Design-Design » collaboration

Designers Forum

Peter Simcoe — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:51:01 +0000

The aims and objectives of Designers’ Forum are to encourage artists, designers and musicians to meet, share information and potentially collaborate on design projects on a formal or informal basis. My experience of Business Link, On Course Innovation and E-Business Events in the East Midlands [2003 - 2009] were generally positive and it would be great to bring these positive experiences to a group of people in creative industries in and around Chester.

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:

Dear Designers, Artists and those of the media persuasion of one sort or another,

Another month, another meetup. This time on 12 September at the same venue, Telfords Warehouse at 2pm! Last time it worked well as it was reasonably quiet and a very pleasant atmosphere to discuss art, design and web related ideas. I think that, from the feedback I have received, that it was useful and a promising start to what could be a regular thing with hopefully an ever expanding group of photographers, Photoshop experts, marketing people, designers, musicians, painters and artists of other pursuasions.

My proposal for September’s meetup is that we look at how we use the web and technology for our creative pursuits both professionally and personally.

Designers – how does the web provide you with additional support and tools?
Musicians – what can be gained from a web connection?
Traditional painters – do you use the web and if so how?
Photoshop user – what are the best tools, facilities and support sites on offer?

These are things to consider before coming to the next meeting. Hopefully we can all leave with some new ideas, inspiration and places to visit on the web to excite and inspire! Please download the Designers-Forum Web overview PDF and use it to jot down some ideas related to the professional and personal sites discussed.

Contributing Constructively

Peter Simcoe — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:53:54 +0000

With the Web 2.0 explosion of interactivity and the potential to make your voice heard comes a challenge for all to be involved with online communities in their particular academic or industrial profession. Quality contributions to an online discussion can get you noticed as much as print or web advertising [both being very expensive] if you target the right audience with the right message. Also, the web is more democratic as a medium – the theory being that, if everyone in a community has a voice [and a PC] then those with something to say that really matters will eventually get heard or discovered independent of their status in their individual interests or professions. That’s the theory anyway.

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.

Tip

Remember that the web has a good memory. If you decide to criticise others then this should be done in a professional manner and assume that your comments are permanent. Excessive or malicious criticism is never respectable and if you are that critical then maybe you should move on in your reading or remove the RSS feed from Google Reader altogether! It’s all about professional conduct and doing to others as you would wish them to do to you really – if it needs explaining further then you probably shouldn’t be contributing to blogs or forums

Good Luck!

10 Free Useful Online Tools

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:08:07 +0000

Remember The Milk – is a great FREE online tool for creating to do lists that can be shared between you and your colleague, client and designer. In fact, you can even send each other jobs and tasks if you want to cause friction This tool can be integrated into the Google home page, accessed by mobile phone and used in a whole browser window. Daily reminders are sent in list form which can be very handy when there are many tasks building up in a month.

iGoogle as a web browser homepage – every time my browser opens or I use the home button the Simcoemedia Google page is shown. To create your account simply login / create a Google account then edit the settings for displaying your content by ADDING items. It is easy to set up and provides an informative and constantly updated dashboard for your business.

Xmarks – a great FREE plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer web browsers. User’s bookmarks will automatically synchronise between all computers running the Xmarks plugin and logged into the same account. This is particularly useful if you have more than one computer for your browsing and general business – you may have an office and home machine or a main workstation and a netbook that can synchronise to avoid constant updating between browsers.

YouSendIt – is a useful program designed to help you send large files without blocking up someones email account or needing to set up tricky FTP sites. Its simple and you can send files up to 100Mb without signing inl. Paying customers can send up to 2Gb per upload with masses of FTP space and plenty of happy customers who can easily access their emails [ie you have not filled their inbox with your data!] and the file you’ve sent them!

FreeMind – another FREE download that is great for formalising your spider diagrams, mind maps, brain-dumps [or whatever you like to call them] for presentation or submission purposes. Once the initial learning curve is overcome then creating diagrams is relatively straight forward, with a variety of options for highlighting, adjusting text, creating lists and nodes and other techniques for communicating your lateral thinking. Diagrams can be exported to PDF and various bitmap formats such as JPEG, BMP etc.

