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.

Simcoemedia: I love playing with my new giant rotating tag-cloud. I’m happy when its tag-cloudy http://www.design-design.co.uk/the-cloud/

Simcoemedia: The Drawing Research Network is officially live and we need to keep up the momentum on new members http://drawing-research-network.org.uk

Simcoemedia: Here’s a useful piece of free web-based software for creating a wiki – http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

Simcoemedia: It’s been two years since I got this little gem from Havana in Cuba – http://bit.ly/cCmYyf – definitely a favourite.

Simcoemedia: [ThemeForest] Dany’s Blossomsoft WP theme looks great for a wide range of design and corporates. Thanks for letting me know about that one.

Policy

Have a company policy, even as a sole trader, in the way that files are stored, backed up and deleted. Deleting your files can be a way of keeping your system healthy and running at optimum speed. There are many ways to reduce efficiency on your hard drive including letting temporary files build up, setting restore points too often, installing programs you will never use or simply clogging up the desktop with documents, shortcuts and other assorted items!

My own company policy is to install software onto my PC only and to use an external 320Gb Hard Disk Drive [HDD] for data and a copy of this drive on a portable HDD for working on the move as you never know when project information will be needed on the road. Every 6 months I backup the previous 6 months of data to DVD+R discs. This is one example of the frequency of backup to optical media and you may wish to backup sooner – it depends on your attitude to risk and your own hardware.

Is Deleting Permanent?

Deleting your files with no backup can be remedied if the problem is identified relatively quickly and by relatively quickly we are talking about a couple of hours. Essentially there are a variety of programs that will allow the user to undelete or restore deleted files. I recently evaluated Piriform’s Recuva – a free download designed to perform the task of recovering ‘lost data’ and the results were that the program delivers a no-frills solution to recovering your data. It is worth considering some of the paid solutions to this problem for those people who need more guidance and assistance with separating their files into original folders as this is a function that Recuva will not perform. Other examples of data recovery files I have found from searching the net [and have not tested!] are:

• RecoverMyFiles
• PCTools
  

Storage Methods Overview

It is important to be aware that heat, dust, electromagnetic fields and other physical elements are out to ruin your data so be aware of the pro’s and con’s of storing your information on:

• Tape Drive where data is reasonably stable, stored in mass but can be damaged by magnetic fields and is very slow to retrieve. Many companies use this as a once-a-day process to backup the days work from all users in the office as it is a way to comprehensively collect massive amounts of data, usually in an automated process, for retrieval should any data from individual users be lost. Cost per Megabyte: low.
• Cloud Storage is becoming more popular. This is where your information is stored on the internet and can be retrieved by logging in to your server via a web browser. Typical examples would be www.acrobat.com from Adobe, Skydrive from MSN or Dropbox – all of whom offer free [or at least low cost], worldwide access to your data. Bandwidth speeds and hacking issues are the biggest concerns here and its not really an ideal way to store secret or confidential information – however, this is a useful tool for non-essential, low security class information when on the move.
• Internal Hard Disk Drive where data can be quickly retrieved and written to but can also be easily damaged by the HDD reader head crashing onto the disk if suddenly impacted eg in a laptop. Cost per Megabyte: medium. Most users use a HDD for local single user purposes only before backing up onto tape or other secure media. Hard Disk Drives now run into Terabytes of storage.
• External Hard Disk Drive has many of the features and problems of normal HDD’s but they need to be slightly more resilient to knocks, drops and loading. They are of course, still very fragile but provide users with a massive amount of storage in what is now a pocket sized item. Great for taking large video, audio or other media files on the road.
• Blu Ray and standard DVD+R or -R are very useful for creating additional backups of work on individual projects so that should tape or HDD fail, there is always another type of media that may have survived. I tend to find that I break down my file system to web, print and other document discs – I then refer to the recording date of the disc and find any information that relates to files created after that point.
• Pen Drive is a convenient way to transfer your files for projects or demonstrations with these small chip based devices providing on average around 16 or 32Gb of data storage in a keyring sized item
• Paper is the least favoured in the modern office. It would be great if we could truely generate the paperless office but we still need proofs, backups of accounts and other important document on yet another medium that will withstand different pressure from the elements.

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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.

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Does it have any use for business users? Well, I am as skeptical as anyone that Twitter has any use at all in the business world….however, I am currently experimenting with the social networking site to see if I can generate any additional interest in my design blog [here] or my portfolio website at www.simcoe.co.uk.

