Unless you’re familiar with American addresses, 926 East McLemore Avenue may not mean an awful lot to you, but when you discover the address is in Memphis Tennesee and has welcomed the likes of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Booker T. & The M.G.’s, you’ll realise 926 East McLemore Avenue is the home of Stax.

Sadly, the studios are no longer there, but the Stax Museum of American Soul Music gives us the history of Stax and it’s incredible musical legacy. The Satellite record shop attached to the Museum, is a reminder of the golden days of the vinyl record shop and the pleasure of buying the latest releases from some of the label’s most talented artists.

Stax represents more than just a record label though, with a backdrop of civil unrest in the US at the time, Stax represented a sanctuary of calm for it’s artists, and broke down the oppressive segregation going on outside it’s doors. Black and white musicians collaborated to produce some of the finest music of the time.

I really enjoyed my visit to the Museum and highly recommend a visit if you’re in Memphis.

The time it seems has come to take the Javascript ‘bull by the horns’ and learn this most essential (if not hugely intuitive to me) scripting language. Over the last few years I’ve flirted with books, and dipped my toes into various courses, but never really felt comfortable around the code. I sometimes look at a bit of Javascript and think, “Yes, I know what that does”, only to realise that if I look away for a second I would have no idea how to write something that does the same thing.

The answer to this is of course is to learn javascript from the bottom up. I know there are libraries like JQuery and MooTools, but I’ve a feeling there’s probably no substitute for rolling my sleeves up and starting at “Hello World!”, then keep on going until I’m a master. So here goes. Hopefully what will follow in the coming weeks and months will be a series of lightbulb moments culminating in membership of the Javascript Hall of Fame. Failing that, a slightly better understanding of how it works and the ability to cobble together a few things together with the confidence that it will work, would probably also be acceptable.

alert (“Here goes nothing!”);

Here are some fantastic Bob Dylan posters that date to the original Isle of Wight festivals in the late 60′s and early 70′s. It’s no secret I’m a big Dylan fan and I particularly like these for the way they look and present Dylan as the artist he was at the time.

Today is oneonedayfordesign.org day an open, global dialogue on the meaning and future of design, and on the meaning and future of professional design associations. Designers are sharing their thoughts and ideas and some really interesting debates are being had.

I’m following the discussion with interest and I think it’s a really healthy thing for the design community to involve themselves with. The thing that interests me the most about this whole day though is how Twitter is being used as the forum for debate. It’s focussing people’s thoughts and concentrating the debate and ideas that are being shared. Hopefully what will come out of today will be a renewed interest in the future of design and those involved will push forward with their ideas, for the discipline that I feel equally as passionate about.

My contribution to the debate was “For me, design is about communicating good ideas simply. Better communication, ultimately means a better world.” This is something I believe passionately. As a designer I can make the visual world more beautiful while at the same time communicate ideas that others can engage and believe in.

I’ve recently bought the excellent new book by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico, Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World’s Great Graphic Designers, and it’s reminded me just how important a sketchbook is, as a record of your visual thoughts and ideas.

I’ve kept a notebook of one description or another since I left University, but it’s really only been my written thoughts, or lists and ideas that require further development. I’ve never visually developed these ideas, so I’ve missed an important part of the early stages of idea creation. What Graphic shows so beautifully, is the endless possibilities that a sketchbook offers, and it’s immediately inspired me to keep a visual sketchbook again.

I consider my website and blog a ‘public sketchbook’. It’s a place I share my thoughts and ideas with the world and is primarily there for me to learn about the web and how I my thoughts and ideas are consumed by others. What I publish to my ‘public sketchbook’ though is subject to some level of censorship. I’m more thoughtful and careful about what I share, and I ensure that the quality of the idea or thought is given due care. This brings a level of restraint though, so unless I’m absolutely happy with what I publish, it sits unseen and private. The question that this poses of course is, if an idea or thought is not shared then does it exist? A somewhat lofty concept given this post is about keeping a sketchbook, but here is my point. Keeping a sketchbook is a safe place to play, and it will free me from the self-conciousness that a formal blog post creates. My belief is that by being more free to experiment and be fearless, the quality of my ideas will improve. They will evolve and exist for as long as it takes for them to develop and eventually I will be able to execute them formally, and publish to a wider audience. I will then not only have the finished piece of communication, but also supporting material that will document my processes. (Incidently the design process and how I design, is also one of my great passions, so I will no doubt write much more about this in the coming months).

