season 1, episode 10 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guest chris shomo infinity watchfaces in this episode of pow, i interview chris shomo from infinity watchfaces chris was one of the first designers to start selling watch faces on galaxy store and has become a very successful app designer along the way he has inspired many other designers to start creating for samsung with his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise listen download this episode topics covered galaxy watch studio for tizen galaxy themes studio galaxy store galaxy store badges social promotion jibber jab reviews jibber jab reviews live chat iot gadgets samsung galaxy watch facebook group tap reveal galaxy watch3 asset creator lifestyle photos chris shomo sdc17 video presentation transcript note transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript tony morelan 0 02 hey, i'm tony morelan and this is pow! podcast of wisdom from the samsung developer program where we talk about the latest tech, trends and give insight into all of the opportunities available for developers looking to create for samsung on today's show, i interview chris shomo from infinity watch faces chris was one of the first designers to start selling watch faces on the galaxy store and has become one of the most successful along the way he's inspired many other designers to start creating for samsung with his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise in fact, it was a video i saw of chris who inspired me to start designing watch faces, which eventually led me to my gig at samsung so it is an absolute honor to bring him on to the podcast and let me warn you chris, and i'd love to talk and sometimes we go off on a few tangents, talking about how his house was not only featured in an episode of ghost hunters, but was also used in a big time hollywood movie and of course we talk a lot about designing and marketing apps for samsung enjoy tony morelan 0 58 i am super excited to have on the podcast today chris shomo from infinity watch faces so let me first actually start by asking who is chris shomo? chris shomo 1 05 hey, tony, thank you so much for having me on the show who is chris sharma i'm, i'm a lot of things i am a designer, which you know, initially, you know, when someone is a designer, they can be quirky, they can be geeky, sometimes they can be introverted sometimes or they can be outgoing it depends on my mood and the time of day, i can be a little bit of everything so, but you know, i can be the shy person in the room, but you get me talking about something that i'm interested in, and then sometimes you can't get me to shut up so i can absolutely relate to that, that you've pretty much have described my personality definitely, you know, being a fellow designer, and that's why i'm really excited about this podcast is that we can kind of geek out a bit as we're talking design cool so how did you first get your start in graphic design? oh, geez well, i guess it goes all the way back to when i was a little kid my mom always had me doing artistic projects for school actually, i would always find a way to make some sort of artistic project if i could for homework, i would always go to the art route it was a lot more fun and then in high school, i did a project it was a pennant drawing of the shakespeare globe theater and i did it for an english class and i decided to take an art class as an elective and mrs martin, my art teacher in high school, she asked for some examples of my previous work and out of my bookbag, i took out a folded piece of paper and then i just like unfolded it to this, this gigantic poster size of the shakespeare globe theater it was that that artistic drawing i did, and then she said, okay, lesson number one, do not fold up your artwork so, that's how i kind of got started and that drawing was pretty awesome and she kind of excelled me through she put me into the higher level art classes real quick they kind of skipped me a couple classes and i want a lot of awards against other students and some regional awards in the area and then afterwards, i decided to go to art school and my brother discovered the savannah college of art and design down savannah, georgia and yes, so yeah, i attended there wow so for a good while to almost like a van wilder experience but multiple degrees tony morelan 3 33 wonderful again, i could relate to that i definitely took the long route through college so straight out of college, then did you work for a large company? did you start your own your own gig? what did you what was your first step coming out of college? chris shomo 3 46 okay, well, i graduated with my undergrad in computer art with a focus on 3d animation and that was in 2005 and right after the i interviewed for some companies, and i just really did not want to be stuck in a cubicle, just you know, for the jobs that i was offered so i ended up taking a job for a contractor and helping build a house from ground up oh, wow and after that, i decided i was interested in architecture and i put together a portfolio and scad gave me a portfolio scholarship to come back and they paid for the masters and i got my masters in architecture tony morelan 4 21 wow i did not know that chris shomo 4 23 yeah so and of many secrets, i guess, some hidden talents there but i did graduate after the economy crashed, and it was really hard to find a job in architecture so i started a website design company and from there, i just kind of, you know, word of mouth i just kept on gaining clients until eventually i had clients all across the east coast so you went to school in savannah, georgia are you currently in savannah? is that where your offices based out of? yes, savannah is where my heart is i love the city and i'm actually president of the neighborhood association for the neighborhood that i'm in, and it's one of the largest neighborhoods in savannah okay and southern living magazine actually ranked the number one neighborhood to live in in the south as well right before all the craziness this year, we got that nation sure so it is quite interesting because it there's so many local businesses and residential neighborhoods in this neighborhood so just dealing with everything from alcohol licenses and giving our blessing and, you know, zoning issues and, you know, just figuring out what's going on with crosswalks and trash cans and all that kind of stuff you know, it's interesting tony morelan 5 40 so i actually heard a very interesting note about not just the neighborhood but the house that you live in yes, you once told me that it is actually haunted chris shomo 5 50 it is haunted and it's documented on a ghost hunters’ episode i believe it's 2010 home is where the heart is okay yeah, it's all about the current a family that was living there and their experiences with a ghost they say they've seen this ghost this little girl apparently, her name is tony clark