It’s official! I have launched my first Web 2.0 product this month — the delicious:designer. For those not familiar with this project let me explain its birth and purpose.

The beginning of the delicious:designer

It all started about 6 years back when my business partners and I wrote down the core mission of our print business — BIG Images. This included a dedication to technological advancement. As the seed that spawned many projects, it ultimately lead to the development of the delicious:suite technology.

For the past 3 years we have been actively exploring solutions for bringing BIG Images’ product and service to the household level. We started with simple AppleScripts to automate away repetitive tasks. This lead to more advanced programs written for both the Mac OS X and the web. Soon it became a proof–of–concept for a creative designer that put everyone with an internet connection in the driver’s seat of our print production engine — this was dubbed Banner Works. As interest in our little project grew and we earned the attention of everyone from employees at Google to a V.P. of Apple, we realized that the delicious:suite, as we had now dubbed it, had a future far beyond our original design. Thus a suite of applications, destined to bring the creative power of computing to every corner of the internet, was born. The first of which is the delicious:designer.

The delicious purpose

Why would a print company be interested in developing creative design software? BIG Images’ printing niche is rather unknown outside of a few specific industries, and is virtually unheard of at the household level. Most people simply do not know that you can print a 20’ x 100’ banner in a single piece. For that matter, most people do not know that you can print a simple 3’ x 5’ banner as fast and inexpensively as BIG Images’ can. This is because these production methods have mostly been marketed to businesses, not the general public. But that is not the biggest stumbling block. Most people do not have the proper tools to create the computer files necessary to print that large, nor do they even know which to use. This is where the delicious:suite enters the picture — freely accessible software that gives anyone the power to create anything from a Christmas card to a Happy Birthday banner. BIG Images is leading the way in bringing large format printing to the household level. The delicious:designer is our first product towards this end.

The future

The delicious:designer is just the beginning. We are diligently working towards a future that cannot yet be revealed, as we are in the process of seeking venture capital, and patenting our secrets. What I can reveal is this: this software is yours and we are crafting it for you. Currently our publicly-announced projects include a specialized version of the designer for Second Life, and a unique viewer that allows anyone to freely share their designs on any web page. At this early stage we welcome your ideas and insights, your critiques and your creative cravings.