I wrote a post just over a year ago about my love for pinterest, I started using it quite early on when it was in beta stages of development. It seems to have taken the world by storm now and there have been a lot of people commenting on how it is good for business, how it directs so much more traffic than most other social networking sites, and there have also been advice posts on how to use pinterest for your business.

You just have to search ‘Pinterest business’ on Google and you get a whole host of advice on how to market your business on Pinterest.

I disagree with these posts because pinterest is more of an organic tool, (I know, not organic in the way that it doesn’t use pestisides on the pixels to keep away nasty viruses) but organic in the way that people use it.

The way that it works, if you don’t know, is you find an image you like anywhere on the internet and pin it. You can categorise those pins and when another user sees this pin, they click on it and go to the website it originally came from and that is where the traffic to those sites comes from. Likewise, they can also ‘repin’ and ‘like’ that pin and it goes onto their own pin board. Creating your own library of images you like becomes effortless because you don’t have to have the pinterest window open at all times, just use the bookmarklet straight from your browser, I see it a bit more like delicious, just with images instead of descriptions.

The reason why I say it is more organic than other social networking sites is because there are no other companies buying advertising to force in your faces, there are no recommendations. I haven’t even seen any advertising for pinterest itself, just by word of mouth between friends and the ability to share pins on other social networking sites. You even have to request an invite to join, it makes you feel a bit special. I just hope this isn’t some secret ploy to get us hooked and then they’ll start introducing advertising. One way to encourage traffic to your own site is to pin your own images and others with see them, repin, like and go to the site itself, however if someone just does this, it gets a bit boring, annoying and a bit like spam. Your audience will start to get bored.

So, as I say, it may be great for driving more traffic to other sites than other social networks but I think this has all happened by people being interested, wanting to create pin boards and wanting to find out more about what they’re seeing. It has been a natural process, or am I missing something? And that’s what they want me to think?

For me, pinterest is great for research, it keeps all my (internet based) image research in one place, all my image inspiration in one place, all organised, all categorised, without me doing much at all, and when I want to see where I found that image in the first place, all of that information is there also. I love it!

For others, pinterest may be a marketing tool, a tool to help planning an event or an outfit. I suppose it is what you make it, like most of the other networking sites.

My Philosophy is best summed up by the phrase, ‘plain, simple and useful’, Such things may not win many design prizes, but neither do they go out of fashion. – Terence Conran

I’m a bit late with this one but a few weekends ago, I saw the Terence Conran exhibition at the Design Museum. I loved these giant pencils because they would make an amazing den, they also have written on them, designer, entrepreneur and retailer, 3 things that are dreams and realities for me, I am a designer, I have entrepreneurial spirit and I’m working hard to be able to sell my work eventually, so it seemed relevant to stand by the pencils and have a cheesy ‘this is me’ photo. I’ll probably go to see the exhibition again due to having to take about 5 modes of transport just to get to the Design Museum and being incredibly hungry, we kind of rushed through this exhibition.

For Conran, design is not simply a business – it is a way of life as well as a mission.

The main reason for going to the Design Museum was to see the last day of the ‘This is Design’ exhibition. The first thing I saw was this sign, firstly because it had my hometown on it, Watford (quite a few road signs point to Watford, it makes me feel kind of famous!) and secondly because it is so meticulously laid out. On closer inspection, you can see all the little guides for spacing and I love the accuracy that is involved. Before the work of Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, road signs didn’t have this meticulous system.

Each character has a separate exclusion zone for every other letter in the alphabet as seen in the image above. This is an excellent example of design that has to be meticulously designed, if it is unclear, drivers wouldn’t be able to determine which direction to drive and it has to be seen by drivers in cars, trucks, vans and on bikes so has to be seen from all heights, so clarity and space is absolutely vital.

Then there was this poor mini cut in half!