Three Simple Rules

My recommendation, if you want to use Twitter for business, is to follow these three simple rules:

• Have something of use to say to your followers. Make it relevant, interesting and professional and preferably relevant to some quality research or finding. As a business professional it is important to find out the facts and figures about your industry on a daily basis, note important events in the diary such as trade shows, read quality news or watch relevant documentaries. If you’re serious in business then finding something you’ve discovered that is of value to your listeners, even just once everyday,  should be no problem at all.
• Only Retweet [publish someone elses Tweet to your own readers] if you think that it is absolutely necessary that your audience knows about it. We live in a generation where people express their creativity by collecting and displaying other people’s creative expertise as a montage eg MySpace. Your audience needs to trust that they are not just getting a random retweet plucked from the general steady stream of drivel because you’ve got nothing to say.
• Keep it professional. We’re not all interested in Steven Fry’s infinitely detailed details. We don’t want to hear about the great curry you had last night or how you’re now suffering the consequences. Quality, facts, informed opinion and valuable expression are the key to success as far as I can tell. I measure this by the way people I trust seem to be using the system and what I have gained professionally from this.

Useful Links

Below are some useful links for Twitter users:

• http://listorious.com/tags – is a great way to search for Twitter users based upon keywords or tags. If you are interested in designing or photography, simply follow the relevant tags to find users with similar interests. Maybe they have something useful to share? Maybe not.

• http://www.tweetdeck.com/ – here you can download a desktop based tool called Tweetdeck

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“Through dpBestflow, we are striving to make best practices in digital photography readily accessible to all professional photographers, no matter what their level or working style” – Project Director Richard Anderson.

“dpBestflow helps translate the intricacies of preserving digital images into useful information that can be incorporated into everyday workflow habits.” – Senior Project Manager Peter Krogh

You can see the results of their work atwww.dpbestflow.org where the glossary is worth scanning through as a matter of interest or to find out about those acronyms you just did not understand in the handbooks! You can also download the Quick Reference guide as a summary of the information they have on their site – a single page summary of the most important info.

‘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

If a company requires a website and the Wordpress engine is chosen for this purpose then there are several things to consider:

Advantages

• Free open source code available for personal or commercial use – Wordpress has been adapted for a more Content Managed System approach in recent years which allows the creation of whole websites using the system.
• Support from Wordpress.org in terms of software updates and upgrades
• Support from a global Wordpress community in the form of forums and template designers
• Use of strict, high quality coding standards compliant with all major browsers
• Ability to create additional functionality through the use of plugins

Disadvantages

• A good level of CSS knowledge and basic Photoshop and PHP [at least] are required to change and update a template
• Some groups claim that it is not a true CMS system as its primary development purpose was for weblogging or blogging

If you are looking to create a website for your company, organisation or academic project then Wordpress is worth a look. Be aware that to create an individual feel to your site, it will require additional time and effort from a programmer and designer There are a variety of templates out there which will save a designer time but the trick is to apply these templates whilst remaining true to your company identity. You can see some examples of Wordpress sites at www.simcoe.co.uk.

Templates

Popular sites for downloading templates are:

http://www.themeforest.net
http://wpremix.com
http://templatic.com

Most of the time you will only require a single user license for which you will normally pay between $30 and $75 [$US]. Its worth browsing these templates to see what Wordpress can actually do for you and what it has helped create already.

A mini-website on a budget of $0.00

If you re on a budget or simply want to try the system out have a look at www.wordpress.com and sign up for an account. You can blog for free but there are a limited number of templates available to you and it is not as flexible as the version you download from www.wordpress.org and upload to your own server such as those purchased at 34sp.com.

If you want to see a brief video on signing up go to Wordpress.TV and find out more. In addition, this YouTube video has been useful to some people too.

Community

This is just an aside really, but I’ve recently discovered BuddyPress for Wordpress MultiUser which, if you are creating a site for a group or groups of like minded people, allows contribution to different group blogs or even hosting of personal blogs on the same server with the main site acting as an overview of sitewide activity. I have found that the BP Groupblog is a very useful part of this community based plugin. BuddyPress is excellent – but as of December 2009 seems to lack the ability to upload individual avatars for users. This will hopefully be resolved in a near-future update!

Conclusion

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I will be looking at the uses of Twitter for business in the near future so watch this space.