What buying Graphic has shown me is that my rediscovery of what graphic design is, and what being a graphic designer means, is much more exciting than I ever imagined it would be. In time I will no doubt show some of what I experiment and create in my sketchbooks too, but no doubt what I show, will still be subject to some level of self-concious, self-censorship.

In a recent tweet by Jon Tan, he referenced an idea by Chris Shiflett, a colleague of his at Analog. Chris’s idea is to encourage designers and developers into a blog reveival. The increase of the use of twitter in the past few years, has moved debates away from blogs and in his view “there are fewer quality conversations and debates taking place as a result of this transition”.
I have to agree with him. Twitter is great, and I learn or see something new every day by being an active user, but to engage in an issue in more detail you always have to follow links to blogs or websites. The only issue being that these links are often few and far between.

Chris’s idea is simple

1. Write a post called Ideas of March.
2. List some of the reasons you like blogs.
3. Pledge to blog more the rest of the month.
4. Share your thoughts on Twitter with the #ideasofmarch hashtag.

I have of late started to blog more, so this initiative has come at a perfect time. I’m rediscovering my graphic design roots so I’m engaging in design debates more, I’m interested what’s going on in graphic design and it’s helping me to articulate my thoughts critically. I work within web design, but I consider myself a graphic designer that designs and builds websites for a living rather than a pure web designer, who hasn’t designed for print.

I will pledge to blog more, but I’m not sure I actively have to say this as I’m already doing it. I’ve got a wealth of things that I want to write and blog about, so more posts should not be a problem.

I will, as instructed tweet this post with the hashtag #ideasofmarch and will also search under that tag myself to se what others are saying.

To read Chris’s full post it can be found on his blog. Ideas of march

A recent tweet from Eye Magazine linked to an interesting article written by the London Design Consultancy Johnson Banks, about graphic designers and our reactions to significant world events. It seems that as disasters or catastrophes play out through our 24 hour news media, the immediate thoughts of the graphic design community turn to the creation of prints and posters in a bid to raise funds to help.

The full article can be read here Disaster=Poster? – Johnson Banks. Having seen myself the events of the Japanese Tsunami unfold so graphically via BBC News 24, I guess my thoughts like some other graphic designers, has turned to the creation of a piece of visual communication that could show support and convey my own personal feelings about the event. For me conveying my thoughts visually means I can create something that stands alone and speaks for itself, but anything I create reflects to the world something about me. Creating a great piece of design could bring publicity to me as a designer and benefit me directly, but in this circumstance it feels inappropriate to make such secondary gains, when the primary purpose of any I were to do would be to raise funds and help those in need.

The debate it seems, has sparked much reaction to this dichotomy and I’m reading with interest the views of others on this difficult issue. It’s first important for me to state, that if someone is moved to use their talents and skills in a bid to help others, then I have nothing but admiration for their actions. I think difficult times bring out the very best in humankind and it’s the desire to support and help others, that will mean the people of Japan can overcome this disaster and move forward.

The work I have seen that has been produced by the likes of Signalnoise, Daniel Freytag and Max Erdenberger are from a purely visual perspective, very nice pieces of graphic communication. The worry and the central point of the whole debate is ‘should we not donate and help, regardless of whether or not we receive an attractive poster or print in return’. If we are affected by what we see on the news then we should donate to organisations already engaged in bringing help, so our money can have an immediate effect.

The Creative Review blog has also felt the need to engage in the debate, and offers it’s own views on the appropriateness of some of the work being produced.

What’s suprised me with the debate is the level of reaction it has caused. Some are very strong in their disapproval of other designers and see their actions as ‘fundamentally grotesque’ or ‘highly inappropriate’. I feel this type of reaction is far too strong. If the actions of these designers is just to do some shameless self promotion, they would probably only give a small percentage of the profits from the sales of these works to the charities they are aiming to support. To my mind these more extreme reactions to the debate reflect more about the attitudes of the commentators than the designers. Maybe they feel that they don’t trust the motives of the creators of this work, and that their gain, whether in cash to help others, or the self promotion it may bring, may be their loss. Who knows? Opinions are clearly very mixed on this issue, and I would state again that any designer who is motivated to help others with their ,then we should applaud their efforts.

Many could criticise me for attempting to gain some self promotion or value off the back of writing this post, but I stand by my decision to write my thoughts and have no intention of manufacturing any gain from sharing my thoughts.

My website is a public sketchbook, I write, create and upload to it, for my own interest. I don’t promote my website in any way and leave search engines to find the content that I have, and index it according to all the other similar content on the internet.

