1. Start Locally
Don’t think that you have to immediately take on the world’s worst problems. Start locally and see what needs are immediately around you and tackle them. Contact the non-profits in your local area and see if they need help with their web site or print collateral.
2. After School Art Programs
If you live anywhere near a metro area chances are there are going to be alot of kids hanging around with nothing to do, especially in the summer. If you are a designer with a passion for the fine arts getting involved in or even starting an after school art program can be a great way to get involved in a child’s life and mentor them. Art is also very therapeutic, it helps us express ourselves in a positive and constructive way.
3. Donate Time to Non-Profits
There are plenty of non-profit organizations that need design or web help. Don’t be afraid to email or call and just offer your services, chances are they’re covered but you could just be the answer to someone’s prayer. If you think about most non-profits and the amount of time they have and what they spend it on, finding a designer is probably last on their list. I’ve also found that people doing non-profit work don’t even have a clue to even know where to begin to look for a designer.
4. Work Some Freelance & Donate The Profits
This is probably the easiest and quickest way of helping out. Find a cause that you are passionate about. Find some extra work and donate the all the money.
5. Raise Awareness
Use your site, social media, online communities to raise awareness about the issues you are passionate about. Video, posters and online media can shed light to an issue. Use the world wide web to it’s fullest potential and challenge yourself to create a visual message that rises above the noise and really makes someone stop and think about what they are seeing.
These are just a handful of ideas, but hopefully this post has inspired you to think a little differently about the skills you have and what you can do for others locally and globablly. Yes we can lend a hand regardless of what we’re doing but if you can use what you love to do and help others at the same time, this is one of the greatest things in the world. If you’ve used your skills to help others I would love to hear about it in the comments.
One of the big holes in my workflow is version control for creative assets. Specifically, .psd, .eps and various other image source files. There are many version control systems for code specifically that exist with lots of GUI client options but there is only one viable commercial solution for creative assets which is Adobe Version Cue. I personally have my own problems with Version Cue I think the app is bloated and for designers who are using tools outside of the Adobe Creative Suite this application is just not an option. Enter Dropox. Although currently in invite only beta, I’m already seeing the massive potential this service has for designers. Dropbox is not a version control service specifically but to me personally this is perhaps it’s strongest feature. Dropbox comes with Windows and Mac installation packages which give you the ability to create a Dropbox sync folder on your desktop, you can choose to work directly out of this folder or copy assets over to this folder and Dropbox instantly begins to sync the folder to your online account, keeping records of every change to the file. If you find that some changes to a file need to be reverted to a previous version you can log on to your Dropbox account, view the change history and download a previous copy of the file, for a designer this is huge, instead of creating multiple versions of a file you can simply draw from a series of changes if you need to. Dropbox is giving 5GB of storage to it’s beta testers right now, but I would gladly pay to have more storage and use this service as an actual repository for my project work. If you’re a designer, keep your eye on Dropbox for when they launch I think you’ll really like what this service can do for your project workflow.
I find it both odd and cool that almost a year ago this month I wrote this post and this week I bumped into this. It’s great to see Google finally getting into this space and also giving someone like me both an easy and interesting way to display data that is both meaningful to me and to others.
The worst part about being sloppy is not the low grade work that you produce, but rather the perception
of yourself that you build. The more mistakes you make, the greater your reputation grows as someone
who just doesn’t pay attention to the details. There’s nothing earth shattering about this fact, but
it’s something to think about because it really does not take long for someone to label you and the
work you do as sloppy, that’s the scary part.