and she's been appearing i guess for the past hour well, the previous owner salt or 200 times that's what they said 200 or more times, and ghost hunters did believe that there were dual entities in the house as well think okay, well, monique clark she is the daughter of the guy who built the house back in 1896 and he owned a lumber mill and he inherited this lumber mill from his father when he was 26 years old and he built a house known he was one of his daughters and apparently, she was one of the first women to receive a pacemaker for her heart and that led to her dying somehow i don't know what happened to it but she died when she was in her 50s but supposedly she's coming back is like a 12 year old girl i've never seen i've had some strange things happen in the house door slamming things disappearing from one place appearing in another place not my imagination other people have experienced things too but how she was identified is that the lady across the street had apparently, i recognize the description of the nightgown that she appeared in because she had made that night gown for her when she was young so getting a little cold chills thinking about it right now but it is interesting, but yeah, i don't feel scared in the house i think the house accepts me i have never had to smudge it or whatever you call it or you know, try to clear spirits out of there but it's an interesting story and it's always fun when somebody else experiences something tony morelan 7 46 oh, that is absolutely wild to hear you know, and we'll circle back to the whole aspect of design in this podcast i will note before i'm going to jump ahead just a little bit your designs have a little bit of a quirkiness to it and sometimes i'm seeing, you know, ghosts and aliens and the crazy thing so i think that may be where you're getting some of your inspiration chris shomo 8 08 yeah well, i mean, you live in a dynamic city, it's actually one of the most haunted cities in america sure you know, and it's one of the most wild cities in america too i mean, you have this, this local field, but then, at the same time, you know, it's one of the few places in america where you have an open cup, and, you know, take a drink from one bar to another downtown so it leads to a little bit of craziness but i myself pride myself in being a little crazy, you know, you have to be in this crazy world and i love surprising people with designs to light like one second yeah, you'll have a butterfly that looks realistic landing on your, on your watch and then the next moment, you know, you have some zombies that are appearing with your step, go biohazard z tony morelan 8 57 that's a great one yeah, definitely so we were fortunate actually to come out and visit you at savannah college of art and design where we came in hosted a session with your students, teaching them all about theme designing for phones and watch faces and that connection actually came through you so that was my opportunity to come out to savannah and get to meet you in person what a beautiful city i mean, it really in the campus itself to is pretty unique because from what i understand savannah college of art and design, they're like the number one occupancy of buildings in downtown is that correct? i mean, as far as the campuses is put together, chris shomo 9 32 yeah, it seems like it's every other building and it's really amazing what they've done for savannah they encouraged a lot of businesses to move in as well to cater to the students and they really played a huge role in where savannah is today you know, we get millions and millions of visitors every single year and schools to thank for a lot of that, you know, just the restoration projects and encouraging restoration and then of course, we have a great hit preservation society alone just in savannah being the oldest plant city in america, and in a genius plan to just how it integrates with all the giant oak trees that are in all the squares and people are really jealous of those, those oak trees and, you know, as a person living there, i always try to make sure that i go out and i do what the visitors do, just to remind myself, you know, what a beautiful city it is and then, you know, just going to school in those historic buildings as well it just it helps with the creativity and yeah, the location definitely helps with the whole artistic side of things tony morelan 10 39 yes, and for those who don't know, savannah is actually the city where they filmed the scene of forrest gump on the bench yep, that iconic moment in forrest gump where he's sitting on that bench that was in savannah at one of the squares i actually walked by that to take a look at that for myself just an amazing city chris shomo 11 00 and it's actually known for a lot of movies as well like the lady in the tramp that's on disney plus that was filmed they actually looked at my house to potentially film it there but they said that the lot was too big so they actually filmed it a few blocks down and yeah, and then also, my house is where the movie legend of bagger vance was filmed there's a scene where it's where the little kid lives the caddy and there's a whole scene at the dinner table where they're, they're talking and stuff that's my dining room oh, wow it was one of the houses the few houses around there that had a dining room with a view to the kitchen as well and they needed that for the scene so robert redford picked out the wallpaper it's kind of cool tony morelan 11 47 absolutely crazy yeah oh, wow i knew this podcast would be fun, but i have no idea so let's circle back around and let's talk a little bit about design okay, tell me how you first heard about the sample galaxy watch chris shomo 12 00 okay, well, i'm a tech geek i love any type of mobile tech, especially before the watches came out on i was like a cell phone fanatic like, you know, first we wanted them to get small and now they're getting bigger yes now we need the biggest phone ever, which i absolutely love but i was eyeing smartwatches for a while and finally i was like, okay, i'm getting one at the time i'm like, i couldn't really afford it but you know, i don't care i'm getting one so i went down to the best buy and i got the first gear s to sport i just loved it it was great but there was one thing that bothered me i needed more watch faces i was bored with the watch faces that were available and went on the it was galaxy apps before but now the galaxy store and you know, i even paid like i think it was like five or $10 for a watch face it looked like the coolest one out there then like, alright, how do i make my own? so that's when i just googled and i found it was the galaxy watch designer well, at the time, it was the gear watch designer 1 0 wow and, like, right when it first came out, i mean, i think i might have actually caught it within days of it coming out and i downloaded it, and i just started playing around with it and i