Skype – theres not too much you cannot do with Skype these days and I find it most useful when sharing my design work on screen whilst talking to my client on Skype at the same time. It is FREE to use and Skype to Skype calls cost nothing – which is particularly relevant when you consider that any phone with Skype, such as many of the 3 phones, can make and receive these calls for FREE also. It is also a great replacement for a landline at around £4 / month for any UK landline – but only if you have a speedy connection to the internet otherwise this system can create embarrassing lags in those business conversations when there is high traffic volume.

Quicktime – if you have some digital video input as raw video via Firewire and just need a quick edit and professionally compressed look to your final output then you could do worse than spend the £25 Quicktime are demanding from you for a license to access Quicktime Pro. One of the best features of Quicktime Pro is the excellent H.264 Codec that really shrinks your video size down but maintains high quality output. If nothing else, you should invest in this piece of software for that Codec alone. Files are easily accessed from a PC or Mac with Quicktime installed.

Google Reader – Another part of the Google suite of free online products which basically collects the latest news from all of your favourite sites without you needing to visit those sites to check out the headlines. Personally, I keep up to date with the world of design through online RSS feeds grouped together in Reader, grouped into an easy to read format and constantly updated. This can save alot of surf time and effort to get the news you really want to read.

OpenOffice – Most people know about Open Office now, but in case you do not – it is a free suite of office programs very similar and compatible with Microsoft’s Word, Excel, Access and Powerpoint products. There are occassionally a few compatibility or inconsistency issues but generally this makes a great alternative to shelling out £400 for the Microsoft products.

Acrobat.com – Adobe have created some excellent design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. They have also created a website where the user has access to a variety of media production related tools including PDF conversion for those without Acrobat Standard or Professional, file sharing where a massive 5Gb file can be uploaded, ConnectNow for screensharing and professional online meetings and Buzzword, a document writer. PDF conversion requires payment to Adobe but other services are FREE.

CamStudio – is a FREE screen capture tool. With this free download you can record your on a computer screen then output a file containing video to a compressed file for delivery over the network. To put it simply, this is a great tool for creating a series of software training videos for your business! Beware though – lengthy screen captures from your PC will create large files. You might want to consider paying for a YouSendIt.com account if you want to create and send this sort of data.

Google Wave

Peter Simcoe — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:11:20 +0000

Google Wave is the next big thing from Google. It is built upon the Google Web Toolkit – a collection of modules that already provide us with maps, spell checkers, search engines and other free web tools – and makes a leap from our current habits and uses to a new method of working and socialising with each other via the net.

In Simple Terms

Google Wave is in simplistic terms a development of email and messaging systems – a stream of information that can be interacted with in ways that make the information more ‘live’ and efficient. This is oversimplifying what is a development that could improve our online productivity considerably. Below are a few of the key features of Google Wave:

The system uses familiar interfaces and ideas when using email, messaging and word processing systems and therefore there is no need to relearn some of the basic techniques when interacting with Wave. When a participant edits or adds comments to a single Wave [or stream of information], the Wave will be moved to the top of the inbox ready for review. Wave becomes a tree structure of interactivity where certain participants in a stream of discussion can break off into another discussion.

Live Interactivity

A key feature of Wave is that as information is typed into the browser, unlike Skype, Instant Messenger and other IM systems, the individual keystrokes are shown as they happen with minimal delay over broadband connections. To avoid embarrassment or if a sentence needs to be more carefully crafted there is the option to bypass the live typing feature where necessary.

When a Wave discussion is occurring and live conversations between several participants is being recorded it is possible for all involved to be able to edit on the fly. If a series of comments are being written these can be changed as they are being written by other participants.

Embedding In Blog Style

It is possible to embed entire Waves into web pages. Put in oversimplified terms – if Google Wave allows more efficient interactivity between groups of people wanting to communicate ideas instantly then embedding a Wave is simply a case of allowing a standard web page to show this interactivity as it happens. This is in a similar way to the way Google Maps can be embedded into a standard web page easily.

Mobile Friendly

Google Wave will be available for mobile phones including Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone allowing mobile participation and interactivity. You can see a demonstration of how this will work [though its not fully working] at 25m 25sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window]

Finding, Filtering and Translating

Another useful feature of Wave is that the user can essentially filter out the factual elements of a discussion and sent to a Wiki or other document so as knowledge is built up around a subject it can be stored and retrieved easily. Eventually Google expects that Spreadsheets and Presentation Tools will be built around the Wave system to reduce time needed to transfer information across to other systems.

Google Wave can support the use of different languages [and presumably the translation of these on the fly]. Hebrew and Chinese characters are demonstrated in the YouTube video below.