There was also the Designers in Residence exhibition, where I was intrigued by the work of Hye-Yeon Park, the clock that she designed is great, it behaving like a regular clock when it senses human presence in close proximately but when it doesn’t sense human presence it takes on a more playful appearance and shows seemingly random displays. I loved the concept and found that the clock almost took on a playful and mischievous personality.

I think the human desire for perfection has been reflected in the objects we’ve created. We design tools to manipulate the world around us, however the clock is an exception, visually representing time which is beyond our control. – Hye-Yeon Park

Below is a video of Mr. Clock, the project that Hye-Yeon Park worked on at the RCA in 2010, the one at the design museum was slightly more developed.

Mr.Clock_Hye-yeon.park_Design Product_2010 RCA from hye-yeon.park on Vimeo.

[Pocket Planner by Jessica Hische, writter of the blog post featured in this post and inspirational typographer and designer, I have this planner and carry it with me everywhere, wouldn't be without it!]

Recently, I have been trying and trying to draw more, write more, sketch more, read more, lots of things…more and better. I’ve been trying to practice what I do, and get to grips with what my style is, what my voice is. I’ve also been keeping up with design blogs, illustration blogs and pinterest to gather inspiration, wondering why none of my work looks as good as the work that I see on the internet and in the galleries and museums that I also go to. This all does make it sound like it’s a bit of inspiration overload and I’m just getting confused, which is possibly true. But I also think, I’m possibly not looking into the wrong things, also possibly putting way too much pressure on myself (which is also fairly common of me!)

I read this post in the week by Jessica Hische, and realised that I’ve just got to calm down, stop panicing and accept that everything like this comes with time. I’m not sure if Jessica really meant that in her post but this what I understood from her post:

It’s OK to copy
She uses the analogy of a new musician: if you’d just bought a guitar and had never played one before, you would copy the greats, practice the notes and make mistakes. You wouldn’t do all that and then publish an album with all of those practice pieces on and state that you wrote those songs. You also wouldn’t become famous from these beginner’s songs either, no-one gets famous over night, not in real life. It’s great to practice, by copying others, but just don’t tell everyone. Work that is in a sketchbook, stays in a sketchbook.

Not everything you make should be on the internet
A lot of designers/illustrators I follow ‘seem to’ post absolutely everything online, and it all looks amazing but what I’ve got to remember that those people have probably got rubbishy sketchbooks lying somewhere, where all the mistakes are made, all the copies are and where all the learning was done, they wouldn’t post these on their blog/website, that would make them look bad! I’ve got to remember that not everyone is perfect, and not every piece of work is perfect either. I’ve got to remember that just because my portfolio isn’t full with amazing pieces of work by now, it doesn’t mean that I’m a rubbish designer, I’m only starting out, I’m still learning.

Diversify your inspirations
Looking for inspiration isn’t just looking at a few blogs to see what It’s Nice That is writing about, what Creative Review think is amazing or what my friends on twitter are posting up. It is about taking inspiration from EVERYWHERE! Jessica says it better:

Your ultimate goal should be for people to look at your work and NOT immediately think “oh she is a big fan of this person”. If you diversify your inspirations, the chances of this happening become much smaller.

History is important
Following on from the point I made above, taking inspiration from what is happening now is good but what about what people have done in the past? Jessica refers to music again when she asks if you have ever looked into a new band and found that they were inspired by a whole host of other musicians from the year dot. It would all be quite boring if musicians and designers just found their contemporaries inspiring, it would all sound/look the same. It’s easy to forget all that we were taught in University, research into the past is SO important!

Train your eye
As you look at more work and study more designers, artists, illustrators etc. Your eye will become more experienced to seeing little details in certain work. You will know what characteristics of one piece of work by one artist is different from one by a different artist. This is useful because you will start to see details in your own work that are characteristic of someone you’ve found inspirational, or as you get more experienced you’ll be able to identify that your work is completely original and inspired by a whole host of subjects, artists and things.

