Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category
Why don’t I have time?
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
I’ve recently starting working for myself. I absolutely love it– I love the projects, I love the work environment (right now I’m in my bed, with my cup of tea), the commute is tolerable (at some point I’ll have to migrate over to my desk) and I absolutely love having control over things.
But I thought I would have more time.
More time to set up my own projects, more time to spend blogging, more time to socialize, more time to learn and more time to work on my hobbies.
Except I don’t.
I don’t think I’ve ever worked such long hours. All my own projects, my pro-bono work, and even just keeping blogging (weekly blogging here sure hasn’t consistently happened) have taken the backseat. I love my clients, and I’m keeping them on good timelines, but I say I’ll have them something in a week, and I blink, and a week has gone by. Of course we all know that everything in web design takes longer than we expect, and I’m getting better at estimating and managing this, but it’s still a big thing. I must be doing something wrong, right?
This is a public display
I’ve put off the following things too long. I’ve been reading a psychology book that says people that go on weightloss programs on tv lose more weight because they are held accountable by more people. This study said that this works for lots of other things too: Tell lots of people what you’re planning on doing and you’re more likely to complete them, out of sheer will not to have to try and explain later. So here it is: a list of things I don’t get paid for, that I need to finish this month.
-A Smashing Magazine article that I researched in late January
-A pro-bono website for a non-profit learning program for kids that I started in January
-My own professional face, for more serious clients that I’ve been talking about making for months
-Design for an iphone game that my friend has developed that I’ve been toying with for months
Now, hopefully, out of sheer embarrassment, these four things will get done. Now remind me not to take on any more client work… I need to have fun one of these days too!
P.S. If you want me to berate you for anything, leave it in the comments, and I will make your life a living hell on march 30th!
Goodbye to a fashion legend
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
The dress that was the start of my fashion inspiration
I just heard the tragic news… Lee McQueen, founder of Alexander McQueen, has died.
I am shocked. He is one of my favourite fashion designers, and his dress design, shown here, was actually what prompted me to create my own fashions, back when I started sewing 3 years ago.
I remember finding this dress (displayed with a soft sweater in a winter wonderland in the magazine spread), with its a-symmetrical wrapping that was neither traditionally tartan, nor over the top, and I thought, “wow, I would love to make something like that.” While my efforts to distill his piece of art were not entirely successful, I was hooked, and I often spent hours routing through his collections, in awe of his ability to create such uniqueness.
Fashion week is coming up, and he was supposed to be unveiling his latest collection. What a shame that this is the last time we will see new creations from him.
Mr. McQueen, your creativity has inspired me, and you will be sorely missed.
Visualizing hate love for Air Canada
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
No carry-ons, extra security measures and an interesting customs experience. These are the things we have to look forward to on our flight tomorrow to England through the US from Canada.
We combined two tickets, by changing the date of one, so we’re not spending more on flights as we’ve already bought them. But when it comes to common sense, Air Canada has really thrown it out the window.
Here is our flight itinerary:
Here is how our trip will look like
Ottawa and Toronto are a 5 hour drive apart, so we thought, “Let’s just drive to Toronto and pick up the flight to the UK from there.” Sounds simple: it benefits Air Canada as now they can sell our seats on the San Francisco leg. It benefits us as we save about 14 hours of air time, don’t have to fly through the states with the increased security (I can just imagine explaining this to the customs guy in the states), and I can see my friend who’s living in Toronto.
Our proposed trip
But Air Canada said ‘NO’.
We’re not asking for a refund for the unused portion and we’ll make our own way to Toronto, so it’s not a route change. But APPARENTLY it IS a route change. Their rules state that if you miss any portion of your flight, the whole ticket is void. I’m not sure when common sense went out the window, but it seems a bit crazy to send us all the way there and back, when they could sell that seat. Of course, the flight TO San Francisco is with American Airlines. If we don’t make our connection in San Francisco, do you think Air Canada would void our tickets?
Update! Good news!
