“Every agency wants a happy client.
There are two ways to do this.
One: do the best job possible.
Two: do what the client wants.
They are the short-term view, and the long-term view.
In the short term the client will be happy if you do what he wants.
If it doesn’t work, he won’t be happy.
The alternative is you insist on doing what you believe to be right.
In the short term the client may be unhappy.
But if it works, he’ll be happy.”

A quote by Dave Trott in the book Creative Mischief. It’s a fantastic book; it reminds me of the books Paul Arden wrote.

Part history book, part modern day news stories, the editing makes the book feel awkward; like a cobbled-together school project made up of historic articles and personal opinions by the Author, Simon Garfield.

It is clear that he has an admiration for type, but having read and watched a fair few pieces on typography, very little of the content felt new. I would find myself remembering stories I had read in Type: The Secret History of Letters, or being reminded word-for-word the interviews with designers for the documentary film Helvetica.

By this book if…

You want a beginner-level book to read about type origins, type history, and some of the modern day stories about type, then this book is for you. But if you want a bit more substance I would recommend Type: The Secret History of Letters. In fact, I think I would suggest reading that book, and watching Helvetica over getting this book any day.

Technology today means we can gorge on content from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, constantly throughout the day without hesitation; But how much of it can we actually take in? Does it reach a saturation point where we keep consuming even though our minds are full?

All you can eat information

For me personally, this information overload means that I generally cannot remember many of the things that I have read. This is because our brains are not programmed to hold lots of short-term memories.

We can use various tools to overcome this. Services like Delicious and Instapaper mean we don’t have to commit it all to memory, but it still takes an involved process to catalogue all of the content we read on a daily basis.

So what is the answer? Reduce the number of people we follow on Twitter, or RSS feeds we subscribe to? Rebalance the signal-to-noise ratio and remove some of the more superfluous things we read? Or have a system in place to catalogue online consumption for future recollection? I’m keen to hear your thoughts on the subject: You can either leave a comment below or reply to me on Twitter.

Stopgap technology

So I get it, you can go from viewing an advert for a game or DVD on a poster to hovering over the ‘buy it now’ button on your mobile in seconds just by taking a picture of a barcode; I see the benefits, but this is just interim technology stuff.

In an ideal world, if you simply looked at the poster with your mobile phone you could be downloading the demo of the game, browsing the movie trailer, or making a purchase instantly. This is, sort of what you can do now, but what makes this an interim measure is the fact that people have to go out and download software to scan these codes. This really limits the audience, and until software is built into the operating systems, it will always be a niche thing.

Regardless of this, QR codes look too technical anyway. Even if they turned into designed objects like these barcodes from Japan they aren’t sexy; and who wants to see black and white barcodes over everything? How about if you didn’t need a barcode? What if you could just look at the advert through your phone?

Removing the need for barcodes completely

Recently I stumbled across Aurasma that does this, in a sort of clunky prototype way, but the technology is promising. Again, the downside at the moment is that you need to download the app, but if this was built into camera software, and the practice became widespread (so that people almost expected to get something if they looked at it with their phone), no longer would you just look at a printed advert, or watch a 30 second TV clip, you could further immerse yourself into the advertised item, but only if you were interested. This is the key. These things are only popular because people want to find out more.

Final thought

The end result of this becoming mainstream is a deeper connection between what you are consuming in the real-world and the digital realm. This happens at both a social and software level. In an age when we go on to IMDB whilst watching a film to find out what else that guy has been in, to reading real-time comments on twitter when watching X-Factor we can link this together to make things we are interested in easier for us to consume, creating a much more fulfilling scenario.

Feedback

I’d be really interested to find out what your thoughts are on this technology, and how you might think we could interact these things in a better way, if we need to at all.

Another month, another redesign. I think this all stems from the fact that I have never really been 100% happy with my website.

So, it is back to basics. With an update of WordPress comes their default theme, so I can concentrate on the content before I work on a custom design.

It’s all about the content

From day one, I have really used this site as a dumping ground, posting anything on here, not really thinking about the audience and so for this new era, I want to focus the content and deliver something of use (hopefully) to the people reading it.

Get out the statistics

I had never really looked into the popular sections of the site, so I dug out the page visits over the last few years, to see which elements were the most visited; here they are:

• /2010/01/19/dribbble-invite-giveaway/
• /2009/04/28/six-high-resolution-cloud-images/
• /projects/
• /2009/10/16/the-kitchen-sink-of-html/
• /2009/07/30/august-2009-wallpaper/
• /about/
• /2009/06/25/july-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/wallpaper/
• /2009/02/06/the-h1-debate/
• /2009/05/28/june-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/10/13/good-design-is-invisible/
• /2009/04/24/london-2012-coin-design-competition/
• /2010/03/19/css3-multiple-backgrounds/
• /2009/08/31/september-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/07/17/creativity/
• /category/downloads/
• /contact/
• /2010/01/10/type-the-secret-history-of-letters/
• /2010/02/22/should-the-grid-be-visible/
• /2009/11/15/thinking-with-type/
• /category/design/
• /2009/10/29/november-2009-wallpaper/
• /2009/01/19/if-you-make-everything-bold-nothing-is-bold/
• /2009/08/14/background-alignment-bug-fix/
• /2009/12/04/december-2009-wallpaper/
• /category/freebies/
• /2009/07/01/the-one-song-sketch/
• /2009/01/11/how-i-got-into-web-design/
• /2009/04/22/five-simple-steps/
• /2009/01/12/design-work-on-footytweets/

So, what can I learn from this:

1. Giving away free stuff interests people and drives an audience to your site
2. The ‘about’ page is very important
3. Design-centric posts are most popular

So having analysed this, I want to expand a section with HTML/CSS code snippets, further develop my profile on the site, and spend time writing some posts on design, something I have always wanted to do more of.