I’ve written about this debate as a way for me to articulate my own thoughts and feelings, and to offer my own personal perspective on the debate. It is after all unique to me and if another designer reads this post and is compelled to offer their opinion, then more people will be engaged, which ultimately has to be a good thing.

If like me you’re a Jimi Hendrix fan, you may or may not know of a statue of Jimi at Dimbola Lodge in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. The statue is to commemorate Jimi’s appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. The festival took place a short distance away from Dimbola Lodge at East Afton Farm and drew a crowd of over 600,000 people, greater than that of the Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, held the same year which he did not perform at.

Jimi Hendrix’s appearance at the festival was one of his last performances before his early death on September 18th the same year. He performed in the early hours of 31st August with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Billy Cox on bass and headlined that day of the festival. Opinions vary about his set and performance on that day, but there’s no doubt his appearance that day has significance to the Isle of Wight’s cultural heritage.

The location of the statue, Dimbola Lodge, is the home of the celebrated Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and is something of a hidden treasure on the island. I’ve seen a number of excellent exhibitions there, including paintings by Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, and an exhibition of Miles Davis’ paintings.

It also holds a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Isle of Wight Festivals, past and present including some fantastic original posters, leaflets, newspaper clippings and photographs featuring, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and of course Jimi Hendrix himself.

More information about this hidden gem, can be found on the Dimbola Lodge website. Dimbola Lodge

When you do something on a day to day basis, it’s very easy to forget what it is you love about doing it. External pressures of delivering to deadlines, pleasing customers and simply remembering to do everything, not to mention maintaining standards and personal quality levels in your work. It’s all too easy for the days, weeks or in my case, years to pass, before you stop and think about why you started doing it in the first place and what it means to you.

As I enter my 16th year as a graphic designer I thought it would be good to stop for a while, re-discover, and understand why I’m so passionate about, what in simple terms, is the arrangement of type and images on a flat two-dimensional surface.

When I began studying graphic design at art college it was a physical act of drawing, tracing, cutting, pasting, glue, scalpel’s and the application of ink on paper. To find typefaces I would scour letterest catalogues, photocopy and enlarge type, trace and re-draw on layout paper and eventually arrive at a finished design. Black and white and colour photocopiers were used over and over again, until a final finished design could be hung and critiqued.

As time moved on and I took my degree access to the Apple Macintosh’s, Aldus Pagemaker, Quark Xpress and Photoshop 2 allowed more creative freedom to be achieved and more polished finished designs could be printed rather than photocopied. From that point onwards, year on year, software and technological advances made creating good quality finished designs easier and easier. This process of making has always been something I’ve enjoyed and is central to the graphic designers job. Turning the needs of others into finished articles whether they’re posters, books or any other printed materials is a great feeling and why I love doing what I do.

This however is not what I want to rediscover about graphic design, the design process is something of a given for me, it’s just what a graphic designer does. What I want to rediscover is why I’m so interested in the relationship between type and image, why does choosing the right typeface make all the difference between a design working or not working? Why is an image right or wrong? What is it about a selection of thirty-odd images that only one of them will work in the context you need it too? As a degree student I was encouraged to engage in graphic design at an intellectual level. We were challenged to understand how our designs worked on a cognitive, psychological level. How would the viewer perceive what we were presenting? How would they understand the ideas we were trying to convey. The craft of producing designs was one thing. Knowing how the software and the technology worked was something you had to know to be employed at a later date, creating and authoring good ideas was what made the difference between being a good graphic designer and a great one.

So what will follow in the coming weeks and months, will be a re-discovery of why I’m a graphic designer, and why I do what I do.

I’ve not been as active in the last 8 weeks or so as I’ve been taking on a new project. I started something similar back in 2009 and that one’s been going pretty well so far. My new project, like the other one is a lifelong undertaking which should develop into something special.

Unlike the other work on this site it’s not of a graphic or typographic nature, but it does requires craft, dedication, commitment and a whole lot of learning. Thankfully, both these projects are collaborations with another ‘designer’ who after our initial kick-off meeting, took it on for the first 9 months. Since then I’ve been involved and it’s taken almost all of my time, so I’ve been unable to really get on and do any serious blogging. In time I hope to be able to show the world what I’m achieving, but for now I’m keeping both projects under wraps.

For now though, I thank my fellow ‘designer’ for all of her efforts on both projects and dedicate this whole site to two very special girls.

For Alice and Esme.