Well, the counter staff at Air Canada have saved us! She said, “That’s ridiculous!” and told us that we were lucky we got her to serve us. She said, “I’ll take your money for a change though” and now we’re just flying from toronto tomorrow morning! YAY!
Writing more this year… project52
Monday, January 4th, 2010
I recently came upon Sam Brown’s blog post on project52. As much as I want to berate people that take on these challenges, I’m a sucker for them. While I’m going to take it semi-seriously, I think it’s a great thing to post more consistently.
Anyway, here’s the first week’s post. Sorry it’s so boring. The plan is also to make them progressively more interesting.
Ada Lovelace day: Featuring Susan Kare
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Ada Lovelace day is today. It’s a day to highlight women who’ve had some influence in technology and science. Ada is believed to be the first computer programmer, at a time when there wasn’t really even any electricity. A math wizard herself, she saw the potential of her colleagues invention for doing almost everything when everyone else saw it just for solving math problems. Ada Lovelace is a day for others to choose a woman who has been an inspiration to them.
There’s a few fantastic women in technology I’d love to highlight, including two of my best friends here in London (Meg and Magz, both fantastic, passsionate developers). I had a few more people I was considering writing about including my math teacher in high school, who taught finite, and made statistics so fun, or the goth girl from NCIS, who is so cool but also knows everything about science, but my choice was so easy at the end of the day.
I’m a web designer. Code is important, but what makes a truly fantastic website or program, is how usable it is.
“Move the spotlight over. Here she is, Susan Kare!” (crowd errupts in cheers).
Don’t know who she is? Oh, sorry.
Well, you know her work, and you probably love it.
Susan Kare's website
Susan Kare worked at Apple back in the day. She was the screen graphics and digital font designer for the original Macintosh computer. She’s the original designer of all the cute little icons used by the macs for so long, and basically revolutionalized computer displays. Remember the original trash can? The happy mac? Or the bomb when things went wrong? Think about it: apple was the first one to use icons in their graphical “window-style” display, and the rest of the big boys followed suit. She did this all in 1983, when I was just over a year old. Susan Kare, in a big way, changed computer usability, made it accessible to the masses, and continues to do so now.
These days, everyone is harping on about usability in computer software, but Susan Kare was a pioneer in this field. She didn’t use gradients or drop shadows to add emphasis to her work. She cared about every pixel being in place, the fonts being perfect and the whole thing working seemlessly. No gimmics, just solid information design.
Beat that!
My Top 5 Guy Webdesign Heros
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
A while back, I wrote a post about my female webdesign heros, and felt a bit guilty about singling out girls. It does affect me that there are so many more fantastic guy designers out there than girls (although the girls are starting to come up thick and fast), and I wanted to showcase girl talent (Lee Munroe went further and even featured little ol’ safetygoat on his list of top 26 female webdesigners… *blush!*). But the fact remains that I am actually much more inspired by these talented men. (side note: these are my heros, not necessarily *the best* as I really think that’s way too subjective, these are those that really inspire me…) So here they are!
#5
Brendan Dawes
Brendan Dawes is an inspiration mainly because he doesn’t just have a style, he also tries to display data and information in different and meaningful ways. His intro page displays all his articles vertically and sized by popularity. It’s almost incoherent, but done in a way that makes you want to explore. He’s one of those people that is pushing interaction between the different creative industries, and seems to see no boundaries when it comes to web design. His stuff isn’t beautiful, and it’s layered on top of a traditional blog platform (which isn’t exactly cutting edge in itself) but his experimentations, such as doodlebuzz , make the web a more fun and interesting, and most of all, dynamic place.
#4
mikekus
Mike is Carsonified’s designer. Mike seems to constantly push himself to do really fantastic work, and he’s a really fun illustrator with a distinctive sketchy style. Each of the conference sites he’s revamped recently have been gorgeous, but they maintain a similar feel and style (with different illstrations and colours) to keep them linked together. I saw a video of his presentation at FOWD, and his slides were all hand-drawn. You can tell that he is passionate about designing EVERYTHING, and gives himself a hard time about following web trends too closely. He also preaches that designers should get into html/css as soon as possible in the designing process, which I’m starting to agree with– you make more useable, dynamic, rather than flat websites. Mike is definitely the type of designer you can look up to.
