1. Love the Process. Daniel does not agree that designing is dull or uncool until you work for Coke or Nike. Be part of the moment, get involved in the process and the more you will love the result. In short: you have to like what you are doing to do it well.

2. Forget about your own taste. Every designer should know this. Love the premise that you are working under, the brief and your client’s needs. When you forget about your own taste, you can start making great designs.

3. Everybody is creative right? Learn to argue you design decisions. Go crazy and experiement, but ensure to bring it all back together at the end. During the process remember to identify what it’s teaching you about your client and product.

4. Don’t hold yourself back. Make sure you know how to play, even though you’re grown up – if you don’t know how, you need to learn – otherwise you’ll be holding yourself back.

5. Learn to give and receive feedback. We agree with Daniel on this point, it is a lifelong learning process. You have to conceptualise the design, place it in the bigger context and explain what is working with it and what is not. Receiving feedback is just as hard, but given in the correct way, it is a bit of a blessing.

6. We are creative and creativity is about inventing. Try to be aware of the culture and the physical environment that exists at your workplace and try not to get carried away with routines.

7. Learn how to write. You need to be able to show off your ideas in text as well. You may begin work on a project before the copy has arrived so you may need to create a context as it is a huge aid in any design process.

8. !!Controversial!! Don’t pitch. I’m well aware that this can lead to a massive discussion so Daniel makes it short. Don’t pitch.

9. Be cool. Creative people often, by nature, reject discipline and set surroundings. They are absent-minded, starry-eyed and they hate systems. But no matter, make your appointments, respect your company and its ways of handling things, such as filing and registering time.

10. Enjoy the ride. You ought to.

Thought provoking.

Now this doesn’t make for much of a blog entry. This however has been my smoothest registration period during my web life, I have constantly had to grapple with domain hoarders hell bent on securing every .com known to man before jumping on the .co wagon. We kind of just accept that a good short domain will have now been snapped up and only a four to figure sum will secure it. Thats life. My question and possible concern is will Twitter meet tis end?

Twitter has over 450 million registered users and around 10 new accounts are registered every second. Not only does this demonstrate the sheer scale of Twitter but it also reveals how many of the accounts have been called into action. Registered accounts and active accounts are different beasts. Think about the amount of times you have seen an account with no posts but following 50,000 accounts or accounts that havent had a tweet since Oct ’09. Twitter states that for an account to be active the account holder must have tweeted within the last 12 months. But Twitter seem reluctant to turn over account names to the open market even after that period. Whilst reading Web Designer Magazine earlier in the month it was plain to see the different tactics used by folk who want a particular handle that is inactive but already registered. Often to no avail.

Sources online state that less than 50% of Twitters accounts are deemed active, that means means over 200 million accounts holding a name that account be used. Having discussed this at Say Digital over some Krispy Kreme’s it is clear that the holding of an account name that could be used elsewhere and given a real purpose is annoying. But why is Twitter being so tentative to release them? Is Twitter afraid that if their registered account users figures drastically drops they will be less appealing to investors? Or is it in the process of sorting this problem out?

If history is anything to go by, I would not be a little bit surprised if we see domain name auctions like we have to day for desirable Twitter handles in the future. Time will tell.

Angelo loves a Mosaic, better or worse than the original? Or his mosaic created using Google search term “prescription free glasses”.

Have a play and share your mosaics… happy days.

The Advantages:

The Disadvantages:

These are a few of the ones we came up with. We would love to hear what the budding designers think…

Answers on a postcard… or below.

Say

So Facebook has taken over and now we are so used to valuing the input of our friends from all over the world on this platform its the norm. As a web designer/photographer I seek the opinions of my friends on Facebook, I put up work/photographs and receive funny/daft/thought out comments from my friends that I have ‘collected’ from all over the world. My network is my ‘Crowd’. Great sites like Groupon and the newer buying strategies employed by giants Ebay to ‘Crowd purchase’ is going to set a new precedent on how we purchase goods, work a deal and communicate socially over the web.

Another prime example, is one of our clients AskHerFriends, a great idea, one I was surprised had not been done before. To ‘Crowd source gift ideas’ from your friends, specifically women. Bag up some products in an advice bag, send it to your friends or her friends and get feedback. I can think of numerous times in the past where I have wondered what to get Mother. What would have been the options? Speak to Dad probably. Take AskHerFriends as an example (www.askherfriends.com), I can bag up gift ideas, then send it out to her friends on Facebook. Yes my Mum’s friends are on Facebook, ‘Mum’s Crowd’ is digital too. Get feedback, job done.

I love having my ‘crowd’ and I am looking forward to growing it as we all over ‘the networks’.

After a few moons and several collective discussions between the team, we have launched our new site. We are making some adjustments to our online planner which should be live in a week or so, which is tremendously exciting. We are working on some pretty cool products at the moment. We have been completing some developments for Ben from AskHerFriends.com which will be unveiled shortly, some e-commerce works for Jonathan at Shine Hair Group in Brighton and developing some brand identity for a cool start-up. Feel free to check out the developments at AskHerFriends at www.askherfriends.com or click the logo below.

Currently listening to: Steel Panther – Ridiculous shameless heavy metal parody