Barcamp Belfast April 2009 from David McDonald on Vimeo.

Twestival is a worldwide charity event organised using my favourite network: Twitter. I’m attending the Belfast iteration of Twestival tomorrow night at Lavery’s Bar in Belfast. Hope to meet up with a few ‘Twibe’ members, have some fun, shoot some video and raise some cash for a worthy cause. Being that Twitter is currently a hot topic in mainstream media now I hope we have a good attendance.

Be there or be square.

Despite the good advice of promoting only one consistent avatar (and I do agree with that) I wanted to have a bit of fun with mine. After all my logo itself is intended as a witty play on my own physical appearance, so I thought to play around with it a bit on a temporary basis. I take my work seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously.

I will point out though that these avatar variations were only used for my Twitter account. The Twitter environment is more fluid and faster moving than most other networks I know of, it is temporary by nature, so it’s a place where I feel more comfortable playing around with my public representation. Having said that I like taking some artistic licence with my icons and I may extend the variations to my email signatures too. Then I’ll have to make sure they are all synchronised, great, like I don’t have enough to do!

Now there’s a thought – why doesn’t someone come up with a cool web app that synchronises avatars across the various social networks? There’s a business opportunity for someone.

I had been thinking about designing a set of themed icons for a while and Halloween seemed like a good time to do it (I’m a fan of classic horror movies) and there are many iconic references that readily spring to mind. The challenge here was to break the reference down to the most basic graphic information so that the image survives the very small size for (in this case) a Twitter Avatar, also that it match the aesthetic of my own avatar, which was the starting point. The Halloween theme had a couple of exceptions, I created one icon as a tribute to the excellent radio drama of ‘War of the Worlds’, as performed by The Devious Theatre Company in Kilkenny, podcast of the show is available soon – check the Devious site for details. Although I’m not a native of Kilkenny I knew the show was coming up as I follow Ken McGuire in Twitter. The other was a Joker image, vaguely horror I guess, but I couldn’t resist making that one.

I certainly had fun designing these, it was a pleasant and creative break from my other ongoing projects. I typically created these icons in a very short timeframe as and when the inspiration struck, so they did not consume a great deal of my time. Thanks to all my Twitter followers who complimented me on the icons, feedback was great and the ratio of enjoyment gained, compared to effort applied, has been most rewarding.

You can see the full collection of avatars here.

So I went down this morning to witness the event, get my free T-shirt and see if the Apple Stores live up to their reputation. This was my first trip to an official store and, I must say, it did not disappoint.
Not so much the style of the store itself (although it does look terrific) not so much the location (they did get the best in Belfast) and not so much the hyper-excited staff (although they are knowledgeable and helpful).

No sir, the excitement for me is that finally, finally, having used Macs almost exclusively since they were first available here (sometime around 1983) I now have an ‘official’ Apple store to buy from, get repairs, training, decent advice and (not least) the opportunity to actually get my hands on the latest & greatest from Apple to help me properly evaluate the right kit before deciding to buy anything.

And, at last, a store that takes Apple kit seriously and doesn’t practically ‘apologise’ for having to sell it – or try and steer you to an (apparently) cheaper PC alternative (probably with a good staff sales commission this week!).

An end also to the frustration of visiting a local ‘Mac’ store only to find their stock levels of accessories/software are almost non-existent – the shopping excursion inevitably ending with the obligatory session back on a web store. In complete contrast the new Apple Belfast store displays an overwhelming range of Mac kit, software (some of which I’d not seen before) and accessories for iPods/iPhones etc. This is a veritable Aladdin’s Cave for the Mac faithful (Macolytes?) and I can see them make a lot of money on the accessories alone.

As for the launch event itself I must admit that the highly excited staff were quite entertaining (for probably all the wrong reasons to me) in their unfailing efforts to whip prospective customers in the queue (and themselves) into a frenzy. A bit OTT for me, though as a long-time Apple user it was excitement enough for me to see Apple’s first store open in Belfast anyway, something I thought would never happen.

So it was a launch morning filled with much excited whooping, cheering, high-fives, applause and thronging crowds… but luckily all tempered a bit with typical Belfast humour.

The long-suffering Apple faithful of Northern Ireland have been rewarded, nay blessed, with a shiny new temple to worship at – and donate to!

And I’ll be among the regulars, looking for a seat at the front, close to the altar.

It was also great to (briefly) meet up again with the usual suspects at various places in the queue. Later, in the melee inside the store, I bumped into many more friends, some of them not seen in years. All told a pretty enjoyable morning.

I took some shots of the launch this morning, now on my Flickr page

Now I’m a veteran of two Flickr meetups, both hugely enjoyable and both very inspirational in getting me out with the prime directive of improving my photography, what’s not to like.
In a post-shoot discussion over lunch in the Kitchen Bar I mentioned that I thought Flickr is the contemporary evolution of the ‘Camera Club’, Phil thought that made sense too and Photography definitely is booming on the web, as opposed to being notable by it’s absence in the real world. I’m sure there are still active clubs, I just found it difficult to locate them.
Just like Twitter, Flickr is now becoming mildly addictive, an easy achievement to someone already addicted for many years to creating images. Yep, Photography is my drug of choice and Flickr is my dealer.

