex, animated objects and illustrations finding their way into logos, websites, apps and products.

Telling Stories 

The new decade will bring a resurgence of storytelling to digital experiences. Beautiful typography will combine with long-form copywriting to enhance brand awareness and capture attention in an age of distraction. UI and UX designers will play an important role in crafting experiences that keep users attention focused on the story.

Augmented Reality

With the current buzz around Apple’s foray into augmented reality with their rumoured “Apple Glasses” and Google also taking a renewed interest in AR development, it’s fair to say that 2020 will mark the time when AR finally gained mainstream acceptance.

For UX and UI designers, that means careful thought about how this future technology will impact interfaces, menus and the apps they control.

The Rise of Progressive Web Apps 

2019 saw the release of “Cake” a mobile-first browser, and PWAs or progressive web apps, are bridging the gap between apps and websites. The technology already exists, so for designers and UX developers, it’s a simple matter of staying on top of the latest trends.

Artificial Intelligence

Don’t worry: The rapid arrival of AI isn’t going to put designers out of work any time soon. What this technology will do, however, is bring the power of machine learning to your apps and websites. For UX designers, this will manifest itself in AI algorithms that will handle user onboarding.

That means you’ll have your time freed up from having to make dozens of options screens and interfaces, as many of these processes will become automated.

Asymmetrical Layouts

In 2020, cutting edge website designs will likely begin to mimic modernist art concepts like brutalism. There will be plenty of skewed, asymmetric elements and a ton of white space. It’s a striking look, and it needs careful thought when planning user interfaces and experiences to suit.

Oversized Typography

Carrying over the brutalist theme to typography, 2020 will continue the trend for large, arresting typography in bold typefaces. The idea is that the use of eye-catching large fonts will concentrate a users attention and pique interest.

Neumorphism

Skeuomorphism is the practice of making user interfaces resemble their real-life equivalents. The trend has slowly fallen by the wayside since the advent of flat design but looks set to make a comeback with Neumorphism. A kind of half-way-house of flat design with skeuomorphic, human-centric touches.

We are always keeping an eye on the ever-changing design landscape to help develop the most relevant design solutions for our clients.

It’s an exciting time for both our designers and clients, with a whole raft of new technologies shaping the look and feel of user interfaces and product experiences.

The post The changing scene for UX and UI Design in 2020 appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

When a company decides they need a new brand image, they usually mean that they’d like a new logo, icon or even a change of name. 

But here’s the thing: A successful brand isn’t a shiny new logo or colour scheme, even if it does involve a large budget and multiple focus groups to implement. 

Nope. Creating a successful brand is all about perception. It’s about how your customers (and potential customers) feel about your company. It’s about how you tick and how you operate within your niche. 

In short, successful branding is not to be confused with design. It’s about the ethos you adopt every time you do business. 

1. Your Brand Image is Tied to Your Strategy 

A successful strategy goes a long way toward building your brand image. Here are a few things that a successful strategy is not: 

• Harvesting as many Facebook “likes” as possible

 • Periodically Tweeting about new products or offers 

• Writing the occasional blog post 

If you do those things properly, you might extend your reach, but you won’t change your brand image. Successful brands are driven by a “call to action” and a desire to make great changes to their worlds. 

Look at some of the best and most iconic brands: Apple, Tesla and even IKEA. They’re all driven to be the best and to shape the world around them fundamentally. 

You need to figure out who you are and why you do the things you do. Work that out and convey it to the public, and you’ll sharpen your brand image no end. 

2. Your Brand is How You Treat Your Customers 

Your customers will remember every interaction they’ve ever had with your company, and it will fundamentally alter their perception of you. That’s a powerful piece of branding and can turn even your biggest doubters into super fans if your customer service is on point. 

Everything about your business falls under the banner of “how you treat your customers”. It’s not just about customer service either: If your website is hard to navigate and low on information, then you’re mistreating a potential brand ambassador. 

3. Your Brand is in Your Written Words 

A powerful message can’t make up for a lousy product or service, but pairing excellent copy with amazing products is a surefire way to take your brand to the next level. 