never even planned on releasing any of them for anybody else i just, you know, wanted to make some for me and then i'm like, alright, look, i can, i can load some and see if i can make a few dollars let's do it so i think i made like $17 off of two watch faces the first day and then i'm just thinking to myself, like, you know, what if i have like 300 watch faces on there, you know, how much how much can i make her? so i mean, sure enough now gosh, i have about 394 watch faces and themes published wow, that's amazing and how long would you say this has been? oh gosh i started in i think it was february, early february of 2016 okay, so when i started, and you can actually kind of look back at some of my very early designs, and see how the design has improved over time sure the very first one that i did, i just called it gear spin and i didn't really know much about the designer, the software and everything i was just getting into, it didn't really think that i could even put a graphic on, you know, a watch hand and use it other than a watch hand at the time so i even animated a gear using adobe flash exported the frame animations out and threw it in there just to get a gear spinning sure now, i'll just put it on a second hand but i'm thinking coming from a designing standpoint, not a watch standpoint and, and that's something that you that you really have to start doing it start thinking, you know, i'm also a watchmaker in a way exactly, you know, so you got to start thinking, that language and that starts you know, meshing with the creative ideas and then you start, you know, you got to focus on functionality at the same time that you're trying to focus on dynamics and what it looks like, that sort of thing so tony morelan 15 11 that's true and you know, i do a lot of teaching to students just learning how to watch design and the challenges are that they've got this tool that can allow them to just do amazing graphics and amazing animations and then they forget that really, this is a time piece where people need to quickly tell what time it is so even though you can have a lot of fun with your graphics in your animation, you still need to make it where you know on quick notice, you can actually tell what time it is i mean, that's the whole the function of the watch and that's what i love with your designs as well i mean, you've got some amazing, fun, quirky, crazy designs i mean, everything from dogs and butterflies to spooky, eyeballs and reapers so let's talk a little bit about your approach to design and some of the tools you're using you had mentioned adobe flash so we're going back in the day oh gosh, yeah chris shomo 16 03 well, i don't use that anymore but i used to use that all the time tony morelan 16 07 so tell me kind of that your workflow, you know, when you know, from concept, your tools, are you sketching on pencil and paper when you have an idea, or do you just dive right into a software program? chris shomo 16 18 well, i guess this is where professors are going to want to smack me and i should be sketching more than that you know, scat always says, you start with the basics, and you start sketching, and i need to carry around a sketchbook but no, i kind of jump into the software first but in a way, i kind of sketch digitally i'll start with a program like adobe illustrator, just to get the basic shapes done and i'll move them into photoshop, of course, to get the nice effects to get the textures, some of the shadows or to create the shadow layers that you'll export separately later you know, those are our two the main tools of getting i guess, the framework of the of the watch, but of course, i like to do animations, so using a lot of after effects and premiere, and sometimes when i have to maya and all that kind of stuff, and then you know, getting it out to the, the frames, and also being very cautious about file size as well you know, we are dealing essentially with an app, even though it's very focused around design, which i'm very thankful thank you samsung for giving me awesome design software, where i don't have to code everything but, but you do have to remember that, you know, people will get frustrated if you have a, you know, a 50 megabyte watch face, which i mean, i could easily make one that large but it's all about understanding the compression and understanding your tools to make sure that when you deliver that watch face, it's fine, it's dynamic, it has all the effects but it doesn't take forever to install or it doesn't, you know, someone doesn't have an issue with it so understanding the technical side but really understand or design software tony morelan 18 02 that helps, you know, and you had mentioned a little trick that i may have actually learned from you in that where you had said that you know, your first animation was done using flash and bringing those in as animated gifs but you then said, hey, i could have just made this a watch hand and that's one of those tricks that when you realize that watch hands don't actually have to be watch hands it's the watch and feature is basically just a rotating graphic that you can then set its direction that it rotates, you can set the you know, the time that it rotates so again, another tip that came from chris that helped me in my, in my success as a watch face designer and i'm actually going to take this moment to thank you again, because it was your you had mentioned, you started in 2016 i think it was at the developer conference in 2017 that samsung invited you out to actually speak at the event was that correct? yes, that's right so tell me a little bit about that that experience, because it was after that conference, they posted the video online and that's how i first learned about designing for samsung it was finding this video of chris shomo from infinity watch faces speaking at the conference, that then got me excited so tell me a little about that chris shomo 19 20 uh, that moment, the whole experience was awesome at first late, like when you get an email saying, hey, would you like to come to the samsung developers conference? i'm like, what, at first, i'm just kind of like, samsung sees me this is cool you know how to play i'm getting so excited the experience was great meeting the team was wonderful and just, you know, the team itself were, you know, the designers of the software, the galaxy watch designer, and all that they were so embracing of everybody that came it was such a wonderful experience and then also talking with them and understanding, you know, their process and what goes into creating the software that was amazing too but i guess one of the, the most awesome and rewarding parts of this is all the designers led you, to me that have come to me, it's just like, just been like, thank you for giving that presentation because you guys showed me that, you know, anybody can do this and, and, you know, and then if you have some fun and, you know, wonderful