Timescale?

My first mistake would be to set a limit of this. The only times I have pushed the development of this site forward is during several hours at the weekends (or on a bank holiday like today). I don’t want to rush it, because the chances are that I haven’t thought about it enough, and it’ll mean I want to redesign it again too quickly, so for now, I will concentrate on writing more, and will slowly develop the plans for the site in the next few months.

In the end, you are what you consume. And if you’re not doing your share of creating, you’re like a vegetable soaking up the sun in preparation of one day being harvested. By advertisers.

A healthy balance

Of course no one can just consume, or just create – a balance must be struck. There are numerous inspirational design sites, and you can find yourselves endlessly trawling through hundreds of brilliant shots on dribbble, but the key is to not let consumption get in the way of creation.

Not enough time? Make time!

I find myself filling up my day with my 9-to-5 work at HigherSites, but i’m actively looking for time outside of this to work on my own things; this blog, my portfolio, another venture to further my craft.

It’s all too easy when you say you are too busy to be a consumer, just watching this TV show, or browsing the latest must-see website

So, stop reading this post, and don’t just consume, create!

It’s about what feels right… design was always something I felt I wanted to do.
To this day I tend to go with what feels right, as opposed to going with current trends, especially within design.

There is a lot to be said for going with your gut instinct, although having reasons to back up your decisions always help when you are showing a client, because when they say ‘it doesn’t feel right’ it usually means back to the drawing board for you!

With a predicted increase in traffic soon-ish the objective to make the content a little more legible (than black-on-red) and to actually display some of my work, which for the meantime means hooking in a Dribbble gallery thing.

But as my sole presence on the way, it by no means reflected myself as a designer (and sometimes developer).

Work has begun on the new site, which you’ll probably see on dribbble in the near future.

Could somebody just make an app to summarise every day what everyone I follow is talking about on Twitter?
Twitter is a passive consumption activity. If someone could condense all the best bits, and remove cat/food pictures, I’d be interested!
As brilliant as it is. Twitter kills productivity. No question. I think I’m going to try a week cold turkey during business hours.
Saying that, we should rename smoke breaks ‘social breaks’. That way we could hop onto Twitter and Facebook every so often during the day.

A couple of recent tweets that got me thinking about how we use Twitter (and Facebook).

Now I am a massive Twitter fan. My account was created over 4 years ago, and I have tweeted nearly 4000 times. I love using, but I do realise that it kills productivity. The issue is that Twitter is so real-time that you end up missing out on the good conversations when you catch up with it later on in the day. The interaction you get and the accessibility with members of the web community is something you just can’t get with email or IM. Everyone is so open and approachable on Twitter. That’s why I love it.

Having said that, sometimes the signal to noise ratio can be pretty high. With Instagram pics of cats, food, old signs and everything you care to name of it can be hard to find the nuggets in the masses of tweets. In the evening I tend to skim read about 200-300 tweets and favourite a fair few to read in more depth in the morning.

I follow some pretty prolific tweeters and I really have no idea how they manage to get any work done! But I guess they say everything in moderation, so I might try a ‘social break’ and pop on it a couple of times a day for 5 minutes.

I’ve never really asked this before, but I’m interested to find out other peoples Twitter habits, and how they manage their usage.

My initial dealings with Russell French Vehicle Sales were positive. Located rurally, the fact that they weren’t a typical looking car showroom did not bother me. After telephoning for a Sunday appointment, my Dad and I were heartily greeting, and were both able to test drive the car alone, and park it in a nearby lay-by for an inquisitive inspection.

A Happy Chappy

Having been very happy during the test drive, we left, and phoned the same day to put a deposit down on the car. By now you might be thinking ‘sounds great – what’s the problem?’, but that’s the beauty of Russell French Vehicle Sales; everything went silky smooth—Until we had bought the car and driven away.

The Deal

During our last face-to-face conversation, and whilst purchasing the car it was pointed out to us that the car only had one key. The previous owner had misplaced the other one, and seemed unable to find it. He said he was going to have another look, and if he found it, simply pop it in the post. The salesman even said to me that ‘you can’t have a car with just one key’. It was then that I mentioned that if there was any reason why the second key could not be found, I would be looking for Russell French Vehicle Sales to provide me a replacement key, stating:

“I certainly won’t be paying for a second key.”

This was acknowledged in a way that meant that they had no problem with this statement that I had just made. I was very specific on this point, and mentioned it more than once. Never was it mentioned that this agreement had to be written down, as up to this point, the transaction had been very open and relaxed.

Poor After Sales Service

Fast-forward 4 weeks and the missing key was nowhere to be found. I had phoned a number of times before this trying to resolve the situation, ultimately telling them but I had no choice but to source a key for myself, and would be looking for a cheque in the post to reimburse me.

After another 2 weeks and numerous phone calls (and by this time I was out of pocket by £133) there was still no sign of a cheque.

Things came to a head when Russell French Vehicle Sales had said (and bear in mind that this was 8 weeks and over 20 phone conversations later) that they would not be paying me for the second key, as crucially we had not put this down in writing.

This was the first time that this had been mentioned. I was shocked. By their admission, Russell French Vehicle Sales are a laid-back, low-key and friendly organisation. This change in behaviour got me fairly annoyed, not just at the cost of a new key I had to fork out, but that it had been around 8 weeks since the purchase of the car that this had been mentioned.

Going Nowhere

It was clear that things could not be resolved, and so I just wanted to let people know that if they are buying a car from Russell French Vehicle Sales to HAVE EVERYTHING IN WRITING.

Can This Be Resolved?

Very simply. My request is this: A cheque for £133 – The cost of a second key that I had to pay for.

- Paul