It drives me nuts. We all know that you just got done reading “Top 10 Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Super Awesome New Blog in Under 20 days Without Spending a Dime So That Your Blog becomes The Focus of My Next Top 10 List and Skyrockets you to Fame”

We get it that guy told you that part of your strategy should be comment often and everywhere. But seriously I can follow your slimy trail around the internet for days. You are the reason that I stop just short of getting into an engaging conversation on a well written article. You litter the comment area of what used to be some of my favorite blogs and I see you time and time again.

Yes please do comment, people like to get involved with someone that get’s involved but add something worthwhile. At the very least try to write a complete sentence and stop using cut and paste.

Don’t get me wrong I to am guilty of leaving the occasional weak comment from time to time just to pat the author on the back and let them know that I am impressed with their article, but for god sake you are relentless. You never have anything intelligent to add to the conversation, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if you have found a way to harness the power of the auto DM and utilize it in your comment strategy.

Please for the sake of the rest of us who, from time to time, would actually like to get involved in a halfway decent conversation over a well written article, go back to MySpaz click Add Friend 200 times and call it a day.

The entire site is beautiful, but I was particularly impressed by the genius idea you will see illustrated below. An end user or casual browser such as myself can very easily narrow projects by discipline using the navigation to the left. For instance if you click “web & interface design” the portfolio is narrowed to only those selections matching the criteria. The matching pieces remain at 100% visibility while the pieces that do not fit the criteria sit quietly behind a darkened overlay. All pieces remain completely interactive and can be viewed at the click of a mouse. On click a full size image gently slides down into view with a short client/project brief, again keeping all of the additional portfolio pieces in view while focusing on the chosen piece.

This type of creative thinking and innovation is really what motivates me to keep at it day after day.

See site www.synthview.com

Design is where science and art break even.
— Robin Mathew

I realize the photo is not the best quality but I promised to share the result so without having the time to set up decent lighting, here it is. The result is encouraging and overall it was a fun project to work on, pretty sure there will be more to come in the future.

I really enjoyed participating in this questionnaire as it gives me yet another outlet to share some of my experience and thoughts, this time focusing on developing a blog and the writing process. As I state several times throughout the brief questionnaire, that is really what it is all about for me.

I highly recommend checking out both Design Feaster and Design Feast as well. Some very insightful and enjoyable writing being done here, a wonderful and much needed resource for the design community.

A special thanks to Nate Burgos of Design Feast for allowing me to participate.

You can also follow Design Feast on Twitter

I will upload some final shots once it comes in, only if it turns out halfway decent.

But I do want to make a quick point or two.

Some odd years ago a little thing called the iPhone was released. For some it was the most amazing creation next to the planet earth itself, others didn’t quite understand what they were looking at and still others laughed and shrugged it off.

Today my mom has one. She’s a PC.

I don’t think it is the product itself that we need to be looking at, I think the opportunities that it presents to Apple and the people who use it are going to have greater impact.

To comment on one of the major reactions I have seen thus far.

It looks like an enlarged iPhone. – Sure you were expecting something ridiculously innovative, something new, something different. But why? This new device by far beats anything currently on the market and anything that has been attempted in the past. To me the fact that it is an overgrown iPhone means one thing, it’s going to work and it’s going to work well.

On to my random thought – opportunity in education.

Imagine upon entering college your tuition includes the purchase of an iPad. Each semester upon registering for classes, included in your tuition is a book subscription. This subscription pricing is based on number of credits, not the actual book pricing off the shelf.

While registering all of your books are automatically selected and packaged as one download, ready for you at any time. Now instead of lugging around 10 odd size books to class each day you will carry one sleek, lightweight instrument.

You can mark, annotate and highlight your books at will with no repercussions come book turn in time, because there is no longer a book turn in.

Sure that means that some of the money you were used to getting back at the end of each semester disappears, but with a subscription package such as that mentioned above, they have also figured out a way to cut the cost of books in half.

Let’s be honest, when is that last time they gave you full price on returned books? I do think however that something of this nature would present interesting opportunities – book trade apps perhaps.

So not only has the weight of ten odd books and manuals been eliminated, but the need to carry a slew of notepads calendars etc has been replace. Essentially you have one tool that is absolutely necessary for you to attend class. The list of apps and tools useful to the average college student will only grow from there.

Sure there will still be course that require instruments and apparatus that can not be packaged neatly on the iPad, but a large majority of the courses you attend, especially during the first two years, can be.

I am sure there are holes in this idea but like I said, just a random thought.

I for one can not wait to see how the iPad effects everyday life. Will it be as influential as the iPhone has been?

What do you think?

Inspired by a family member who, while discussing a project we will be working on together, pulled out the “artistic” card. I got to thinking, if don’t have my own family convinced that what I do is a bit more than adding embellishment or being artistic, then why should I expect my client (our clients) to understand it for more than that.

How can we go about explaining the basics of what we do using general ideas and concepts? How can we do this outside of the client/designer interaction?

The point would not be to teach a client how you might go about calculating line-height or what exact steps you might put into developing the check out process for a complex shopping cart system as you might attempt to do in educating other designers or developers. The point would be to illustrate that just as an electrician wires an extravegant home theater system or an engineer develops a complex road system, we as designers use much more than artistic ability to solve complex problems and develop best routes.

It takes time to learn principles and foundations. It takes careful study of what does and does not work, drawing on experience in the field. It involves continuing education in both what has already been discovered and the technologies being developed in the future.

More importantly it takes the application of the above to careful research and discovery of the problem at hand to develop the best solution.

It is not just a matter of having an eye for it or applying your artistic qualities to a solution, it is careful thought out calculation.

Anyhow my point was not to get into a long discussion about what design is and is not, rather to raise the question of how we might help others to gain a better understanding of the designers job or what it is that we do on a daily basis. In turn making out jobs and possibly our live a little easier, or at least more understood.

(I am just looking for general ideas here, examples would be great to if you happen to leave a comment.)

… design “isn’t about cosmetics, pixel-pushing, and button placement. It’s holistic and it’s everyone’s concern, not just the realm of ‘artistic’ types.”

— Peter Merholz, President of Adaptive Path
(qtd. “10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design” – Mashable.com)

I’m afraid that in a few years Webdesign is nothing more than: Download -> Fill With Content -> Upload -> Get Fame.

Quote taken from the Drawar Forums written by username: Flowrush, a student of Communication and Multimedia Design

While I might not include fame as a definite, quite often I find myself thinking about were web design is headed and noting the above as one of the possible outcomes. I do not see this as the only avenue we will head down in years to come but I do see it as a major factor in determining the public perception of design as a profession as well as the way in which one practices and makes a living from the practice of.

What will it mean to be a designer, specifically a web designer or developer a year or five from now?

I have my own theories, ideas and moral dilemmas concerning the topic and will perhaps expand on them in future articles, but a comment like this really makes me think.

Where do you see things heading?