designs that people like then then you can really succeed at it as well and i just i love that yeah, that i could influence someone to start a watch face design career there's another one in particular, that is with usa design he started a little bit later he was doing some games for the watch and he was there at the presentation as well and now he's like one of the top sellers it's amazing he jumped into it he founded as a design formula that works really great with the active two, especially when that came out without the bezel at the time, and is doing phenomenal and i just absolutely love to see that and the fact that i might have played a part in pushing him in that direction is just, it's rewarding it's humbling it's, it's cool tony morelan 21 28 yeah, no, that's, that's great it was you know, when i watched that video of your presentation, and you had mentioned, the first thing was that you can create these watch faces without coding you know, i've done a little bit of coding, but my experience is a lot like yours i mean, i had my own freelance design company i did a lot of website designing but when i learned that you could create these watch faces, really without doing any coding so it's just such an extension of photoshop or illustrator in using like after effects with the timeline you can have so much fun doing it you had mentioned earlier little secret again, just like the watch hands rotating how you could actually have buttons that you could tap and reveal things by using a transparent png that didn't have any pixels in it, you use that as sort of like a cover button well, when i learned about that, i then dove into this whole idea of being able to tap certain areas of the watch and have it reveal new things like, you know, if you wanted to show your step counter, you could tap an icon and it would then show the numbers so you could customize the look of the watch face, cleaning it up by not having all the graphics show, but tapping to reveal whatever sort of data you wanted to see your heart rate beats per minute, i mean, all sorts of different elements and it was from you the that i learned about that i then have totally expanded on that creating videos on tap reveal, that are shown on youtube and doing a whole thing around that and i've seen that a lot of people really enjoy, you know, learning about that and that again, came from you in that presentation so thank you a big thank you from the crowd of designers that really appreciate what you've what you've inspired chris shomo 23 09 thanks yeah, i mean, it's fun and that all kind of spawned from figuring out a solution to putting all this information on a watch face, but not making it look too busy and so kind of hiding it and revealing it there, it kind of making use with the tools that are given to you, and how can you make it work to simulate something when you when you don't have all the code underneath it so tony morelan 23 35 that's great so we've talked a lot about watch faces i know you also are doing theme designing so what was that progression? you first were designing for watches and then learn that you could actually do something very similar with theme studio and creating themes for our phone devices chris shomo 23 52 yeah, no, the whole idea is matching your watch face to your theme and having total continuity between the two and for example, the shock theme that one's actually a free one just called shock, you can look it up that's the most downloaded theme that i have and it has a matching much face called shock as well so you just be shocking everybody with the shock but, but yeah, in those i also like to i like to make fun and exciting something that you wouldn't expect from dancing frogs to lightning bolts to oh gosh, and i got so many more that are just about to come out i'm not going to ruin the surprise, but y'all are gonna love them tony morelan 24 34 wonderful i'm looking at your website and the one that jumps out to me is martian bash i know it's a great dancing alien you know, how is that is there been a lot of success behind some of these quirky dancing cuz i've seen like santas dancing and you've got a lot of fun ones chris shomo 24 48 well, yeah, because i want to reward people for taking some steps a lot of these characters that are on there, they change what they're doing based upon step gold percentage so if you want the aliens dance you're going to have to meet your step goal so in the morning, he might, you know, he's standing there, he's waving at you and then as you proceed during the day, he's running one direction and towards you that another direction and then finally, yeah, he's dancing whoo, you just read your step goal one of the points of these watches is for health and to encourage people to, you know, get out of the chair and you know, move around, and so why not make something that's fun and exciting and encourages that at the same time? that's great so even the one called bolt that has lightning bolts that go across it starts as like a tiny little bolt and as you proceed through the day with your step, go, more electricity comes out and i'm getting ready to release another one with a fun little loving alien that does a lot of other stuff to your step goal as well so that should be fun tony morelan 25 45 super excited about that tell me watch face designing and theme designing is this your full-time gig or do you actually still go back and do some of your website designing or anything beyond design? chris shomo 25 55 oh, this is actually full part time gig chris shomo 26 00 between that and website design and i'm also the cto and creative director of the picker joe's brand you probably heard of antique pickers, vintage pickers, they go around and find really cool stuff and bring it to people yes so yeah, there's a store in savannah, georgia called picker joe's antique mall and it's 10,000 square feet 25,000 items that change daily, about 65 antique pickers that go out and find all this stuff we like to say that it's an experience like no other because it really is we have people that come in from different parts of the world, from across the country, and they go, wow, this is the best antique mall experience that i've ever had and we've also been on oh gosh, i don't know how many interviews so far with the same production company that does american pickers and so they are still considering us possibly for that show oh, wow but, but i designed the branding and do all the advertising and we do crazy videos usually filmed with the latest samsung phone as well and if you go to our instagram if you look at our youtube and stuff, you'll see some of the, the wild and insane advertisements that we do all the time and that's one of the things that really sets it apart from other stores i mean, if you ever heard of an antique store that you know for halloween has monsters invading us and appearing everywhere and like all sorts of things, no, probably