Jessica makes other points that I didn’t find relevant in the search for my style. I hope to take all of these things into account and continue on my quest. I hope you have all had a lovely weekend, I’ve done a lot of relaxing.

Poster by Ed Hall, inspired by this list. 

I’m not sure I agree with all of these and it isn’t an exhaustive list either but it is a starting point and a fun poster.

Wenlock and Mandeville are the two mascots for the 2012 Olympics. When they were first launched, I wondered what connection there was with the Olympics, or London. I later found out that they were made out of the two last drops of steel left over from building the Olympic stadium, by Grandpa when he retired (It all makes sense to me now!). I didn’t really think too much about them until before Christmas when I saw the following two posters on my travels:

Designed by McCann London these posters make me smile every time I see them. These made me realise that it doesn’t matter that I’m not too keen on the idea for the mascots, they weren’t designed for me! They are to keep children interested, and I just love the playful-ness of these posters. It really looks like Wenlock (or Mandeville) is going to dive into the bath, and you can really imagine Mandeville (or Wenlock) running the race against the London bus and the toy dinosaur. They capture the imagination of a child perfectly.

Where does the creative process begin? You could argue that the creative process begins with the decision to become a designer. From that moment on, everything you see and do feeds your visual intelligence, and contributes to the making of a designer. It’s one of the best things about being a designer: seeing design everywhere, and taking inspiration from anything. You can’t turn off the fact that you’re a designer: you will always be tuned in and receiving. Or at least you should be.

Adrian Shaugnessy – How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Alix asked on Twitter a while ago ‘If 2011 was a typeface, which one would it be for you?’ and yesterday seemed to be the perfect day to think about this kind of thing (but I’m a bit late).

So, this is what I think, generally speaking 2011 was a mixture of good and bad, the good parts signified by the ‘e’ and the bad signified by the squished ‘g’. Then it is a condensed typeface due to the year going way too fast, it was over before you knew it!

I started 2011 as an intern and then in march, became employed. Being a junior designer, I have learned so much, I’ve been working hard to improve the process that I use when designing and I’ve learned so much about the software that I use daily. I’ve also learned how to make a typeface, it’s not perfect but with a little more work, I’ll be making them all the time. Overall it has been good fun!

It hasn’t been without it’s hard times either. Being a junior, obviously I don’t have as much experience as others who have been in the industry for years, so it can be frustrating when it takes me longer than planned to do certain things.

Throughout 2012, I hope to continue to improve in the work that I do. One of my many new years resolutions is to try and visit a gallery, museum, exhibition or talk once a month to keep up to date with the art and design world. I don’t just want to sit by and watch 2012 go by without me, I want to be involved! I’ve also got plans for some new personal project ideas for 2012, so hopefully watch this space. I always make resolutions to draw more and take more photos but never stick to it, I hope to do so this year!

I hope that you all enjoyed any celebrations that you had last night and I wish you all the best for 2012. Here’s to 2012 and everything it throws at us, bring it on, I’m ready!

I was searching istock for some sort of healthcare images and these images appeared next to each other in the results, made me feel a bit queasy…

A couple of days ago, I discovered Feedly. It seems it is the solution to all of my problems, as I mentioned earlier in October that I felt that I wasn’t reading my blog posts and just leaving them unread. Well, joining feedly has taken all of the blogs that I previously followed on Google Reader and it has allowed me to sort them into groups (although you can do this on Google Reader) and feedly makes it a lot easier and user-friendly. It all looks beautiful too, you can customise the background, the general lay out and you can customise what posts show first too, whether it be the latest articles or posts recommended for you.

I think it’s great so far, if there’s anything else I discover about feedly, I’ll be sure to let you know.

I should take this card everywhere with me! Found here.

This wooden ampersand is beautiful and for $299.00 I think it should be! Found here.

I love the fun, child-like, playfulness of this one. Found here.Yes please! This is similar to what I’ve been up to. I love calligraphy and hand-drawn type, and this I love! Found here.