Dlod

Unfortunately like most ill-informed people I have a lot to say, so motivation to write is actually quite high. I’m not even that worried that only a handful of people read my blog, the process of thinking about what I’m going to write is really useful and enjoyable for me. It helps me to clarify my thoughts and work through issues. It’s just the process of writing itself that does my head in.

I persevere anyway because I’ve found it so valuable, but now that I have a new baby there is an increasing danger of not writing at all because I no longer have the time to bash away at something all week in my spare time. The funny thing is when I started this blog I thought the writing would be easy and I worried about the decision to do a new drawing for each post. But the drawings are the easy part, the literally take about 15 minutes each. Less than that even because since the aforementioned baby arrived I’ve just been rehashing older drawings. They would be better if I had more time to spend on them of course. So I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think how I can say just as much, just as often but spend less time doing it.

I’m thinking about maybe a mini blog, where I just spit out the guts of my thoughts and deliberately keep it short. This would be good for my writing I think, I’ve found the discipline of twitter to be very good for my writing anyway, it forces me to be less verbose. But I’m not sure if this will save time, making something short is harder than making something good and long for me. But I might give it a test run.

The other option is a podcast. I know from experience that with editing and whatnot these can be more time consuming than writing and who wants to listen to yet another designer mumble away into his microphone about typography. But maybe I could interview other designers I know. Keep it to a set length, not worry too much about audio/video quality (as long as it is listenable) and put it up unedited, no matter how rubbish it is. Quantity over quality! Although I don’t know any high profile designers I know a lot of designers in different fields, i.e interaction, user research, branding e.t.c. This idea appeals to me because I’m a much better communicator verbally than .. um.. writerly and then I can have a chat with other designers which is nice. It would be designers at the coal face if you like, people doing meat and potatoes design for a weekly wage or a day rate. So if I wanted to talk about writing about design for example I could talk to a copy writer, talk to them about writing specifically and about what it’s like on a day to day basis to work as a writer.

I’m going to give both these ideas a spin over the next few months to see if they float.

Dlod, Fail

Posted: June 14th 2010 | « Faster! More failinger »