not but i encourage everybody to check it out and if you're in savannah, you've got to experience it you really did tony morelan 27 31 definitely in i can see in your designs you definitely have a lot of fun humor happening i'm looking at the watch face for joe, joe's, your character of the dog that seems like his tongue is actually bigger, bigger and then his head and wagging more than his tail yep, chris shomo 27 53 yep and i actually have a dog named joe and that's actually what picker joe's is named after do oh, that's great figure so he's a jack russell and he actually looks very similar to joe and he likes all the time he's always happy and always mischievous as well, too so, again, he'll react to your step go, he'll, he'll do some fun stuff at 50% as well so definitely check that out tony morelan 28 18 so, are you doing all this design work yourself? or do you have a team of designers that work with you in producing watch faces and themes? chris shomo 28 25 most of this stuff is just me but i do have a another a friend and fellow colleague that graduated with me, jonathan maillard he's over in denver right now so i do pull him in on tons of different projects we're working on some right now some interesting apps and hopefully in the very near future, some game designs as well oh, that's great that's great yeah, games are a big push for samsung so super excited to hear that you're going to bring your brand over to that side and let's produce some amazing games it's going to be fine do you work out of your house? do you actually have an office space? okay, i have multiple locations that i can work out of i definitely have the house set up and with the cool gaming computer and all that kind of stuff and then we have the office which is actually right above a florist it's really cool you can walk up the stairs and you smell roses love it always say i always get to stop and smell the roses every day and, and then also working out of picker joe's as well in the side office there tony morelan 29 26 so we talk a lot about savannah is that where you were born, or were you born and raised somewhere else? chris shomo 29 33 born and raised in the mountains of virginia and pulaski, virginia? oh, wow yeah so a little town called pulaski it's in the middle of the blue ridge mountains and it's your cool i guess mainstreet hometown recently it's been hit kind of a little hard from the economy my master's thesis in school for architecture was actually called the polanski institute of art design, which was taking the million square feet of the pulaski furniture plant and change it into a design school, which would in turn, hopefully help the economy and encourage businesses to open up to cater to students and yeah, that's pretty much what my master's thesis was first seen on my hometown but then, of course, i moved to savannah in 2000 and i've been there ever since tony morelan 30 29 so let's talk a little bit about marketing i mean, you are definitely one of the most successful designers for samsung tell me some of your tips and tricks when it comes to actually marketing your watch faces in your themes are you using social media? are you doing any additional advertising? what's your what's your approach to marketing? chris shomo 30 49 okay, so first off, i started out with the website, and just really making sure that it crawled on google so i'm always getting some sort of traffic and so either way website at any given moment can get like 200 to 500 hits a day, which, you know, that really helps just get the brand out there tony morelan 31 08 and share the url chris shomo 31 10 oh, it's www infinitywatchfaces com, and also social media, instagram and facebook we used to use google plus a lot it was a big designer community, but of course that's gone but that has shifted over to the facebook groups now and like the facebook group, that ash with iot gadgets, runs, it's one of the largest facebook groups out there and they have great moderation some good people are definitely running it and it's a great place to really show off your designs and spread the word to everybody and it has just a great following so i always recommend you know, get on social media and you just scream out your brand's everybody i actually tony morelan 31 55 interviewed ash iot gadgets on the podcast nice if you haven't listened to that yet, go back a few episodes it was a great, great time he's an excellent interview, great person doing amazing things and yeah, that facebook group is huge it's crazy chris shomo 32 11 yeah, it's crazy it's got to take a lot of time to moderate i'm sure it does but um, oh, and also on youtube we got our favorite watch face reviewer andrew tony morelan 32 22 jibber jab reviews yes and again, that came out of your presentation when you spoke at the conference you'd mentioned jibber jabber, and first thing i did when i became a watch-based designer was track jibber jabber reviews down on youtube and get him to review some of my watch faces i have just done a live chat with andrew, that we published last week great interview, he talks a lot about strategies, not only using youtube, but even beyond youtube for marketing your app so and i know you've got a great relationship with andrew, can i say this? can i share this? you're helping him with a new website that he's launching is that correct? chris shomo 32 59 yeah as the website is in the very beginning stages, it's going to grow over time doing some interesting work on pulling his youtube channel and all over the place and yeah, it's going to be something you're going to want to visit very often cause he's going to have some cool giveaways and a bunch of other stuff so, yeah, andrew is great to work with and it's interesting, because, you know, in the very beginning, he's tracking down watch face designers to do a review, and now everybody's tracking him down, of course, which is wonderful but, um, but yeah, he's done a phenomenal job and he's just, he's very vital to the community i totally agree i mean, andrew is a great guy and a lot of watch face designers owe their success to, to andrew so your watch faces and themes have a lot of animation so i want to ask about instagram a lot of times people just post pictures on instagram are you utilizing videos on instagram? oh, probably more video than anything else and a lot of that video is just taking my galaxy phone and just reading according the watch on my wrist, this is the first thing i want to do actually, as soon as i have a design, like even almost done, it's a work in progress and it's fun sometimes for your customers to see works in progress to see the early stage and, and all the work that goes into it as well and you'll find that you'll get a lot of a lot of following on there, which is great and, and a lot of times customers will, will critique it and you'll end up getting a better design in the very end because they kind of helped with