Category: Totally Random

There’s a profile of me in the Toronto Standard today, talking about exactly what made me leave my theatre career for web design, my amazingly supportive husband, and my internet crush on swissmiss.  Check it out.

The website Unsplash features gorgeous photographs in high resolution, that are free to use however you’d like (that includes commercial purposes).  I check it out every once and a while to look for images for my design projects, but I also like looking just to see the pretty pictures.  They would make gorgeous wallpapers for your computer desktop, or your Facebook cover photo, or printed on a card.  Check out Unsplash.

I didn’t blog for over a week, because I was super busy working on an exciting new project (details to come this fall), cramming in as much work as possible, because now it’s vacation time!  We’re off to Kinnon’s cottage in Quebec for a week, relaxing and having fun with friends. I might pop in on the blog this coming week, or not. I’m trying not to make promises, with it being a vacation and all.  Hope you’re having a wonderful summer!

[photo via The Most Photogenic Pug Ever]

I love this.  New York-based artist Philip Romano got his very first car and then covered it in chalkboard paint. When he parks it, he leaves a box of chalk on the car and encourages people to draw on the car. See more pictures here.

[via Twisted Sifter and New York Daily News]

Love.  Have a wonderful long weekend, everyone!

I don’t write much about work here on the blog – this is usually my space for the other stuff.  But I did read something this morning that I wanted to share – a short piece on 99U called “Spend Half Your Day Alone”.  I find this idea really intriguing, and I’d like to try it out.

For the past few weeks I’ve had lots and lots of meetings, and it’s put my productivity in the toilet.  Yesterday I specifically made a day without meetings, so I could plow through work and get some designs out the door. It was amazing! I was thrilled with how much I could accomplish when I put my head down and wasn’t interrupted.

Of course, a lot of meetings are necessary.  So I’m not knocking the concept of meetings – I’m just going to try scheduling them differently, so they don’t cut my day into tiny pieces. I’m going to set office hours for meeting times and design time, and once the meeting time is all booked up, I won’t will try not to infringe on the design time.

Have any of you tried something like this?  How did it go?

[images via Some eCards]

We’re going on vacation next week (more on that later).  I’ve found that whenever people go on vacation, they talk about “unplugging” – often literally.  They try to leave their computer, or their cell phone or other devices, behind. I guess they’re trying to leave their email and the stress of their jobs behind.  But when I travel, I NEVER want to be unconnected.  Sure, call me an internet addict (it might even be true).  But if I’m addicted to the internet, I’m not sure I want a cure. I honestly love how the internet connects me to friends and family, and provides me with entertainment and thoughtful discussion.

That’s why I found this so interesting – tech journalist Paul Miller went an entire year without the internet.  He “thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was ‘corrupting my soul.’ ”

The results were surprising.  A year is a very long time – I’m sure Miller’s experiment would be much different if he had only gone without internet for a week or a month. At first, he thought it would be easy, and he’d have lots of time to write and read. But then he started filling that time playing video games and feeling a bit bored, depressed, and listless.  He realized that the internet wasn’t causing problems in him – those problems were there all along.  His feelings of loneliness, boredom, depression, isolation… they didn’t disappear when the internet disappeared.  Miller said that without the internet, he “felt out of sync with the flow of life”.  In the end, to respond to his own theory that internet was making him unproductive and that it lacked meaning, he says, “I was wrong.”

I encourage you to watch the 15 minute film entitled Finding Paul Miller, and read his piece.  And then ask yourself if you could do what he did.  I’m not sure I would want to, to be honest.  Fascinating.

[image of Paul Miller by Michael B. Shane via The Verge]

This street in Bonn, Germany is totally canopied by cherry blossoms.  Wow.

PS – The cherry blossoms are at their peak in High Park (Toronto).

[photo by Adas Meliauskas via BoredPanda]

I can’t recall where I read this, but I vaguely remember once coming across an article (or a chapter in a book) that said you shouldn’t clean up your workspace at the end of the day, as it can hinder creativity.

I was reminded of that while looking at this roundup of the workspaces of 40 creative people.  Some are total messes, and some are OCD-style neat.  Most are somewhere in between.  Interesting.

[ps – check out all the post-it notes in Will Self’s workspace!  That’s a LOT.]