The second meet-up was in Dublin, fantastic day out, thanks to our fearless leader for the day Shauneen and the rest of the photographers who turned up; Caitriona, John, Darren, 73 Man, Phil, Nathalie, Alexia, Debs, Will, Bob, and Claire. A separate post is required for that one I think.

Having thought some more on the whole phenomenon I think we should now be officially recognised as Phoblographers.

Good fun and, as always with those who are fired with enthusiasm for their work, some exciting projects under discussion. One such project is The Big Word Project

I chatted briefly to Lee from the project last night and so I thought I would throw my tuppence-worth in ($4 actually, luckily I have a short nickname) and buy my name:

This is a very interesting, and popular, project – already getting picked up on the web by many highly-regarded sites (such as one of my favourites: daringfireball ).

I wish them all the best with this and maybe you’d like to pay them a visit (and some dollars) and buy your own word.

Our brief is to promote Northern Ireland as a leading resource in ‘best practice’ web for business, hence ‘Northern Ireland’s Digital Hub’.

But, as they say, “a picture’s worth a thousand words” – so go check out a few million word’s worth in the video.

Hmm, word’s worth – how poetic…

We’re using Brightcove to host the media file, will probably post to YouTube as well, in due course.

…Well I definitely wasn’t.

Working as a freelance creative is a demanding job, I spend a lot of time generating concepts and in the subsequent production work – in addition to the necessary admin in running the business itself. This means an unhealthy amount of time sitting in my work chair, so I thought I should do something about that nagging thought I’ve been having that my old office chair was less than ideal (it was!) and about that even more nagging back pain that had been on the increase lately.

Being in the design industry myself I’d already heard of Herman Miller, but I never got to actually sit in one of their chairs until a while ago while doing some freelance work in another design office, where they had installed the famous Aeron chairs from Herman Miller. You only need to sit in one of these chairs for a short while to understand why they are so popular, despite the high price-tag, it really is that noticeable, the chair even feels better as you get more used to it. I was convinced.

These chairs are truly excellent products and, of course, they come at a premium price, but I think they offer good value for money as they really do live up to the comfort promise and are built to last. Herman Millar chairs come with a twelve-year warranty, yes, you read that right, twelve years.

I didn’t spring for the Aeron model, I went for the Mirra instead, since almost all the chairs in their range have the same huge number of adjustment options for a really personalised fit anyway – and I like the lighter look of the Mirra.

On many a long working session I have wondered what it would cost for a really good chair, now I know… the Mirra costs around £500 here in the UK, depending where you buy it from. I bought mine here. Worth the money I say, not only do I feel comfortable and less stressed when working but the backache is noticeably reduced now and I know it’s this chair that has made the difference.

But hey, don’t just take my word for it, here’s a great review of the Mirra chair from another designer.

I really wish I’d bought this chair a long time ago, but I’m glad to have it now. If you spend a lot of time at your desk owe it to your good health to check out the chairs from Herman Miller.

Technorati Tags: equipment

I got to see Gary Hustwit’s ‘Helvetica’ movie a few weeks back at my old Art College in Belfast. I really enjoyed the movie, it was done with abundant wit and charm, but most of all I was carried along by the enthusiasm of it’s director. Gary really achieved a lot in delivering such an engaging story of what sounds like such awful dull subject matter, I don’t know what the actual running time was but the movie was well paced and the time seemed to fly in.

Gary did a little Q&A session after the movie too and I was surprised to hear that it was almost entirely self-funded – resulting in some ‘interesting’ credit card bills, as he put it. He says he’s having a ball traveling around the world promoting the movie, I don’t doubt it and it is well deserved after the two-year development of the project. Worth keeping an eye out for further work form Gary I would think.

Official site for the movie is: http://www.helveticafilm.com/

Co-incidentally I was watching the movie right at the time Apple were launching the iPhone in the States – and guess what typeface is used on the iPhone interface?

Another one of my pet obsessions is movies and their effect on popular culture, so I recently picked up the ‘Alien Quadrilogy’ (is that a real word?) DVD box set at my local HMV shop. I’ve seen them all quite a few times of course but the one that really stands the test of time is the first movie in the series, directed by Ridley Scott. One of the bonus discs presents tons of background info in the making of the film, I particularly liked the storyboard drawings produced by Ridley himself (an art school graduate), almost every scene was hand drawn before setting up to shoot. The payoff is that you can see the attention to detail in every frame, this film is a masterpiece of art direction and cinematography – in addition to being the first real ‘A’ list horror movie. Notably it took a fine artist, H. R. Giger, to visualise the design of the creature itself in such a radically different – and effective way.

Co-incidentally I also bought another Sci-Fi cult movie favourite, ‘Dark Star‘. This black comedy Sci-Fi movie was started as a student project by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon, – who later wrote the screenplay for Alien.