the design process ah, that's awesome i think the first thing i do, of course, is i post on instagram and then the next thing i do is i head on over to that large facebook group and i started announcing there and, you know, i'll do some, you know, some works in progress, like post and that sort of thing you know, making sure that i replace that post as opposed to adding another one with, you know, the final, you know, work and just, you know, keep on updating that that sort of thing because you know, everybody's notified at the end another picture to a post they like so, yeah, just knowing these little tricks with social media and with instagram, knowing how to use your hashtags, it's all about hashtags on instagram, yeah, then you don't have to, to pay essentially, we're on facebook, you know, you might want to, you know, every once in a while, on paid advertise a little bit, sometimes it works but the main thing is being active with those groups, getting people to recognize your brand and getting repeat customers that also want to share your stuff, too tony morelan 35 30 and glad you mentioned the hashtags, we actually posted on our site, which is developer samsung com if you go to the galaxy store page, we actually posted a long list of valuable hashtags that you can use, whether your marketing your watch faces or your themes or apps or games so it's a great place to start to go take a look at some really good hashtags that could work chris shomo 35 52 nice and i just need to give a huge shout out and thank you to everybody with the samsung developers program because like i've also seen that grow over time and the resources available are just amazing and it's so helpful and you guys have yeah, even great every step along the way thank you tony morelan 36 13 yeah, no, you're welcome you're welcome you know, one of the things that we've done to try and help designers like yourself promote their apps is galaxy store badges, which i know that you use so a little bit about your experience with that, and where are you using those galaxy store badges? chris shomo 36 31 well, these badges are great because first they make you look legit they make you look professional, because they know, you know, it's 100% hey, this is available on the galaxy store and also being able to track the clicks and where people are coming from you can you can make a link specifically for a facebook promotion and you know, how many people you know clicked on that to participate in that so how do you know how where to grow unless you know where you stand and that helps you understand this statistics and where people are coming from so it's a valuable resource tony morelan 37 03 what about banner promotions? i love chris shomo 37 06 banner promotions you will see your best downloads during then that when you have one of those and ron is great yes, yeah, he helps guide you along just making sure that the banner looks great definitely everybody needs to take in his comments, everything that he tells you because i mean he, he's saying him for a reason so he will help your sales tony morelan 37 29 my biggest success came from a watch face that i had done that was featured on a banner promotion and it was crazy the amount of downloads and sales that were generated by having that banner promotion so for designers out there, once you've got a collection of strong designs, then you can approach samsung about being featured on a banner there is no cost to the banner, but there are a lot of people requesting it you have to be approved proved to actually have your designs featured on a banner but definitely worthwhile pursuing for sure chris shomo 38 07 and make sure that you have your social presence as well and all your facebook page and instagram page and all that when you submit for the banner because you know it's going to make you a better candidate for one tony morelan 38 18 yes, definitely they actually look at that they want to see previous downloads how much success you've already had so once you've got some experience, it's definitely worthwhile to at that point to reach out and then apply for a band promotion going back to your video, so you do have a lot of animation in your watch faces and your themes and i know you leverage video so talk a bit about youtube are you taking like all of these designs each time and posting them on youtube creating videos to expand your reach? chris shomo 38 44 most of them the main reason to do the video for me on youtube is to really have something dynamic to show on the galaxy store when someone sees that video after they land on your listing it really can be the difference as to whether they're going to buy it or not, and since most of mine offer animations to them, it makes sense to have a video to, to show it off one thing that i, i wish that the galaxy store had was an animated preview, like on like where the icon is, that was really cool because then everybody would be gravitating towards mine and other animated faces instantly but, but yeah, the youtube video is what really makes a difference and there are some watch faces that need to actually go back and make some videos for sometimes you finish the face and then of course, you're like, oh, now i have this whole production i got to make tony morelan 39 35 sure i totally agree with that and let me explain a little bit further about what you were talking about creating the video so that people can see it when they're viewing your galaxy store page so on the galaxy store page for a watch app, you have what are called screenshots and these screenshots show still images of your graphics that you use your marketing graphics however, there's also a way for you to include a little link to a video on youtube so you grab your youtube url, place it into your, your application for the, for this app and the very first screenshot will actually show your youtube video instead of the still image so it's a great way for users like you had mentioned, that want to see the motion, they can actually click on that screenshot, and it will launch the youtube video so it's a great way to market, you know, motion in your graphics so you had mentioned that your top theme is a free download so let's talk a little bit about the approach of offering apps for free because i know a lot of designers utilize the ability to you know, give away their apps and some designers are a little tight with that and they hold on to them and they don't do it where do you stand? i mean, are you using this as a marketing tool? do you just want to like get your brand out there? chris shomo 40 43 well, it started as a marketing tool, because you know, there's also a free section on the store, and if you don't exist on it, then well, it's just another avenue that people are not going to find you so you definitely need to make a free one and a good free one too just don't pick your worst design and be like, oh, i'm just going to make it