So, what’s new?

The past few months have been swamped with wedding planning. Before being engaged, I never considered how much of my life would be consumed by it, but it isn’t bad, and actually kind of fun at times. You never realize how much creativity comes into planning until you’re actually in it, but I got a chance to design our website, as well as the invitation identity, with some assistance from Victoria Pater. It was the first print project I’ve ever done, and though it was fun and challenging, I’m glad that I work on the web. Once the full package arrives for the invites, I will post pictures.

In addition to wedding planning, there is still Tridea, which got really busy at one point earlier this year, which brings me to my next point.

When you’re burned out, you know it. You can feel it and taste it, but in order to get past, it you have to acknowledge it and fight to restore your internal equilibrium. Stop, decompress, communicate, and focus. That process often begins with a look inward to learn what gives your life balance, such as family, friends, personal interests, and hobbies—the things that counterbalance your life on the web. via

Freelancing on the side

Not that I’m old or anything, but I’ve been doing the fulltime job/freelance on the side thing for roughly 5 years and it finally caught up to me in the form of mental exhaustion. Between a fulltime job, wedding planning, and freelancing, I was stretched pretty thin. Something had to go, and the best decision was to take a break from freelancing for a while. I will say that it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made recently and it’s nice to not only have my evenings back, but I feel much more refreshed.

My point here is don’t work yourself too hard. Step away from your computer/work sometimes and enjoy life because it only happens once. It’s ok to not be a workaholic, which I’ve had to tell myself quite a bit. And since not working all the time, I’ve come up with a few creative ideas/projects that I would like to work on in the near future, that I can do at my own pace.

So what about Tales of a Designer?

Many times in the last few months I’ve thought about giving up this blog, not because I didn’t want to write anymore, but because I haven’t been inspired by design on the web lately. So I’m throwing around ideas to slightly change the direction in the types of posts that go up here. It would still be design/development related, as it always has been. I am open for ideas though, so if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to comment.

So that is my life update. Lots going on, but I would love to hear your thoughts, and/or ideas on what kind of stuff you would like to see posted here.

It seems, though, that there are less interesting panel selections this year, than last year. I’ve picked out a few that I plan on attending, but I more look forward to meeting and conversing with new creative/business minds.

I also plan on tweeting quite a bit, so if you’re on Twitter, let me know if you’re down there so we can connect! I’d love to meet you, if I haven’t already.

I have to cut this blog post short because I need to go register and such. So if you see me, say hi.

Of course the hard part, like any other personal project, is finding the time to get the site done. Well finally, with some free time and inspiration, I got it done.

Enter, johnphillips.me. The goal of this site is simple, to give you a quick glimpse of who I am, link out to my sites, and give you my contact information. I needed the design to do just that, and not get in the way. I only spent a few hours in Photoshop before I was ready to start coding it up. After a few days, it was all done and live.

Inspiration

Over the past 6(ish) months, I stumbled across some very nice one-page sites that gave me a lot of ideas on how I wanted to approach doing a site for myself. The biggest inspiration was from, both, Tim Van Damme, and Rogie King. I think both of their sites are absolutely stunning, and both accomplish exactly what I was looking to do with my own site. So, from an IA standpoint, it made sense to do something similar. So I’d like to thank them for inspiring me.

Browsers

When I was done designing the site, I had a feeling that it might be a pain getting everything to look how I wanted it to in all the browsers. Turned out that it went pretty smoothly… sort of. I chose to not spend much time worrying about IE6. Now, normally I don’t do this, especially for client sites. But this is no client site, nor is it an end destination. It’s meant to send you elsewhere.

As long as the content displays in IE6, which it does, I did not want to invest anymore time in it. It’s really time for people to upgrade their browsers to something modern… but I’ll save that debate for another blog post.

So, go visit the new site, and let me know what you think about it. Also, let me know if you find any issues or if anything is broken. Thanks!

So, how do I use it?

