A couple of months ago my Dell XPS M1330 died after four years of faithful service, and despite my best attempts with a screwdriver and soldering iron I’ve yet to manage a repair. While I still hold out hope that it can be fixed, it made much more sense for now to make use of the tax benefits of a one off larger purchase and replace it.
Some of the print work I recently completed for The Meadow housing development, Maghaberry.
On wednesday I spent much of the day out in Maghaberry taking photos for a client involved in property development. I couldn’t have asked for a better day for it. Beautiful deep blue skies with few clouds made for some great shots. Here’s a small sample from the 200 or so taken.
I’ve had a seriously productive today working on some wireframes for a new site, and am realising how much more satisfying it is working on larger projects with lots of content.
It can be a bit of a mindbender trying to figure out how everything fits together, but I think that’s the key. I love problem solving. After all, that’s what most design really is. I see something that doesn’t work quite right – either it’s not comfortable to use, buttons are in awkward places or it’s an odd shape for no apparent reason – and I want to make it better. That’s what first attracted me to product design. Now I’m a web designer, and the principle is still the same.
Having a website that is filled with information can be a challenge to navigate if it’s not structured in a coherent way. When I bring up the site, I want to be able to find what I’m looking for without clicking through a thousand pages, or worse still resorting to the search box and ending up navigating through a whole host of new links.
The challenge of being the person who organises that content so that people don’t run into those problems is what has made today so enjoyable. Too often I work on projects that have very little information to organise, or projects where the client isn’t really sure of the content and starts adding to it after the site is designed and built. As information is added it tends to be squeezed in here or there and isn’t accessible to the user as it hasn’t been thought out in advance. That’s when I like to suggest it’s time for a redesign!
I’ve posted a preview of the work-in-progress wireframes on dribbble to gain a little feedback from my peers.
A few weeks before we headed to Barcelona I decided to take Fridays off work. Reason being that both Saturday and Sunday had become get-things-done-around-the-house-days, and I was feeling burnt out, finding it hard to switch off and relax.
It’s something I’d been saying I needed to do since last summer, as I wanted time to get back into painting. Without scheduling it in I was never motivated to pick up a brush. Giving myself that space and assuring myself that I didn’t have more important things to be getting on with has brought a real freedom. It’s something I’ve neglected since our holiday, as I’ve allowed busyness to creep back in, but today I’m reestablishing the routine. It’s not all about painting, either. Everybody needs time to recover, look after themselves, treat themselves to something nice. Why not take a day yourself, even if it’s only every few weeks? Weekends are more suitable for most, obviously. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to choose Friday. But take a day to eat your favourite foods, do your favourite things, and more importantly sit in quietness for a while. I’ve found it incredibly refreshing.