Avoid industry jargon, walls of impenetrable text and stale, outdated prose. 

If a company is witnessing sluggish sales, poor copywriting is almost always the number one reason. The well-written text could almost be seen as part of the design process itself, especially when it comes to a company’s website. 

There’s one obvious caveat here: 

Amazing copywriting, paired with a substandard product or service, isn’t going to do your brand any favours at all. If there’s a disconnect between what was advertised and the product a customer receives, then guess what? 

There goes your brand image. 

4. Your Brand is in Everything That Your Customers Interact With 

So you’ve realised by now that your website is part of your brand. What you might not have considered is that everything else that a customer interacts with is part of your brand as well. 

Smaller businesses especially, need to think about those little details that make a big difference: 

Can you imagine walking into an Apple store and seeing a member of staff eating lunch behind the desk? How about a handwritten sign taped to the door that says “closed, short staffed”. 

Anything with poor optics can impact your brand, and anything that messes with functionality or user experience will kill your image. 

5. Your Brand is Your Staff 

A good team requires dedication, perseverance and lots of training. They also need a positive environment to work in, and a strong work ethic that stems from a love of what they do. 

Get all that right, and your brand will skyrocket. Get it wrong, and no amount of uniform tweaks or style guide designs will fix your flagging sales. 

Now You Have a Brand; You Need a New Logo! 

Ultimately, your brand is about passion, an obsessive drive to deliver excellence, and a caring attitude towards your customers and staff. 

Your brand is about slick products and services, an awesome online experience, and fans that rave about their customer journeys. 

Get all that right, and you might just need a new logo to reflect how much your company has improved! 

The post Your Logo Isnt Your Brand appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

It’s 2020—the beginning of a new decade. We don’t yet know what visual and stylistic changes the 20s will bring, but when it comes to graphic and UX design, there are already a few trends beginning to emerge.

Here are the top ten visual themes that are starting to evolve into a definitive look for the new decade:

Cyberpunk is Hot Right Now

2020 will be the year that Cyberpunk hits the big time. This mixture of Bladerunner-esque futuristic urbanism and trashy 1980s neon colour emerged from internet culture and is now set to make it into mainstream visual design.

Dystopian Visions

Dystopian themed visuals differ from the Cyberpunk style in several ways: They are bleak, often with muted colours and harsh typography and feature disturbing visuals that represent a world that has gone awry.

It’s mostly a theme for print and media design, but UX designers should take note of the growing trend towards dark futurism nevertheless.

Graffiti Art Throwback

Graffiti colour schemes and edgy, anarchistic designs will be all the rage in the 2020s. This art form has seen several reboots over the last few decades, but feels “right” for this decade: A time of social upheaval, protest and activism.

Paper Collages

2020 will be the year of the cut-out collage. From advertising posters to photographs, the theme will be choppy, cut-and-paste visuals that juxtapose different elements and colours that don’t always belong together. Not so much of a trend for UX and website creators, but designers of traditional print media will enjoy working in this unique style.

Hand Written Fonts

As we enter the new decade, it’s becoming apparent that in the process of becoming more connected and globalised, we’ve lost a little local intimacy.

Retro Logos & Typefaces

You’d be right in thinking that this visual trend has been around a while. For 2020, designers will take the style further, even including medieval and art-deco themes in their logos and typefaces, in yet another visual style that harks back to simpler times.

2020 will continue to see a preference for small scale, artisanal products and services. Handwritten fonts are part of that trend, conveying an authentic, one-off feel and a caring small-town vibe.

The Return of Bevelled Edges

Bevelled edging fell from grace once designers became enamoured with flat design. The problem with flat design is it’s often tricky to distinguish interactive elements (like buttons) from their backgrounds.

Bevelling solves this issue, without having to return to the days of faux-wood interfaces and big shiny red buttons.

Data Visualisation

With the fast-evolving rise of flexible screens, we’ll start to see new and exciting ways to display data for a host of applications and products.

Data that changes form depending on how a device is formed or transformed will be an exciting challenge for us designers.