Now that I’ve really found my footing with Twitter, I mainly use it for networking purposes, finding interesting links, and connecting with new people. It has allowed me to connect with tons of people, both in my industry, as well as local people in and out of my industry. Since using Twitter, I have almost tripled my network of people. The benefit of this has been excellent. Being heavily involved in Twitter, locally, has also lead me to Tweetups where you can continue the [140 character] conversations and meet others face to face. The Detroit Tweetups have been growing heavily each month, and there are always new people to meet.

In terms of my actual tweets, I try to make sure I stay relevant to those following me. I’m normally posting links to things that are digital related, whether that be design, development, or social media. Occasionally I’ll post about the sports that I watch as well. Overall, I just want to keep my stream of information relevant and interesting to those that are following me. No need to bore people with a bunch of personal rambles.

Following vs. Followers

I don’t follow every person that follows me for two reasons. The first reason is, not everyones information (or tweets) will be relevant to what I’m looking to gain out of Twitter. I hope people don’t take it personally when I don’t follow them right back, but that’s just how I feel. I don’t like following people for the sake of increasing my ‘following’ list. I need to be sure that the information I’m taking in will be relevant to me and my interests. With that said, if someone following me responds (via @reply) to one of my tweets, I always respond back to them. Just because I don’t follow you doesn’t mean I won’t interact with you if you direct a tweet towards me. I still like communicating with people.

The second reason I don’t follow every person that follows me, is because I try to limit the amount of information I take in. If you’re a heavy Twitter user, you know that it can become information-overload very quickly, especially if you don’t manage your followers list. So I try to be cautious about being overwhelmed with information.

Tools

There are literally tons of tools that can be used with Twitter, and the list doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I can’t say that I’ve tried them all, but I’ve definitely dabbled in more than enough of them to know which ones seem to work best.

…as your tweet volume and social interaction increases, the standard tools begin to degrade the exprience. (via)

TweetDeck is at the top of my list, which is an Adobe Air app. The one feature that has made managing tweets much easier is groups (thumbnail below). Currently, I have a group for my network (people I know personally), and a group for designers. Those are the two groups that I want to make sure I don’t miss tweets from. Having the columns in TweetDeck gives me a big glance at all things that are happening, and if I’m really busy or away from my computer, I can quickly scan through those groups to see what I’ve missed. I won’t go into heavy detail about Tweetdeck, but Ken Burbary wrote a good post on more features and how he uses TweetDeck.

Tweetie is hands down, the best iPhone Twitter client there is. The UI is very intuitive and it keeps getting better. It has a great feature set, and the load time for tweets is pretty fast. I would highly recommend that to anyone looking for a new Twitter app for their iPhone or iTouch.

Tips

Everyone is going to use Twitter differently, whether it’s personal, for business, or just exploring the digital world, but there are a few tips that I can pass on that span across all of those. The first tip is to interact with people. Don’t just use it as a platform to link up your blog. Twitter is so much more interesting when you’re interacting with others. You’d be surprised at the interesting debates and conversations that can pop up. It becomes more of a beneficial platform when you’re talking with people, and not talking to them.

Then I learned the secret of Twitter: don’t try to keep up. (via)

Don’t try and keep up with every single word said on Twitter, because it’s impossible, and you will drain yourself quickly trying to do so. I’ve actually tried it, and failed. Jump in and out of conversation at times, but pace yourself. It’s ok if you miss things, but the overall conversation will continue.

My last tip is to use Twitter’s search. It’s a great way to follow conversations (that use hashtags), or to see what people are saying about a certain topic. You can also find both new people to follow, and interesting links.

I hope this post was someone valuable to those reading. I know that I always like hearing how others use Twitter, and how it’s been beneficial to them. There are a ton more tips that can be given on the best ways to use Twitter, so please comment if you have more to add, and feel free to add me on Twitter as well.

How are you using Twitter? Has it been beneficial for you?