Ideas of March 2012

Firstly, If you don’t know what Ideas of March is, it is to:

  1. Write a post called Ideas of March.
  2. Write about why you like blogs.
  3. If you don’t already blog regularly, pledge to blog more the rest of the month.
  4. Share your thoughts on Twitter with the #ideasofmarch hashtag.

Point 1, done.

Why I like blogs, and blogging

I believe that writing about something helps you to understand it in a different way; in much the same way having to give a presentation or explaining a topic to someone means articulating the topic.

This skills is vital for any professional.

If there is one thing I have learnt whilst being a designer, it is that articulating yourself well makes you a better designer. Explaining designs to a client, boss, or colleague is key. In the past I wouldn’t have been able to describe why I created something the way I did; I felt (wrongly) that talking about it was art bollocks and not necessary.

Describing a design is as important as designing it well.

What I wasn’t aware of was all the thoughts that went through my head whilst creating a design. A client can’t see this, and so you have to articulate yourself to describe your design process. With the client aware of all the decisions made, they are more likely to ‘buy in’ to your work, as they’ve been taken on the same journey.

Back to this blog…

Never thinking of myself as a writer, my blog includes things that I want to explore in more detail. Blogging allows me to collect my thoughts and put it out there, primarily for myself, and secondly for anyone who is interested.

But my blog has never been an advert for myself. If there is one thing I have learnt from my website it is that the most lovingly crafted posts fall by the wayside in favour of posts that were created on a whim, but I don’t write for traffic, and neither should you. Don’t go for the cheap shot of a red-top headline when your content deserves better.

Writing more

In my professional career, i’ve set myself a few goals. Some of which have happened already, like being featured in .net magazine but to have my writing published somehow is still on the list, waiting to be ticked off.

A few people I follow on Twitter have wrote books. Their tweets during the writing phase make it sound like a kind of literary torture, but having your work in print, being able to buy it in the shops, and being in Amazon must be quite a cool feeling.

Don’t just say it then, do it!

In the coming months, lots of things will be changing for me, and I hope to be able to delve deeper into the process of designing, in particular for the web. It’s an exciting time with lots of innovations to come and I want blogging to become an integrated part of my work.

So I’m not going to get hung up on the design of my site (yes, it is the default WordPress theme at the moment) because people will hopefully be reading these posts on Readability, Instapaper, or an RSS reader, but I do hope to develop my site to include more development work, code examples, snippets and other tools in the near future.

Now it’s your turn…

If this post, or the Ideas of March concept has spurred you on to write your own, let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure I link to it.

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