The mockup on the left is using Helvetica Neue, square avatars, and large image previews, while the version on the right is using Avenir, round avatars, small image previews, and hidden badges. Probably the most significant departure from the current Mac app, however, is the option to switch between an expanded or collapsed sidebar.

The expanded sidebar draws influence from the Finder favourites list, with smaller subtly filled icons and accompanying text, which is intended to feel more at home alongside some of OS X’s default apps. The collapsed sidebar, on the other hand, is more similar to the existing Tweetbot for Mac and the official Twitter app, and is my personal preference.

Tweetbot 2

From the time I started writing this post, Tweetbot 2 for Mac has gone from being nonexistent, to teaser, to being officially announced. Because of the crazy timing, I thought it might be fun to look at the similarities. To avoid any confusion with credit, I’ll avoid posting the image inline, but you can take a look here.

The navigation structure is, as you would expect, very similar to both the existing Tweetbot for Mac and my redesign, with a couple notable differences. For one, the quality of icons in the Tapbots version is much higher. My quick and dirty approach was to simply match the iPhone icons as close as I could, and scale them where required, but given some extra time they’d be the first thing I would scrap and redo. Tapbots’ purpose-designed icons work much better here. They’ve also chosen to indicate new tweets in basically the same way I have, with a coloured dot, but using it on the right side instead of the left, and at a larger scale. I prefer their approach here, too. A good testimonial for taking the time to get things right. The title bar in the Tweetbot 2 keeps the Lists button available, something I decided to replace with Back/Forward buttons, largely because I don’t use lists, while the New Tweet button looks just like the one in the iPhone app, and in my earlier iterations.

The timeline itself looks very similar, which I would expect given that I was trying to keep their branding intact while creating this redesign, with one of the only major differences being the larger avatars. My only gripe from what I can see is that the Mac traffic light buttons aren’t vertically aligned with the center of the title bar, but it’s a minor note for a design that otherwise looks fantastic overall. I can’t wait to use it when it’s launched.

Conclusion

Better late than never, I suppose. The write-up portion of these challenges remains the hardest part for me. I’m getting better at organizing my thoughts, but even still, compiling examples and screenshots can be very time-consuming.

My mind is still completely blown that Tapbots announced Tweetbot 2 on the day I planned to publish this. Considering how long it must have been in development for, and considering I have 20–30 redesign candidates in a list that I’m selecting from semi-randomly, the coincidence is wild.

Regardless, this week’s design was fun as usual. I’d definitely like to try my hand at designing more native Mac apps. Having so much real estate to work with is refreshing, but almost daunting when you’re used to the world of mobile, which means this challenge is doing exactly what I intended it to by pushing my creativity in new ways. In the end, I was fairly happy with how it turned out. There were definitely some areas I would have liked to have tweaked further, but at some point you need to call it done. Lesson learned, though, don’t design for an unfamiliar platform if you’re short on time that week.

If you’d like to follow along, or if you’re reading this from the future and want to see what I’ve redesigned since the start of the year, I’ll be posting everything to my Weekly Redesign Challenge publication, which just reached 500 followers! Thank you all for the support.