Great British Design (1)

Dear First Great Western. I know that in the days of Brunel—where the British rail system still seems to live—Apple computers (and their chargers) were a far utopia of the future, but when I recently tried to use my Macbook Pro on one of your trains, this occured to me (see picture). And thanks to the clever 3-pin design of the British Standards 1363 plug I couldn't even turn it around and be able to use it (as I would with European plugs), although the 3rd (earth) pin which hindered me in doing so has no function at all. Great British Design.

Christmas has started

My self promotion project is handed in, the website up and running, the last day at uni for this year is over, a few more projects started, my bags are packed with a bunch of junk—which I believe might be useful in Switzerland—both iPods synced and ready for the journey. Christmas may begin.



And so it does. A spontaneously erected christmas tree in the house is—as you would expect from us—looking very Emo again (indeed more emo than we would have expected, see picture). Traditionally we had our housemate christmas meal and traditionally it was crispy duck for me again, only this time from the malaysian restaurant around the corner and not frozen from Aldi like last year. For dessert we had a chocolate fountain at home with a bunch of fruits and mulled alcoholic wine (the imported German spirits finally had to be used off). Lauren was feeling rather well after a couple of glasses of asian white wine and confident enough to prepare the chocolate using a microwave—and turn it into chocolate sand. Nevermind, we'll just throw it on the pavement in case it´s getting icy outside.

The hint with the microwave came from the instruction manual of the chocolate fountain (which—by the way—Lotte found somewhere last summer). And that wasn't the only thing that stood out to me from this manual. In particular I'd like to draw attention to the important precautions mentioned on page 1 (which in actual fact is page 3, but we're not fussy).

• J. Keep out of reach of children.


• K. This appliance is NOT A TOY.


• L. This appliance is not intended for use by young children [...] without supervision.


• M. Young children should be supervised to ensure that they do not play with the appliance

 
Brilliant. The same point expanded over a third of the page. We got it—Lauren, hands off!



 
Tomorrow then I'll be flying back to Germany for a bit. I wish everyone a happy christmas and a good start into the new year!

to blog or not to blog

Well, where to begin? Exactly that´s the question I had no time to ask myself over the course of the last few months. And even though people who know me will say that I've always been a busy bee anyway, this year has been just insane. But before I go into any more detail, let me just say a few words about this shiny new website.

un, wo fange ich am besten an? Genau das ist die Frage an die ich in den letzten paar Monaten aus Zeitmangel überhaupt nicht einmal denken konnte. Obwohl, wer mich kennt wird wahrscheinlich sagen, dass ich immer schon vielbeschäftigt war—aber dieses Jahr war wirklich der Ausnahmezustand. Doch bevor ich noch weiter ins Detail gehe, möchte ich zunächst ein paar Worte über diese funkelnagelneue Seite loswerden.

Ever since I first connected to the world wide web (in the age of Dial-up and AOL CDs—but let´s not go there), I wanted to be part of it. These days kids start playing with MySpace and call this their own 'homepage', I started teaching myself HTML and JavaScript and coding my website in Windows Editor. Well, to be honest before I went there, I went through the hard school of learning that neither Word nor Publisher nor Frontpage Express are valid tools to create a working website. My web presence always was to be considered experimental (ie. crammed full with gadgets that nobody needs but I found awesome). Before I flew out in the wide wide world, I created my last website—designed to help friends and family to stay in touch with me and to keep up with what´s going on in my life.



That was 4 years ago and what I called my 'weblog' (despite lacking everything that defines a blog today) worked surprisingly well for the first few months. People absolutely loved my 'reports from the island' and even printed them off and read them offline and offscreen. When life became dull towards the end of my voluntary service in Northern Ireland, so became my weblog (I love this word, it´s so much more than the misnomer 'blog' used these days). So there were always two possibilities: either I was too busy to blog, or I was idle and had nothing to blog about. Now I have loads to blog about, but absolutely no time to do it. Likewise, I really really (yes really) wanted to update my website, but never got around to do it. I increasingly became worried that my web presence might make me look like a complete n00b and even rejected web design jobs because of lack of confidence in myself. In a funny sort of way however, there seems to be an inverse proportionality between a websites amount of content and the designers business. Busy designers usually do not have the time to fill their site with work, idle ones do.



I have been a busy designer and this brand spanking new website was only possible through a self-promotion module at uni. I took this opportunity and dusted my good old HTML and PHP skills (bloody hell, so much can change in only 4 years—think XHTML! think CSS! think tableless design!), got to grips with Wordpress and thought about where I want to position myself in the wider design community. It was a worthwhile experience and it won't end at assessment time.



This is now my new presence on the web (beside of course my omnipresent web2.0 addiction) where I will not only showcase my work but also share my experiences as a design student and creative practitioner in England—and soon also Switzerland—with the world ie. my old target audience friends and family as well as the design community and people interested in offering me work. It is my contribution to the blogosphere—except: it´s not a blog.



The title journal suggests that I will be writing up a daily account of my life, but don't worry that´s not the case. With currently 13 projects to work on until January, I have no obligations to bore you with my latest type choice, the hottest new features in CS4 or my opinion on the new design of company XYZ. I will do that when I'm idle—or procrastinating, probably. In the meantime you may watch my del.icio.us, observe my facebook status or listen to my music (and all that other web2.0 jazz).



And if you're subscribed to either my feed or the e-mail newsletter, you'll be informed when there´s something new and exciting in the life of Paz, the busy designer.



 
PS: And of course you're more than welcome to comment on anything you like.