Meetup.com was chosen as the vehicle for encouraging this activity because it seems to strike the right balance between professional and personal interests, has a large following, is an acceptable price to start your own Meetup.com group and has a reasonably intuitive interface. This is the write up for the Designers’ Forum:

This group is for designers, film makers, graphic artists and animators in the Chester area. The focus is on creating a support network made up of freelancers and company employees who enjoy meeting other people with a similar interest in designerly activity of different sorts.

The next meetup on 12 September at Telfords Warehouse [2pm] is all about how we use the web as professionals and for personal inspiration:

The fact is, I’ve just written about Joe Biden and his health reform – I’m not the only one by a long way and there are many t-shirt designs to prove my point – also, David Cameron and his comments about Twitter and Joy Division’s re-released single. These apparent faux pas may be genuine but maybe not. Remembering that these people have reached the top of their game and experience many different types of public presentation – verbal and written to the mass media audience, it SHOULD come as a surprise that these mistakes are made. After all, these people will have PR and marketing people working for them 24 hours a day and sometimes the only way to get yourself noticed is to behave outrageously or out of character because this is the sort of news that people are interested in – serious public figures acting in fallible or indiscreet ways.

Nothing happens by mistake?

The question is – were these actions planned or not? In most cases I would suggest that nothing happens by mistake and that these mistakes are carefully orchestrated to keep the agenda afloat or at least keep the web talking about it and therefore raising the online profile of the subject matter via YouTube, Twitter or other social media. There can be an associated monetary or political value to this raised profile in obvious ways.

So, how should this apply to you as a company director, academic or even designer? Well, I would suggest that you don’t immediately publish your own agenda, promotional advertising or university paper with a raft of strategically placed foul language, ‘in jokes’ or deliberate mistakes to shock your reader but see these as examples of curious events that lead to wider coverage because of their unconventional nature. That is all. It is all about the wider coverage and [potentially] the way some of these examples may or may not have been carefully orchestrated.

If a blogger wants to get noticed within their subject area then the challenge is to write something about a subject that goes against or intelligently challenges the understood norm. The key here is writing on a very sophisticated or intelligent level and yet presenting an argument clearly and accurately but then bringing the reader round to another agenda or point of view in more subtle ways – which may simply be by allowing user comments to reflect the other part of an arguement. A YouTube video that recently went viral is Mental Designers Graphic Designer Vs Client video that represented comments that every designer had heard from potential clients at some point in their career – this is not so much following the apparent mistake examples already given but is a clever way of shocking people to get the message across – a message that contains many levels of angst and truth.

I recently created a short news item for the Drawing Research Network called 6 Digital Drawing Experiments. This was essentially a collection of some of the research I had done into drawing and online experiments. When I say research, I mean the kind of informal searching for new and interesting design related websites I find by subscribing to design related RSS feeds through Google Reader and other paths and other related sites this may lead me to – I regularly scour the web for new and inspiring methods of digital drawing to learn from.

Why give free advice?

Why did I volunteer to freely spend this time providing others with content? Well, its simple and can be explained in 3 points that apply to blogs, forums or simply commenting upon someone elses work:

Reference. There is nothing like getting your head around a topic and clarifying your thoughts by writing them down – especially when there is potentially a large readership should the web community decide it is of value. The article is written both for my own benefit and the benefit of others interested in this area too.

Status. Do people rate what I have written? Well, maybe they want to see more of the same quality and may click on my own sites to see what else I do in the field of design – therefore this is an investment in potential future clients as well as impressing current clients who want to see that you are actively keeping up with what is going on in the world.

Community. Are there others out there who want to form collaborations, swap ideas or share similar information? By contributing to relevant blogs you can help connect with others.

What guidelines should I apply to my contributions?

Quality. Only create articles that you know are accurate, informative and contain a reasonable level of detail on the subject you are describing – ask yourself “What do I expect my readers to gain from this article? What insight or new information am I bringing to them? Could I assist presentation by using video or images or should the text be the only medium to convey the message. This sounds like common sense but there are many blogs out there full of very bland uninformative articles. Simplicity is good – over simplifying the content is not good.

Quantity. Establish an approximate and suitable typical interval between your articles. I typically leave around 2-3 weeks between each article on this blog as I feel it is healthy to stop and think about design objectively at these intervals. I learn and I hopefully help people to gain insight from my experiences and knowledge.

Objectivity. Having a personal agenda, opinion and direction is good but watch what you say online as this can be misinterpreted or simply not understood – at worst you could gain a bad reputation or simply be ignored altogether. I always assume I am talking to one of my clients meaning that my focus is upon helping them to understand a design related concept, acting professionally and ultimately gaining their respect.

Where to start?

The best way to START contributing is to STOP. Stop and look around at the way others are contributing and the types of contributions they are making to online conversation. This is useful for gaining an idea of what readers find valuable, the conventions for writing for different audiences and for forums or Twitter rather than blogs [or other typical web technologies] and the typical style of content. Once you feel comfortable and passionate about contributing then go ahead. If you don t feel like writing a whole article you may feel inspired to write a short response in a comments box on the site.

With the Adobe® AIR® runtime, you can deliver branded rich Internet applications outside the browser that give you a closer connection to your customer. Adobe AIR uses the same proven, cost-effective technologies used to build web applications, so development and deployment is rapid and low risk. You can use your existing web development resources to create engaging, branded applications that run on all major desktop operating systems. -Adobe Website

Essentially Adobe have created a way of creating tools that operate independent of browsers but use the same sort of technologies and resources developed for your website – the most typical use being the creation of Desktop Applications where the user can download the AIR® application and interact / link to data from your own website such as databases or RSS feeds. With a variety of free and very useful apps available created with this system it seems that the underated Adobe AIR® is definitely worth a look for designers, academics, photographers and business users.

Small, Compact and Interactive

Below is a brief video outlining some of the features of Adobe Kuler® – an application created with AIR® for selecting, choosing and applying colour to vectors and bitmaps either independently or as part of the creation of design work within Illustrator. The video demonstrates how Kuler can integrate into CS3 software or at its most basic level it will provide a great talking point for both clients and designers for assessing the colour palette they currently use or planning a new colour scheme.

Other AIR Applications

Adobe have provided a useful summary of the AIR® system on their website. For a summary of some of the best applications you could visit this summary of the “30 Extremely Useful Air Applications for Web Designers” – a useful resource for anyone involved in the design process which includes the Adobe Kuler application. It is also worth looking at Adobe’s own Marketplace for AIR® applications too.

‘Very Special’ Effects

The video below demonstrates how Adobes Design software has been used to create some of the elements in the film including the use of Photoshop to create some of the textures seen on the creatures, Premier Pro used to piece together demonstration material [though they skirt around the fact that Avid systems will have been used for the final production] and Lightroom to preview and categorise the image libraries created for the film.

Review

Cameron has undoubtedly created a masterpiece of special effects that will lead a new era of film makers into the next decade. The story is unashamedly [by Cameron's own admission] a lame framework with which he can hang the story together and there are many subtexts – not only of war, destruction driven superpowers ploughing their way through indigenous populations – also a spiritual, new age theme of ‘mother-earth’ fighting back at the forces trying to destroy her. However, possibly unintentionally, there is another theme at work here and something that has been an ugly side to the internet for many years now…..that people online may not be what they seem. I wonder if all those abusive comments on YouTube and other social media would actually be said to people face-to-face in the physical world? In Avatar the power difference here is physical in that the user is a courageous [yet initially misguided] soldier injured and unable to walk.

Conclusion