reflections

I have an appointment tomorrow. It will end almost a year’s worth of uncertainty, doubt, fear and resentment.

If I test positive for the Huntington’s gene, then there’s a good chance that I’ll be dead within the next 20 years. During that time I can expect to slowly lose my mental stabilty and my social skills, gradually alienating those who are closest to me. Most people with Huntington’s have few or no friends, and repeatedly attempt to end their own lives.

The testing has been significant. I’ve been seen by consultants and counsellors, undergone psychometric analysis and had my blood taken. Now all that remains is for me to get the result - which has turned out to be the toughest part of it all.

I thought hard about whether to write this post, and if it was necessary to let the people reading my blog into this part of my private life. I decided that I should say something, because like it or not this thing has fundamentally altered who I am, affecting me in more ways than I would like to admit. In doing so it has changed what I write, and so how I blog.

One thing that I’ve learnt is that life can be fragile. You need to cease each day with both hands, and don’t let go until another one comes along.

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It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then I find a video on YouTube that I really like - and I think this one is probably the best one I’ve ever seen on the site, and quite possibly the best video that I’ve ever seen. This just blew me away…

It’s titled ‘The Machine is Us/ing Us’ - and it was produced by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

Let me know what you thought!

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With my head being planted firmly in Britster-land at the moment, I’m taking time out to keep up with what’s going on in the world of Web 2.0 startups and successes - reading sites like Techcrunch and Mashable almost religiously! Of course, there’s only so much information you can learn from a third-party write-up, which is why I was excited to hear a few weeks ago that a brand-new videoblog on the subject was going to be launched.

Well, the weeks have passed, and IntrudersTV has arrived! The English version of the blog is being hosted by Vincent Camara (superb surname for a video blogger), and he’ll be presenting videos from major web events and conferences, and visiting web startups to take a closer look at their founders at work. He’ll be focusing not only on the major players, but also on newly-founded startups, and how it’s possible to make a great idea into a success.

Current videos on the site include: an interview with Loic Le Meur (Honorary Chairman at Six Apart and notorious French blogger), a conversation on video podcasting with Robert Scobble from Podtech (and author of Scobleizer), an interview with Immad Akhund, co-founder of revmap.com, and an exclusive presentation of Bubbletop (the soon to be released Ajax personal home page from Orange).

Take a look, and let me know what you think! Would any of you ever consider moving away from text to a video blog?

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Every designer is influenced by their surroundings, the people they meet, and design trends - but does that mean that we’re all affected in the same way, or does each of us retain a sense of uniqueness in our designs - regardless of influence?

Tara at the Graphic Design Blog decided to run an experiment to find out. The experiment (open to anyone who wants to take part) requires you to scribble down a logo idea (or several if you wish) for two fictitious companies.

Well, I couldn’t resist finding out if my patterns of thought when designing are my own - so without further ado, I present my submission to the experiment!

Caffeine Rush - Espresso Machine & Accessory Supplies

The first scan shows my initial brainstorming sheet. I wrote down the two words from the company name, then strung off various keywords and sub-words that were related to them. Finally I put asterisks by the words that had visual cues for me.

The main idea I played with on the second sheet was the different ways of portraying coffee cups and mugs (1-5, 13, 15). I also looked at coffee beans (6-9) and their shape, latte art swirls (10-12), coffee leaves (14) and a remembered idea for a lettering style (16).

The third sheet shows me playing around with various ways of indicating speed (17-20) and movement (21), and drawing out an idea about a rocket (!) that popped into my head (22). There’s also a stamp motif idea (23 - like they have burned into the sides of coffee sacks), and some messin around with letter spacing, word division and text placement (24-30).

Cheap ‘n’ Cheerful - Budget Fancy Dress Shop

Same as before, but I wrote down three main keywords this time, strung off the related keywords and sub-words, and put in the asterisks by the most visual words.

I played around with various clown, jester and harlequin concepts on this sheet (1-5) and then a couple of interesting ways to use them (6 - glove puppet, 7 - toy on a stick).

This sheet’s got a couple of jack-in-the-box ideas (8 and 9), and then I’m playing around with letter styling, word positioning and placement of the graphic (10-14).

The Final Designs

I realise that this wasn’t a part of the experiment - the sketches alone should be enough alone to indicate my thought processes - but I couldn’t stand the idea of not taking my favourite concepts through to completion! So, here they are…

Thanks again to Tara for coming up with the idea - I can’t wait to see the results of the experiment… Remember to check out the other submissions too: Tara’s sketches are here, Tess (from Thoughts and Such) has some up here, and Siong’s are here.

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One of my ongoing projects at the moment is Britster - a social networking site that will offer many of the popular features from sites like MySpace, YouTube and Date.com. What will make this site different to the rest though, is that fact that it’s aimed squarely at the British - including UK residents, ex-pats, and anybody else who wants to communicate with those living in Britain. My role in the project has been varied to date, and has included PHP development, online and offline marketing, corporate styling, and (of course) the design of the main website.

As research for the website design element of the project, I’ve looked at all the major existing social networking sites in a critical light, to see where I could make my own designs better. What I found really surprised me though - a general lack of quality, poor navigation and huge file downloads are common among both the leaders in the field and those vying for success

Please remember that these evaluations are purely my own opinion as a web designer. Just because I think a site sucks visually, it doesn’t necessarily mean the functionality is also lacking, as that isn’t what I’ve focused on.

I hope that any designer (web or otherwise) will find this roundup useful, as it highlights the pitfalls a designer may come across when creating a design for mass consumption - something we all have to tackle at some point in our careers. This may also be of interest to anyone else developing a site with social networking features.

Notes: clicking on any of the thumbnails will open up a full-size grab of the site in either a new tab or window. These are stored on my Flickr account, and I’ve grouped them into a set which you can view in full if you want to make comparisons! With this being a rather lengthy post, I’ve made use of a ‘read more’ break in the text, so you may need to click the title to read this article in its entirety.

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