Exciting Times Ahead… 

2020 looks set to be an exciting time for visual design, with a whole host of new looks that capture the mood of our hyper-connected planet and the sweeping technological changes that we’re all starting to witness.

The post The 2020 Visual Trends That Will Define a New Decade appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

There’s no doubt that the technology has made huge leaps and bounds over the last few years, and has moved from an expensive and niche pursuit to a mainstream accessible device.

With the advent of Google Cardboard, that delightfully old school solution for turning a smartphone into a virtual reality headset, immersive technology looks like it might just be on the tipping point of mainstream adoption.

With Apple and Facebook also joining the augmented and virtual reality party, and Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram surpassing over 2 billion combined users, it does seem like all the ingredients are in place for AR and VR to hit the big time.

So how will this evolving technology begin to impact the way we create UX/UI design solutions? Will the latest advances in VR and AR alter the ways users interact with apps and services?

Virtual spaces and interactive experiences completely change the traditional process of designing in a flat, two-dimensional world.
Here’s how we are adapting our mindset when developing design solutions for this rapidly evolving new medium:

Virtual Reality is a Journey 

The most important aspect of creating immersive and user-friendly VR simulations is to concentrate on the “journey” that guides the user through the experience.

That journey, and the steps within it, will help a user to understand the placement and design of the various UX elements spread throughout the VR environment. Some can be automated, and others will need careful thought about how the user will interact with them.

Think Storytelling & Experiences

VR is a challenging platform for designers to conceptualise. It’s a far cry from merely creating a usable interface. Good VR and AR design rely heavily on psychology and intimate knowledge of real-world environments.

To this end, UX designers should focus their attention on the art of storytelling. Great storytelling allows designers to paint realistic pictures that draw from real-world experience. It’s a vital part of making VR worlds less complicated to conceive, in a medium where visuals need to mesh with sound, light and even physics.

Virtual Reality isn’t Just Visual

VR experiences can seem “thin” and unrealistic if they only rely on visual cues.

Humans use a massive spectrum of sensual and contextual data to interact with the world, including speech, sound, light and shadow.
Add all that together, and the word that springs to mind is “ambience”. Successful VR interactions need to be realistic but also grounded in the right emotion and subtext. It’s important to design a complete style guide for the journey you’re trying to create.

Colour Alters Mood and Emotion

Colour selection is a vital element of the design process. For VR, that importance is amplified exponentially.

Colour affects reaction times, emotional responses and even cultural context. Unexpected or jarring colour palettes can create negative or disjointed experiences for the user.
Shining a Light on UX

Digital depiction of ambient lighting has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Designers will need to leverage the use of space, distance and perception in their VR environments and clever use of lighting is the primary way of achieving that.

VR Design Needs a Realistic Field of View

Designers working with virtual Reality will need to craft experiences that are both gradual and seamless. Human senses (and minds) are fairly poor at leaving one “scene” behind and quickly immersing themselves into the next.

Designers will need to be sympathetic to these issues and design smooth transitions within their VR journeys. An understanding of timing and flow are key to achieving a sense of immersion.
In addition, without a realistic field of view, depth of field and perspective, users can be overwhelmed with information and even experience motion sickness during rapid head and eye movement.

Understanding User Behaviour is Key
If you’re trying to design interfaces that seamlessly blend into the VR experience, then it’s imperative to understand user behaviour.
Knowing where to add visual cues is a vital part of creating realistic VR journeys. It’s essential to understand exactly how the typical human goes about uncovering new experiences, and exactly how a typical user is likely to move their head, arms and even adjusts their height as they progress.

Incorporate Design Thinking

Thinking ahead about what a user wants from a VR experience is key to creating a memorable product. It’s essential to use all the analytical tools at your disposal to tweak and hone your designs until they are seamless.

Virtual Reality, by its very nature, is a multi-faceted and often multi-outcome journey. It’s vital to understand how your users make decisions and form preferences within the artificial world you’ve created, and then adjust your designs accordingly to suit their needs.

Reality is an Illusion

Taping into the psychology of dreams and consciousness will give a designer a considerable advantage when creating VR experiences.