#3
wez maynard
Wez is one of my buddies on twitter, but that’s not why he’s here (I have lots of great fun web design buddies on twitter but I can’t feature them all!). I’ve chatted with him a lot, and he’s a really nice guy. Little did I know, he was also the creator of YoDiv‘ and divVoted’s design (my screenshot here), both of them sites I’ve admired and put in my inspiration book. Wez is fantastic at integrating in his illustrations and textures into his headers and footers. His design utilizes his artistic abilities so well, and while he’s definitely a web 2.0 designer, he has his own style which resonates through each and every design. Looking through his portfolio, he experiments with different techniques, but always produces cohesive designs. Take a look at the footer of his most recent design for Dean and Reddyhoff Marinas. I love how the design is bursting out of the water. Wez is one of those designers that pushes me to try and use graphics and illustrations in more effective ways. His work is definitely drool-worthy.
#2
Jason Santa Maria
It’s hard to make one of these lists without this guy appearing on it. Before I knew of his own site, I had admired his work a few times (just look at wordpress or alistapart). Jason really spends the time to design things right. His current blog is simple, but a great framework to allow him to individualize every post. It is nice to see a designer, who is also a good blogger (it’s amazing how many quality design bloggers are not very good designers, but that’s another story), actually spend the time to individualize each post that he writes. He is also thoughtful and conscientious about where he’s come from. You can read how he came into typography and design from an art background in this article, but I love one of his recent posts has been about his first and second online portfolios back in the day. They’re pretty good, yes, but you wouldn’t call him amazing at that point. That’s what makes him an even bigger hero: he used to be mediocre, and now he’s amazing. This says to me, “If I work hard, with a little bit of luck and a lot of sweat, I too can be amazing. That’s a hero.
#1
Olliekav
Ollie has to be my biggest webdesign hero. He’s self-taught, both at design and code, and he is one of those people that pushes himself all the time, because he wants to be better. In code, he is the one who has made me care about standards compliance, microformats, and new technologies. In design, he has instilled in me the importance of grids, pixel perfection, and the value in the little details. A few of my favourite examples of his work is his design for theBoxCat (launching soon). I worked on the logo, but he took that logo and came up with a better webdesign than I could imagine. I remember seeing it and immediately wishing I had done it, and respecting him even more as a designer. His illustrative style is unique, but the area I admire most is his logo design. Just take a look. He loves typography and is always experimenting with type– an area where I need the most work. Of course, Ollie doesn’t sit down and tell me about these things, he is my hero by his example. Now, I’m sure you’re all thinking that I’m just saying all this about him just because he’s my boyfriend. But the truth is, we don’t work together too closely. He always wants to get better, and nothing pushes me harder to want to be better as well. Take a look at his stuff, and talk to him. You will never meet a more helpful and hardworking designer.
How about you? Do you agree with my choices? Who are your heroes?
Murder in the night
Monday, May 19th, 2008
After working all weekend, more than anything I wanted to get my portfolio up and then get a good night’s sleep. I “sort of” got my portfolio up (I’m still no jquery expert, so some tweaking needs to be done), and settled down to sleep. After an hour of “Ring my bell” in my head (catchy dance tune, not a great sleeping song), I finally got my eyes closed.
I was jolted awake in the middle of the night by an animal being murdered outside the window. It sounded like a fox, maybe a baby fox, being attacked. It was desperate to get away, moaning and screaming. This continued for about 10 minutes. Should I do something? What could I do? It would take me 3 minutes to get downstairs and outside. And then it got worse, and I could hear the moment it died. You don’t actually often get to listen to an animal being slaughtered, and it made me unsettled to realize that I didn’t do anything. Should I have?
Update: Someone told me that this could have just been the female fox during the mating process…. scary!
