Working Hard to Leap Buildings

• December 21, 2010
  29 Comments // Retinart

I’ve always had a tendency to work maniacally on a project, pouring every ounce of energy into it until the outcome is struck.

This has been truest when it comes to Retinart. If you look through the archives it becomes quite clear that I work productively for a month or two, then lie dormant for several – there’s no real outcome to aim for, so I burn out.

A few weeks ago, as I was retreating to the warmth of my bed, I felt the exhaustion of the day swarming in my shoulders. “Hmmm” I muttered, “I have to stop with the Hard Work and just start working.” It was an odd thing to have flutter through my mind, but it was the closing of the day so I brushed the thought off.

The following days found the notion continually snake through my thoughts. Deciding to explore it further, I realised this was something I’ve always done, happily dedicating great effort to Hard Work.

The Redesign of Retinart

• June 1, 2010
  23 Comments // Retinart

I just got to the point where I was always embarrassed.

I loved my previous design, but I was embarrassed by it. And one shouldn’t hold such rotten feelings when asked to show their blog. Or worse yet, when other sites actually link to it. It should be a moment of excitement, of satisfaction of ‘everything is just right’.

That’s what I was missing. I didn’t have that at all. I was bothered by a lot and found my self in a horrible position, burdened by cures to fun and excitement.

I felt as if I could do better. I felt as if I needed to provide a better experience for those of you who were kind enough to come visit. A blog should feel like a home — a place of comfort, entertainment, knowledge, an inviting place of warmth, full of little nooks and crannies in which fun can be found.

So I set my self the task of building a better home.

The Bird: The Redesign of Retinart

• June 4, 2008
  Nil Comments // Retinart

Retinart has existed in one form or another for a few years now. Most of the changes made, existing solely in my own mind, didn’t actually turn into much. It is now that I feel that I have taken the right first step.

This domain has been the address for a slew of folios, a self-centered blog or two and mostly empty, in promise and content, ‘coming soon…’ place-holders. Then I designed the previous version of Retinart and started to write. While I was, and still am, comfortable with my writing looking like that of one who is new in the arena, the amateurish design I employed was sub-par. And what do we do with sub-par work? We kill it. Build it better, bigger and stronger. So welcome to version two of Retinart—I do hope that it pleases.

I mostly find my self wondering why it’s so necessary
to try and force so much content into my field of vision

Blog design is an interesting branch of the tree. Being a primarily print-based designer, web design is often a little odd to me. I mostly find my self wondering why the designers of most sites find it so necessary to try and force so much content into my field of vision. When it comes to blogs, it seems like the people behind them want to push a whole lot of content as well as their most popular articles, their latest articles, their featured articles, their Flickr steam, Twitter stream, favorite YouTube links, links to their friends blogs, feeds of their friends’ blogs, the blogs that have linked them and the blogs they hope will link to them once a referral list is looked at, and don’t forget links to add each article to Digg, Delicious and who-knows-what-other-social-network. You would be forgiven for thinking that these sites consider hits to be the main focus, with the ends justifying the means, rather than good content, that is actually worth linking too. All of this superficiality is what I want to avoid like a plague.

A page out of my notebook as well as an early Photoshop composition