I’m asking this question from the point of view of someone who sports an opposite-of-smart-phone (Sony Ericsson t280i, apparently) and a four? year old iPod, which plays music but not video. I get/receive about 0.5 phone calls a month, and it takes me about half an hour to send a text, probably because I keep looking for the typographically correct apostrophe.
Websites, or at least the approach to getting things done on the internet are changing. iPhone apps are breaking down big websites into tiny tasks – not a big website with a complex left hand nav that tells you all about London Underground, but an app that just finds your nearest tube station. Or an app that shows you the underground network.
The skills required to hand-craft a specific UI for a specific task is very different to that of a website, which is basically ‘here’s some text explaining what we want to do, and here’s the form to capture your information so we can do something, hopefully useful, with it’.
If you want to keep up, you’ll need to invest the time and money to experience these new forms yourself.
It is possible to fake having an iPhone – I’ve got the iPhone emulator on my MacBook. But a picture I saw somewhere of people making a physical mock-up of an iPad reminds me that virtual representations of a thing, be it an iPhone or a 5th century BCE Greek pot, aren’t the same as holding the real thing in your hand.
I can check that a new website looks OK in the emulator, but without having my fat finger trying to click a link, I can’t check the physical experience of interacting with a design.
Does it matter if it’s an iPhone? I’d have to say, from a position of ignorance, probably not. Android, Palm, iPhone – they’re all out of my price range equally.
My wish list mainly centres around having something to do on the train. Watching video, reading an e-book, being able to type weblog entry drafts, listening to music – if there was a small, lightweight thing in my bag that would save me just having to look out the window at bits of leafy green Cheshire going by (when I didn’t want to do that, of course), that would be lovely. But as long as the charity shops still sell paperbacks I want to read for 50p each, I can cope without this multimedia dream.
I see so many people wandering down the street, half looking where they are going, half immersed in the small world in front of them. Each one annoys me as they bimble into my path as I try and overtake them.
I don’t think anyone is after more distractions in this day and age, are they?
Sorry about the wait.
It’s finally time to start blogging again – I have missed it, even though it might have seemed otherwise. I think the ‘old’ weblog used to dart so quickly from topic to topic that anyone would have got confused about what it was for.
So this time, I’m going to try and stick to the things I (should) know about. I’ve come up with a series of categories to define what I should write about: web design, books, music, things like that. There’s always twitter for everything else.
This design is (probably) a stop-gap for now. The main thing is I wanted to concentrate on was the content, I’d like to know how to write things that are interesting to other people, not just me. And there’s still a lot I’ve got to learn about web design.
I’ve got the function of the website sorted out, but I’m not going to leave the sections apart from the blog to go stale. There will be a proper portfolio – it’s not like I’ve not got enough stuff to be added (that’s where I was for the last three years, making things).
So, I’m back. How have you been?
In between wondering if I like or don’t like the 2012 London Olympic logo, and looking at pictures of walruses with silly captions, I’ve been designing a book or two. Well, I say, book, more catalogues, as it’s end of year show time at campuses across the country, including the university I work at.
The first of these, a catalogue for a show called firing thoughts, about the relationship between ceramics and drawing, has just come back from the printers and being the professional sort of printer, they have given me a big pile of file copies. I thought I might try and make up for all the radio silence around this place by giving away three of them – they’d be worth £10 each, if you bought them from the gallery.
If you want to know what you’re getting, have a look at me modelling a copy, on the firing thoughts website.
If you’d like a copy, just e-mail me at derren dot wilson at gmail dot com with your postal address and I’ll send it out to you.
Oh yes, hell has most definitely frozen over – shorn of literally thousands of spam entries, with its own domain name, and an rss feed for just-added sandwiches, the sandwich project is back, back, back.
I’ve got literally three ideas for the site (plus the obligatory re-design), so point your browsers and go make one of the 2,665 sandwiches that make up the sandwichproject.co.uk.
I also discovered today, though I think it’s been up for ages, a google homepages widget for a ‘sandwich of the day’ from the project. I love the internets.
I’m starting to get interested in this ‘web design’ thing people keep going on about again. I haven’t got to the point where I start making lots of sketches of the very very final incarnation of this weblog, but there are some ideas bubbling up to the surface.
I’ve done a few things that I should point google to: a website for Seiko Kinoshita, a textile artist who works in Sheffield, and makes very intriguing sculptures, and I’ve updated Helen Felcey’s website as well, with a design that bears absolutely no debt at all to this work of god-like flash genius (I went all 1980s Melody Maker then).
And, sure as day follows night, there comes another floral event. Mothering Sunday is coming up at the shop – another day spent driving around trying to read people’s house numbers so I can deliver flowers to the right place. I think all UK house numbers should be in bright yellow 720pt Akzidenz Grotesk Medium on a black background or else.
Oh yes, I’ve started twittering as well. Just need to find the right background image…
Afternoon, all. Not much to report here. Still making some websites and print-y things. The shop is still going strong, and we’ve got St Valentines’ day coming up soon, as well as a wedding fair this weekend. There’s a few good pictures of our Valentines’ day window on the shop site – it’s three bits of painted mdf, which still haven’t fallen out of the ceiling, even though I was the one that installed the rails they hang off.
This year the shop’s not doing any red roses at all for Valentine’s day – not just because they’re naff, but because most red roses are forced to be ready by the 14th, and everybody wants them, so the price goes through the roof. It’ll be interesting to see how the menfolk of Poynton and surrounding areas react to our principled stand.
I missed the ‘best of 2006’ music lists by a long way, so I’ll just add one record I’ve discovered this year –Tim Steward’s solo album, How does it end?. Tim is probably unknown to you as the lead singer of the highly-rocking Brisbane band Screamfeeder, but has come up with a relaxed Sunday afternoon record that keeps growing on me. Head over to his site and try track one, two and seven to start.
Hello. I nearly forgot I had a weblog. But I haven’t left the internet behind, oh no. I’ve done the odd site or two for other people. And one for work. I had a bit of a holiday-stroke-gluttony back in September as well.
But that’s not the reason I’ve decided to flex the atrophying blog muscle. For the last couple of months Laura’s been working on a big new thing: her own flower shop. It’s seemed like a long process: finding the shop, painting it, getting all the bits and pieces you need – cash register, desk, credit card machine, and so on. I’ve been responsible for the logo and the sign (that’s why it’s still not finished), and the website, of course. This is what we’ve come up with so far for Green Earth Flowers. There’s some pictures of the shop on the website, and we’ve put some more on flickr as well. So if you’re in our delivery area, or need flowers delivered to South Manchester, please give us a try.