I’ve never considered myself a designer… i can design in the sense i can visualise things, pull them together in photoshop and ‘hack’ stuff to make it fit. I also have a great appreciation for design but i don’t think it’s enough to call myself a designer. The problem is, people with no appreciation for design, are only too eager call themselves designers..
Worthy of a title?
Because i can run, does that make me a sprinter? A long distance athlete? Of course it doesn’t. But the same reasoning isn’t applied by some people or towards certain professions. If you can play a game, you’re a gamer… fix a light-switch, an electrician… if you can drive, you *could* be a taxi driver… if you can play an instrument you *could* be in a band… know about football? you *could* be a footballer… if you wanted to.
The problem with all of the above, is that if you truly believe any of them, you’re over-confident and under estimating the job. Almost writing it off as something which could easily be done, if you were to apply yourself. Therein lies the big fat problem. The lack of application. You can’t be sure you can do anything until you actually do it. You certainly can’t be sure you’ll be good at it, or better than somebody else. Disagree? Prove it. It’s the only way.
Politician Time
Politics is a great example of how people’s dreams & promises get crushed. Those dreams & promises were once upon a time real, legitimate, do-able targets someone set. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. Jobs. Lower taxes. Bla. More Bla. More often than not, that confidence & belief is extinguished and the world moves on, spitting out another person who claimed they could do something, but didn’t or couldn’t do it. There’s nothing wrong with failing of course, but failing without expecting to fail means you’re not as smart as you think you are. All bases weren’t covered, something went wrong. Maybe there wasn’t enough fear.
photo credit: europeanpeoplesparty
The idiots are at the top, the smart guys are always in opposition or on the street. That’s the way it works… until somebody changes it. Most of the time people can’t change it despite thinking they can and convincing everyone they can.
Get to the point!
After that long introduction, i want to talk about my design work and how i’m learning the most difficult task in the world is to ‘just do stuff’. A while back i stumbled upon the phrase ‘done is better than perfect’ and it hasn’t left my mind since. Doing stuff isn’t easy, but it is rewarding. Certainly more rewarding then ‘not doing stuff’.
Whilst my PC was out of action, i had more ‘offline’ time than i normally have but i was still jotting down thoughts & ideas, or emailing them to myself. Some were just stupid but for a split second, they sounded good. That’s all normal… on this blog alone i have over 200 draft blog posts which at the time of creating each one, had my full concentration but after a while i thought ‘no, now is not the right time to post this’ or ‘this might be a little too controversial’. When creating this post, i almost backed out of it. That’s just how i roll. Nothing is final until it’s published.
This week, i’ve created a few designs, some of which i can’t show here, others i can…
That image above is a Liverpool crest. Crafted with love. Looks a bit weird at first and upon closer inspection you’ll see it’s made out of about 20,000 mini Man Utd & Everton crests. I don’t have others online at the minute, but i created about half a dozen of these ‘twisted’ crests during the week.
The second image we have is a simple chart of Europe’s best supported clubs on Facebook & Twitter.
Thirdly, we have an ‘if social networks were football players’ design. Pretty simple, but it’s my favourite, mainly because i deliberately invested a lot of time in to it. It was originally fairly plain without any fancy effects or much colour, but i decided to spent a few hours improving it until it looked ‘professional’.
Why?
They’re all sports related designs and the reason for that is because i’m working on a sports related website… 257sports.com (blog here). Up until now i don’t think i’ve even mentioned it here, but it’s been a work in progress since early this year… way back in February in fact. I could have done without getting involved at that time due to the fact i was smack bang in the middle of dissertation pressure / deadlines, but i liked the concept and felt i could add to & improve it.
About a million conversations & meetings later and things are finally falling in to place for us. ’25/7 Sports’ is a sports social network. I could go in to detail about our goals & objectives but allow me to present something i made a little earlier to help explains things…
So this is what i’m working on these days… this is what i *have* been working on since February. I’ve deflected all questions on it up until now mainly because i want to let the site & our content do the talking. I didn’t want to hype something that had zero online presence, but now you have a better idea of what the site is about.
The idea of a sports social network is nothing new… it’s generally agreed that it’s something that’s waiting to happen and you only have to look at clubs and athletes to see the social media shift happening. The only problem is that sports fans are being outnumbered and outshouted on Facebook & Twitter so the fuse is always being lit on sport but it’s extinguished just as fast… much like an 80,000 seater stadium with small pockets of noise. The atmosphere never gets going.