free no, no, not at all it's not going to do any good so, for example, actually i did a watch face for jibber jabber reviews for andrew and that turned into my top downloading free watch face and that one at one time oh my goodness i think it was downloading like one to 3000 times a day tony morelan 41 22 wow so this is a branded jibber jabber reviews watch face yes so you so i actually remember when he posted his review of that i didn't realize that you were the designer behind that that's awesome yeah, chris shomo 41 35 but my name snuck on there like a little bit, but i wanted that to be mainly about him sure but yeah, not that one still gets downloaded like hundreds of times a day and stuff that very solid one and it gets reviews every single day to love it so having some free faces you can get discovered from people that you would have never discovered you before as well if you can get your watch face up to, you know, a certain section of the free section, which means it has to be good, essentially so, having done this now for several years, i'm sure you could face some challenges will first has been just the challenges of, you know, just growing with the software and understanding what you can do and taking advantage of updates to the software, like when the gyroscope became available and you could use that, oh my gosh, i was so happy when we could do that because that just adds a whole new level of dynamics to the watch faces and so it's really just, you know, learning your tools, but then also encountering that the watch face market has gotten a little bit congested with you know, there's a lot of people, you know, so you definitely have a lot more competition than when i first started out and, you know, i was just thinking the other day, i was like, wow, if i knew what i knew now, right in the very beginning, would i've been designing more sophisticated watch faces and have like a whole monopoly in the market or something like that, you know, you always think back like, oh my gosh, but no, no, i grew at a great rate with the software with the other designers you'll find that a lot of the other designers have become, you know, friends we all talk with each other yeah, we help out each other but yeah, it's a great community it really is tony morelan 43 22 talking about some of your favorite designers and who are the designers that you follow that you're inspired by? chris shomo 43 27 oh gosh, like jeweler broda like oh my gosh bergen of course like, those are great such clean watch faces i love those chris shomo 43 41 md matteo dini oh my gosh, like a little jealous there we'll have to say, but, but yeah, he's, um, the those are just a few of some of the amazing designers out there and a lot of great designers and, and again, the main thing is you know, everybody communicating and kind of working with each other? you feel like you are part of the community regularly tony morelan 44 07 yeah, that's what i've noticed i'm not too long ago actually did a podcast interview with tomas yes check from vienna studios yes yes great person yeah and he's done some amazing designs yeah, he's taken a different approach to watch face descending, where he designs extremely high end, very expensive watch faces that are in the hundreds of dollars and he is one of our top whitespace designers i mean, he has found a way to you know, make amazing revenue off of these high-end watch faces so yeah, i love the community it's been a lot of fun for me to not only be inspired by them when i was a watch face designer, but now being fortunate to be in a position working at samsung, i now get to have these conversations and then help out where i can with some of these you know, the rock stars of the watch facing design community chris shomo 45 04 that's awesome and i promise you that we all appreciate you too thank you so much tony morelan 45 09 thank you tony morelan 45 11 you've used galaxy watch studio for some time now, i'm going to ask you, what sort of features would you like to see added to it? so you'd mentioned about adding animations, maybe as a preview in the galaxy store but what other features would you like to see added to the galaxy watch studio, chris shomo 45 26 probably some little nitpicky things like being able to start and stop an animation with a click of a button that would be great to be able to have an animation react while your mobile for example, if i could have a guy that starts to run while i'm running, that would be cool to sure that would even take that joe watch face to another level, which would be awesome and then maybe in the future, and i think that someone was talking to me about this, but having the ability to do 3d and be able to put like a 3d mesh in there and have real shadows and that sort of thing who knows that that's really thinking into the future, that sort of thing sure and then if we look over to the theme side of things to my main one that i want right now is to have gyroscope action to have parallax effects i think that would add another dynamic to the theme designs tony morelan 46 25 yeah, i love that suggestion chris shomo 46 27 yeah so just, you know, just having like, you know, three to five layers that you could work with that could react with the gyroscope to mess with for like the regular background image people are looking at their phones, i don't even know how many times a day so let's make it like the best, most awesome dynamic experience ever and that would just be great tony morelan 46 48 that's what i mean wishes for that you know, and you were the first designer that i saw that truly leverage the gyroscope on the watch, where i can't remember the name of the watch face you had but as you rotated your wrist because of the gyro functionality these like metallic, big doors just like opened up to then show you know, the like data, you know whether it's the digital clock or heart rate, but it was so cool i could rotate my wrist and have these metal doors on my watch, paste, you know, collapse or open so that's how i first learned about the gyro is from your from your watch face design chris shomo 47 26 yeah, that as soon as they came out with the gyro is just like, oh, how can i use this to do like, tons of different things and i was thinking like a cuckoo clock, you know, when it opens up and that sort of thing so that kind of started at all and trying to think what the first one that i did using that is think it might have been digit glow spark tony morelan 47 45 that sounds right yeah so do you have any tips for designers when publishing on the galaxy store? i mean, we've mentioned a lot about marketing, but when it actually comes to, you know, creating the graphics behind their apps, what sort of tips could you give people and publishing on the galaxy store? chris shomo 48 05 definitely bone up on your photoshop skills, you got to design those thumbnails, don't just throw, you know, watch on a white background