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.

If you want to use this image on your blog here is a collection of them at varying sizes in this zip file IBA-nominated-badges.zip.

Bon Chance!

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

I’m a huge fan of Basecamp from 37Signals, so I’m pleased to see they chose to publish the ‘welcome message’ that I enter as the first post on all my Basecamp projects.
I remember writing this and, not having too much time, just blazing through it in an effort to succinctly get across the important ‘ground rules’ for new users unfamiliar (and possibly hostile to) using Basecamp.
Thinking back on it now I was really focussed on a ‘Just the facts ma’am’ missive, even though there’s quite a bit of text to the finished piece. Thankfully most of my clients ‘get it’ fairly quickly with Basecamp, but I like to think that putting out the ‘Welcome mat’ helps.

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

It’s one of those typefaces that ignites love and hate in equal measures amongst designers, celebrated for it’s ‘clean geometry’ on the one hand and vilified on the other as a safe, boring, corporate ‘cop-out’

For me it’s neither, it’s Helvetica and it just is. I like to think I employ it on merit, if the project requires that sort of look, although I sometimes find myself reverting back to it after experimenting with some of its trendier relatives.

I expect the undimmed popularity of Helvetica for 50 years now is testimony enough to the skills of Max Miedinger, designer of the typeface.

But wait… there’s more – ‘Helvetica’, the movie is coming to a screen near you soon, courtesy of film Director Gary Hustwit…

“Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.”

You can check out more about the film here, actually looks pretty good too.

So, Helvetica the movie star, who knew!

The answer from most of the Mac creative websites is a resounding yes (it was worth it). Like many creatives there was no compelling reason for me to upgrade my hardware to the new Intel Macs when CS2 did not run natively on that platform, but now that CS3 is fully Intel it’s time to make the jump. My copy of CS3 just arrived a few days ago and although I haven’t had the opportunity to really kick the tyres on it, from what I’ve seen it does indeed feel like a significant upgrade. I’m running CS3 on a Macbook Pro and it is noticeably faster and snappier than my G4 dual Ghz PPC main workstation running CS2. Speed aside the whole interface has been redesigned on all the applications, they now have an even more consistent look and feel across the suite.

Additionally the Bridge application now sports an interface very similar to Adobe Lightroom (the pro photography application). This is a good move as Lightroom has been in beta for a year before final release and has been the subject of a huge feedback loop from pro photographers for all that time. Asset management for pro photography has a lot in common with pro graphics designers.

I’m a recent Lightroom convert too, it has improved my digital photo workflow immensely, even in the short time I have been using it.

As you can tell I am an unashamed Adobe fanboy, I live in CS every day and it has served me well. In fact it is unusual for me to have to stray outside of CS when creating any core graphics work, a testimony to how well integrated the overall suite is and to the ‘real world’ value of the purchase price. So making the Intel/CS3 jump was inevitable for me, as it is likely to be for many other designers who know the value of keeping their work environment current.

I’m excited about getting my teeth into CS3, so far, so stunning.

Definitely more posts to follow on this one.