Now that FOWA and Barcamp Miami have blown through South Florida, I wanted to take a couple of minutes and post some thoughts about the two events.Barcamp Miami this year was definitely a success, last year we had about 60 attendees, 3 presenting stations about about 10 or so presentations. This year we jumped to 300 registered attendees, 6 rooms and about double or triple the amount of presentations. I can’t thank Alex, Brian, Chris and Mike enough for their work the event would have not been possible without their efforts and a big thanks has to got to Carsonified for letting us squeeze in with the conference, I spoke to Ryan Carson briefly while setting up and he was really supportive of the whole event. Unfortunately I was running around alot so I didn’t catch alot of the presentations, but I was impressed with what the guys from a.viary are doing, I really think that application is going to do well.FOWA was great as well. I didn’t attend any of the workshops but was there for the talks the following day. All the presentations were excellent, but I think the real value to conferences like these is the inspiration you get from attending. For me personally I really like to get my “wheels spinning” from attending events like these. The people you meet, the exchange of thoughts on various ideas really helps you sort of flesh things out in your head. I will also say that it’s just great to have a large conference like FOWA come down to Miami, it sort of legitimizes this area in terms of what alot of us at Refresh and other initiatives have been trying to do for the past couple of years, it gives us exposure and let’s other people know that there is more to South Florida than just beaches and palm trees. So I really hope to have both of these events happen again in conjunction next year, thanks again to everybody.
There are some significant events happening in South Florida this month namely the Future of Web Apps conference and Barcamp Miami. It’s been fun to see how far along this area has come along in the past couple of years. FOWA is in my opinion the first well respected web conference to hit this area and it says alot about the potential Miami and the surrounding areas have. I’ve stated all along that there is alot going on in this area in terms of design and technology, the main hurdle has always been the many disconnections that existed. If you’re in the area I would highly encourage you to make it out to one of the events.
It’s always fun to look back, on this day last year I gave a presentation at the University of Miami’s Communications Week entitled “The Aesthetics of Web 2.0″ While I was moving some files over to a new host I decided to take a peak at the presentation and was surprised that it held up pretty well. Just today I was discussing Barack Obama’s web site design and I couldn’t help but notice tonight that the look and feel of his campaign site really captures one of the tropes I made a claim to in my presentation called “Optimist” I don’t want to discuss the presentation in this post, if you’re curious you can download the presentation at the link below and post any of your thoughts in the comments.
Download “The Aesthetics of Web 2.0″
I don’t have an Amazon Kindle so I really can’t comment intelligently on the device, but I just wanted to press down some thoughts on the subject.
There have been alot of good comments and some bad, mainly about the device’s design. Some claim that this device is ushering in a new era of reading, some claim that it will never replace the book. I don’t know whether or not this device will be the preferred method of consuming the written word in the future, but something tells me that books are still going to be around for a very long time.
The people who tout Kindle as the next big thing tend to use the iPod alot in their arguments. They say what the iPod did for music, Kindle will do for books, but I disagree. What is the great thing about iPods and books? portability. I could be wrong about this, but I believe portable music has only been around in the mainstream since about the early 80’s with the advent of the “boom box” and other smaller tape players, so I believe that we were still primed and ready for a device like the iPod to arrive and disrupt the market when it came out. The iPod serviced a need and that was to have more music available at your side, this was something that everyone wanted. Music differs from the printed word in the fact that it can be consumed at much larger amounts without much thinking, so having a large amount of music with you at all times makes sense.
Now let’s talk about books. First off, the book as we know it today is already portable. I would make the argument that the majority of people out there do not want to have 200 novels with them at their side wherever they go, perhaps maybe students and teachers would want this, but not your average consumer. Reading is also a much more time and brain consuming task, so you’re only ever really going to want to be reading one book at a time, at least I feel this way.
I don’t say this with any pride, but overall reading levels are down…way down and I don’t think it’s going to get any better. Technology is speeding information up at astounding rates, information is being fed to us in bite size chunks all over the place, this is still a relatively new occurance right now but in another 50 years it will be considered as norm. For this fact I don’t see the future of the book as getting any brighter, therefore I don’t see why a device like Amazon’s Kindle makes much sense. I’d like to end this post on an slightly naive and optimistic note and say that I applaud Amazon and their commitment to a device like this, if they do say they want to try and get more people out there reading, that’s great and I wish them well, but something tells me this device was released for other reasons.
With the help of Friendfeed I am now publishing a “life stream” on this site here, take a swim and enjoy.
