October was fantastically busy both for us as a company and for me personally. Furthermore, November doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of letting up. I guess some of this is driven by companies wanting to compete for business more, and thus needing effective communication materials. As a small business owner it’s crossed my mind that the financial issues the economy is facing might present us with issues, but at the same time I see it very much as an opportunity.
In my line of work everything essentially boils down to forming a relationship with the end user. This is true (and easy to see) when we’re talking about a website design, but it’s also just as pertinent for print, application design, signage, identity and so on. Our customers come to us because they think they want a new website or a refreshed brochure etc, but what they really want (in nearly every case) is to convey an idea or message to their existing customers or attract new customers. The end game is a call to action—to buy something, to provide feedback or to engage in some other way with the company and/or the product and services it is involved in providing.
So actually the brochure or website is all about creating dialogue between the service provider and the service user. Graphic design, fundamentally, is about facilitating that dialogue; opening new channels, approaches and mechanisms to enable the communication to flow. The trick to being a good designer is getting to the key messages and objectives, and presenting or representing these in an aesthetically attractive, fresh and engaging manner.
Every designer wants to be original, creative and unique. The best designers (in my opinion) are those who manage to take all the communication and dialogue requirements and wrap them up in a perfect package of typography and graphics in such a way that the design aesthetics (although fundamental) are forgotten temporarily as the piece engages the user or viewer in a moment of dialogue. I think that if we, as designers, can acheive that, well then we’ve done something right that day.
So, as companies are competing in the deteriorating market conditions generally, so they’re going to be increasingly wanting to differentiate themselves, engage and enter into dialogue with their customers, retaining and building relationships. Given that’s what we’re here to help with, even in troubling economic times, there’s a wealth of opportunity out there to capture new clients.
I had a nice package delivered today: my new concert-sized ukulele. First of all, I’m a guitar player so it’s all very alien to me (but quite exciting!).
I opted for an electro-acoustic model in the mid-price bracket (using up some of my paypal balance), and I’ll connect it up to garageband later on to see what it can do. In the first instance though, I’ve got it out the box and tuned it up to get a feel for the sound. According to my research the strings were likely to be “servicable” and nothing more, so I also bought some of the universally recommended Aquila strings which should dramatically improve the sound; restringing is a task for this evening.
I also hear that it can take a while for a uke to hold tune. My Ovation electro-acoustic guitar only needs very minor tweaks every month or so to hold tune, but this is definitely slipping out of tune within minutes.
So on the subject of Ukuleles, I found a nice useful site when doing my research which I’d recommend for anyone considering buying their first Uke: http://ukulelehunt.com/buyaukulele/
YouTube is full of uke-goodness too. I especially like Gus & Fin:
I’ll post some tests up when I’m feeling confident enough to play it!
I’ve been using Illustrator CS4 for a few weeks now, in fact I wrote a review of it for Digital Arts magazine. I was initially sceptical about the release if I’m being honest. It all seemed to come out of nowhere, and the feature list didn’t sound that compelling for an upgrade.
Let me say now, if you use Illustrator regularly, upgrade.
Seriously, I wouldn’t go back to CS3. The most important new feature, in my opinion, is support for multiple artboards. I wouldn’t recommend laying out a brochure in Illustrator; it’s just not built for that, and InDesign handles it all with much more aplomb, but for business cards, multiple items of stationery for the same client, and even multiple versions of the same mockup – superb.
Anyway, beyond that the tool I’m getting the most enjoyment out of currently is the Blob Brush. Rubbish name, even if appropriate, but great tool. Essentially, everything you hoped Illustrator would do the very first time you used it is now true. This is like a combination of Flash and Freehand in terms of drawing vector shapes with a brush. Great fun, massive productivity boost. It makes blocking out colour in to organic shapes much easier.
These are just the two enhancements I’ve got time to talk about just now. There are actually quite a few other very useful additions I hope to get to talk about in the future. So, I’ve come full circle. I started off dubious, but am a total convert. Pretty glad to have the new version, I’d recommend it to any serious Illustrator user without hesitation.
When I switched to my new Mac several months ago I didn’t really get a chance to set up all my peripheral hardware. I’ve been adding the various bits of goodness to the Mac as I’ve needed them.
Today I added my Wacom Graphire 4 tablet, and after installing the drivers it’s working beautifully. In fact, it seems to be working far better than it ever did on my various PCs. The tablet itself is getting on a bit now, and I suppose I could do with a new one fairly soon, but I’m really pleased it seems to have a new lease of life; might be the revised drivers, or could be Photoshop CS4 I guess (although I don’t think so).
Quick test of pressure sensitivity:
Actually, it might be that I’ve managed to set the pressure levels more successfully than previously. Whatever, I recommend using a tablet. Alien at first, natural after 20 minutes of use. I’d forgotten in the several months since last using it how much it can add to the workflow.