Virtual worlds are playgrounds where time and space can lose all meaning. It’s one thing to create a realistic environment that mimics Reality; it’s quite another to create a completely novel experience that melds time and space into a completely alien environment.

In Conclusion… 

Virtual Reality looks set to explode in popularity over the coming decade. It’s a fast-paced and rapidly changing medium with a steep learning curve, and designers need to experiment with new technologies and strategies if they want to stay at the top of their game.

The post The New Challenges for UX Design in a Virtual and Augmented Reality Landscape appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.

It’s an overwhelming experience at times, encompassing a vast and sprawling site filled with so much to do, you’ll never cram everything into your first trip. 

If you want to make the most of your time at SXSW, and squeeze in as many events, parties and secret shows as possible, then you’re going to need a plan. 

We can’t make up the perfect itinerary, but we can warn you about the usual mistakes newbies make during their first South by Southwest experience. 

Here are ten pieces of advice you should take heed of: 

Don’t Overdress 

SXSW might be a place that hipsters flock towards, but before you cram a bunch of crazy outfits into your luggage, have a think about what your days are going to look like: There will be a lot of waiting in line and even more trudging around. Wear sensible shoes and never, ever cart a heavy backpack around with you. 

Don’t Underdress Either

March in Texas can be unpredictable. It might well be hot and humid, but it could also pour with rain. Pack a travel umbrella and a decent raincoat. You’re also going to want to take along a light jacket, as the evenings can still be on the cool side. Finally, make sure you purchase a decent sunscreen before you arrive at the festival. 

Make a Proper Itinerary 

You might think all the cool kids wing it and throw themselves into the party spirit, but in reality, it’s always best to have a rough itinerary of things you don’t want to miss. 

SXSW is a fairly spread out festival, and you don’t want to spend your entire time trudging between one long queue and another. 

Showlist Austin is a fantastic resource for free parties and RSVP events, or you can follow @rsvpster on Twitter for news on newly announced shows. 

If you’re looking for freebies, the cleverly named @FreeShitGuide has updates on open bars and free street food. If you’re worried about queue lengths, the #SXLines usually gives an accurate idea of wait times. 

Don’t Pay For Your Food! 

Speaking of free stuff, don’t be the newbie that pays for food. It’s entirely possible (with a bit of planning and inside knowledge) to eat all of your meals at the festival for free! 

Don’t Wait in Line at Franklin Barbecue 

Many newcomers to SXSW will wait for literally hours outside this world-renowned BBQ joint. It’s the best in town, but with all that free food elsewhere, and Micklethwait just down the road, is it worth the long queues? 

Leave the Car Behind 

Whatever you do, don’t hire a car. Austin will be gridlocked, and there are loads of rideshare options to choose from. If you’re planning on travelling lots of miles each day, it’s cheaper and faster to use a bicycle, of which there are dozens of options downtown. 

Be Careful Where You Drink Alcohol 

Avoid driving or riding anything if you’ve had alcohol. Austin has severe penalties for driving under the influence. It’s also extremely important to remember that downtown Austin isn’t a place where you can openly carry around alcoholic drinks, even though you might be swept up in that festival vibe. 

Don’t Just do Big Film Events 

SXSW has hundreds of unique shows to keep you entertained. You don’t need to queue in line for hours and hours to get into the main venues. If you must stand in line for an hour or two, plan on choosing a couple of highlight shows, then break out into town to catch some of the more obscure acts. 

Make Sure You Take a Breather 

SXSW is a long festival. If you’re in Austin for the first time, don’t be afraid of missing out on some of the acts and shows to get a bit of relaxation time further outside the city. 

Austin has some beautiful scenery and hiking trails if you need to escape to somewhere greener and more peaceful. 

Prepare for Airport Delays 

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is quite small and very close to Downtown. That means that with such a large event happening nearby, it can quickly get overwhelmed. Security lines will be long, delays will be inevitable, and airport shuttle buses will be packed. 

The post The 10 Biggest Mistakes Newbies Make at SXSW appeared first on Square Circle’s blog.