Uploading Images

Wave can handle uploading of images to the server and as these images are uploaded to the Wave conversation thumbnails are quickly generated to show other participants on the network what images are being processed. The image labels can easily be edited by the group / participants. A demo of this is shown at 35min 20sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window]

Tagging Waves

Tags are used to organise Waves and allow users / participants to search for different Waves on the system as they build up. This is similar to searching for emails in an email archive. A demo of this is seen at 40min 26sec. Waves can also be cross linked – a link to another wave can be inserted into a wave and therefore cross linking is possible. See this at 40min 39sec on the Google Wave demo video [links to YouTube in a new window].

Advanced Spelling and Other Toolkit Modules

Advanced spelling systems from Google Web Toolkit are integrated and there is an excellent example of how advanced this has become at 44min 15sec. Google have cute names for their various toolkit modules including Bloggy [for inserting Wave as a blog], Linky [intelligent method for inserting links] and Spelly. These all happen server side which means that information is all processed quickly on the server then the results transmitted over the web to the client computer [where the user sees the result].

Polling Systems and Collaboration

At 48min 56sec an interesting poll system is demonstrated where users / participants can vote or indicate YES / NO / MAYBE interest live on the site. As people change their mind or vote the results are displayed in lists and graphs for analysis.

Games and Progress

At 51mins 42sec Google staff demonstrate Wave being used for interactive games and demonstrate the progress bar that highlights how the entire Wave progresses from its origins of a single stream of information and at 52mins 42sec a demonstration of how Google Maps can be used to demonstrate interest in a holiday location is shown. Google hopes and anticipates that their examples are only a basic venture into the endless possibilities of what could be achieved with the system.

There are several other systems demonstrated toward the end of the presentation but essentially the features listed above would provide most effective for business and social development. Google Wave is currently in the final phases of development and a demo version of the system will be made available to a limited group of users in the near future. For the moment we just need to be patient before this exciting new technology creeps into mainstream workflow and daily activity.

Google Wave: A Brief Overview [8min]

This is for the less programmer orientated viewer who may want an overview of what Google Wave can do for their business, academic project or social interaction!

Full Google Wave Demo [1h20min]

Here is the full Google Wave demo before a live audience. Most of it goes according to plan. Recommended for those with both a programming interest, patience and a reasonable understanding of technical terms for the 1.5 hour demo [and general Google banter]. If this doesn’t sound like you then go with the overview above!

A Brief Introduction to Design-Design

Peter Simcoe — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:00:47 +0000

Designing is often seen by designers as a one sided process where the designer simply tells the client how the end product should be because “they are the designer” whereas the client “doesn t really know what they want or why”. The assumption of an ‘ignorant client’ is simply not necessary, appropriate or an attitude that will lead to healthy productive relationships on either side.

The aim of this blog, news page, community magazine or whatever you would call it, is to involve and inform the client of the emergence of new ideas, design techniques, styles, equipment and technologies in an easy to understand summary so an informed decision can be made regarding the incorporation of these ideas and techniques into their media design strategy. When I use the words “media design strategy” – I am refering to a way of describing the plan of action a business, institution or artist may have for generating different types of media to promote ideas, sell products or store information.

To put it in more simple terms – this website is about informing clients interested in employing a designer about the options, ideas and technologies currently available to the media design and production industries.

Some of the subjects and technologies you can expect to be covered are listed below – these are just a taster and if you have any suggestions make sure you leave them in the comment area at the bottom of the page or email me at design@design-design.co.uk and don’t forget to subscribe to the Design-Design RSS Feed.

1. Is Social Media really any good for your business?
2. Turning the tables – designers and CSS
3. How RSS feeds can sell your business
4. Managing projects and pleasing clients
5. Accountants – love ‘em or hate ‘em
6. Travel and Inspiration
7. Making your online presence felt – multimedia, blogs, CMS
8. Print vs Web – a brief study into the advantages
9. Networking and social interaction for designers
10. Why use a framework for your site and why WordPress?
11. How to surprise and inspire your designer with your own ideas
12. When to talk to your client?
13. Partnerships between academia and industry
14. Working nine to five?
15. Why should you, the client, care about blogging?
16. When to use stock libraries for images, video and sound?
17. How Google Won The Net
18. Social media at work: Is Facebook good for business?
19. A clients guide to getting a great image to publish on their site
20. Is business stationery redundant?