reflections

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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Scot at Meridiancrest has very kindly sorted me out with a Joost account, so I figured it would be nice to pass on the favour to others!

Joost is currently running an invite-only Beta, and the first 5 people to leave a comment saying “Cover me with your Joost!” will get an invite from me - simple as that.

Of course, you can find out what Joost is and what it does if you’ve had your head up your backside for the last six months!

Good luck!

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Do you design web sites of any type - from blogs to full-blown corporate e-commerce solutions? Perhaps the only site you design is your own one? Well, one of the problems that faces every web designer at some time is that of testing your site on all the major browsers. In case you’re interested, this is how my current visitor’s browser useage breaks down:

Having three of four versions of each major browser installed at the same time and on the same machine is not only an administrative nightmare, but damn near impossible too! If you’re lazy like me then you probably end up testing on just the very biggest ones - I typically test in IE6, IE7, Firefox 2 and maybe Opera. What about all the others though - the MacOS browsers (particularly difficult if you only have a Windows machine) and the Linux builds?

Well, I’ve discovered [via thepaperbull.com] an easy way to not only test your site on the usual suspects, but also to see what happens to it on other platforms and more obscure browsers!

Browsershots.org allows you to enter your web address, select from an enourmous list of browser/platform combinations, choose screen resolution and plugin availability - and then a little while later (dependant on how long the queue currently is) will generate screenshots of what each of your selected browsers saw when they hit your site!

I think this is an incredible idea - and like all good ideas I’m amazed that this is the first time somebody’s done it! Oh, and did I mention that this is a FREE service?!? Well, what are you waiting for - the end of the browser wars?

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