with the watch face on it because you really have to grab someone's attention talking from my website design experience, on average, you have about three seconds before someone clicks the back button or continues to read on the website it's kind of the same thing with watch face listing you know that you can have written information, everything, people aren't going to read it they're their visual, they want to look at the thumbnails and it starts with the icon as well make sure that icons looking good tony morelan 48 40 that's great are you familiar with the tool that i created called the asset creator? chris shomo 48 45 yes and i've actually been through it and i've used some of it to create some of my thumbnails and, you know, pulled some stuff out of it and threw some stuff in and that sort of thing so tony morelan 48 54 that's awesome yeah so super excited you know, we just announced galaxy watch three yes and so i spent a bit of time recently updating the asset creator to include all of the new watches for the galaxy watch three i just checked, you can actually go download the new updated version of the asset crater that includes all that that was just published recently so, in addition to that, i also have created what we call lifestyle photo packs, using the same tools within photoshop that allow you to use smart objects to quickly copy paste your design into a watch and have the perspective change and have the blurred change so that it truly just simply photoshopped right onto the watch i am madly working on new photos that show the galaxy watch three i will be publishing those very, very soon so super excited those have been a big success, a lot of help for people because it's not just showing your watch face on the watch just on a simple straight, you know, top down picture we're actually taking the watch and putting it into a scene so whether it is, you know, sitting on water drops, or it's on a slab of granite, or you know, some high-tech texture, these are great pictures to help using your screenshots when you're publishing your app so, look for those new galaxy watch three lifestyle photo packs coming out very, very cool chris shomo 50 22 i'm excited and one thing that's cool about that is it allows the customer to relate to the watch and wearing that watch face more by having photos like that so that that's great you can get your customer to relate to your product, you're golden, an architecture professor actually told me one time that a building or a product, any type of product, it is 10% your ideas and 90% the way you present them so if you can't present it right then your product is not going to mean anything tony morelan 50 55 so what is in the future for infinity watch face design tell me what can we get excited about? what's happening? chris shomo 51 02 oh gosh, what is in the future? we got so many things in the future, we're going to have some games come out, you know, break into the, the other part of the app world still continues with wearables of course, we're going to expand our video production as well working on that and infinity watch faces is going to be getting really involved with local businesses really soon, and helping promote their businesses to other local people and visitors ever since this whole pandemic, things going on local businesses have been hit so hard, we've lost a few in our neighborhood i just don't want to lose any more so i'll be going out and you know, just really doing what i can to tony morelan 51 49 help that's wonderful yeah, these are definitely challenging times you know, it's been a while now that we've all kind of been in this sort of lockdown and we've realized the effects that this has really had on our economy, it's also been an opportunity for us to try and find new ways to, you know, to still do the work that we do and in the reach that we do so it's nice to hear that you're, you know, finding ways to sort of help out in all of that aspect so, going back to the fun designs that you create, i need to ask you right now, which if you have to pick one, and then you've got 390 plus, i want you to pick one design, what is your current favorite? chris shomo 52 36 i know this is going to sound a little goofy, maybe a little girly the butterfly named fred love it's not very i think because the way the flowers interact with your wrist and then that that butterfly just landing perfectly right there on it every single time it makes me happy and the dude's name is fred come like fred butterfly tony morelan 52 59 how did you come up? fred for the butterfly, chris shomo 53 02 i don't know i was just kind of looking at an insect one day and i named an insect fred and then i was like, ah, this butterfly should be named fred now, i mean, i could have called it something like beautiful butterfly or blue butterfly or you know, just some sort of whatever name but let's give him an actual name and let's make a character out of this yeah wow, that is a great story i'm going to close this podcast though by asking what does chris sharma do for fun when you're not designing these wild themes and wild watch faces? oh, i live in the city of fun i mean, just going around and you know, going to experience the different restaurants and just the atmosphere in the summertime, i guess staying indoors more because it's so hot and humid down there someone asked me one time what's it like living in the south during all this heat because like just the other day that heat index was like 105 degrees that's of course, when you combine the humidity and the actual temperature, that's what it feels like and i told him when i was like, alright, take the hottest shower that you can now get out of the shower, do not dry off and put your clothes on that's what it feels like oh, so it's a sauna out there tony morelan 54 22 that's crazy you know, and i will say i have to share we've had to reschedule this interview numerous times, because there was a hurricane going through savannah and you were losing your internet connection so yeah, living in the south, i think definitely has a lot of excitement chris shomo 54 37 well, the hurricane is actually one of the normal things for 2020 chris shomo 54 43 we were very fortunate that the hurricane mainly missed us we got some wind from the outer bands and locally, my internet was like, it was all over the place we didn't have it and we had a flood yeah, it's just something that we got to deal with but i'm glad we were fine hazleton connect and get this interview done tony morelan 55 03 yeah, this is great this has been a lot of fun so chris, thank you very much for joining the podcast much access to you at infinity watch faces and looking forward to all the great new designs i know they're going to be coming down the road for us so thanks again chris shomo 55 15 thank you, tony and thank you, samsung, you guys are awesome outro 55 18 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan
