Today, my third ever entry, an advertising concept for dictionaries was a joint winner alongside a few other users that landed at the same concept.

What I like about One Minute Briefs is the fact that it gets your creative juices flowing. It doesn’t interfere with your day – it is only 60 seconds after all, but it does stretch your brain a little which is never a bad thing. It can become very addictive looking at the other entries as they appear, so be warned!

If you work in advertising, pr, design or any other creative industry I would highly recommend that you give it a go. It may just change the way you think, the way you work and even save you a huge amount of time – it may not, but it’s 60 seconds of your life.

You can follow One Minute Briefs on Twitter to get involved or take a look at previous contests and winners on their website.

I never really used Fireworks for any length of time, largely because it didn’t get on with my old MacBook Pro, it was laggy and unresponsive (and no, I’m not talking about resizing a browser window). That said, in principle I liked it. To me it was like a bridge between Illustrator and Photoshop, it had Illustrator’s superior selection method and it touched on Photoshops image editing capabilities. Photoshop is a great piece of software but it wasn’t built for web design and that is clear when you use it. Don’t get me wrong I’ve been using Photoshop for 15 years now and it does the job well, but it could be better. Unfortunately Photoshop is now so developed that unless they have a major interface change (which I don’t think they should, it is an image editing application after all), I really don’t see it getting much better from a web design point of view.

Alternatives To Fireworks

While Fireworks will continue to work as version CS6, it never really feels like a good move to be using an application that is no longer developed. Sooner or later it won’t work on the operating system and an alternative will be needed. So what are the options?

Sketch by Bohemian Coding

Sketch feels great, it has a very simple interface and graphics look really sharp when using it. The smart folks at Bohemian Coding offered a 50% discount on the day that Adobe announced their Fireworks news in the hope of luring more customers in. I’ve been playing with Sketch for a while now and I like it, I have a few reservations though. Firstly, it is hugely lacking when it comes to bitmap editing. I’ve never really been a fan of jumping between 2-3 apps to get the job done and as my style of work does tend to involve quite a bit of bitmap work, this is an issue for me. Secondly, it’s Mac only with no plans for a PC version. This is fine for me and all the other mac users out there, but what if you need to collaborate with a PC user? I fear that the lack of a PC version will affect the uptake of Sketch and ultimately stop it from becoming an industry standard app.

Skala by Bjango

The as yet unreleased app from Bjango is said to be a precise user interface and icon design tool with vector, bitmap and 3D abilities. It’s difficult to say much about Skala as the beta is not due for release until later on this year but it seems to be getting a bit of publicity.

Adobe Edge

Adobe’s suite of Edge tools contains Edge Animate, Edge Reflow, Edge Code and Edge Inspect (among others). It’s a collection of tools that are intended to allow you to create content that is responsive, animated and works cross browser. Edge is early in it’s life and I haven’t used it in any form yet, I’m struggling to see where it will fit into my workflow. It feels like a collection of applications that simply allow me to do what I’m already doing. I’ll keep my eye on it’s development, but until Adobe can clearly explain what the hell it is and why it’s any good, I can’t see me touching it.

As far as I am aware, there are no other stand out alternatives, I’m not even sold on these alternatives but they seem to be the ones with the greatest chance of success. For now, I’ll just keep on using Photoshop, 15 years usage isn’t so bad!

A (not so) small problem

My first day using the new machine to design on hasn’t exactly filled me with confidence. Ordinarily I use Photoshop for almost all my web design work, so I began by setting up my standard sized document that I begin with – 1200 x 1200 pixels. At 100% zoom this takes up around a third of the 15″ screen. Its absolutely tiny. It’s so small in fact, that you simply cannot design that way. Fonts are illegible and its like designing on the back of a postage stamp. Easy fix, zoom in to 200% right? Wrong. While 200% zoom feels about right on the monitor, fonts appear fuzzy, images look like poorly compressed jpgs – its not a workable solution.

A (partial) solution

For new projects I’m working with a document at double size. It displays well on screen and can be saved at 50% size for anyone wishing to view on their non retina display screens. It works but it feels wrong. It feels like a hack. Not only that, it doesn’t work if you’re editing files that have been created on a non retina display. You’re either back to working at postage stamp size, or zooming in to a fuzzy mess.

I’m not sure what the solution is and to be quite honest I’m thinking it was a mistake to buy a retina display. If anyone out there has found any workarounds then please let me know as I’m a little bit lost at the moment!

Update

I’ve done a little more digging on this and other than some users suggesting use another monitor (which is neither practical for me as a freelancer nor the type of solution I want having spent just shy of £2,000) or simply zoom in to 200% (which kind of ignores the issue), I haven’t found any real answers.

Interestingly, if you set up the same size document in Photoshop and Illustrator and view it at the same zoom (100%), the visual difference is huge, the Photoshop document is displayed at half the size of the Illustrator version. This makes absolutely no sense to me considering both apps are retina enabled.

Sure I’ve used Adobe products for the last 14 years on a daily basis but the £50/month required to use the software in future makes me think twice. Realistically, what do I actually need that Adobe have? The 2 programs I use most are Photoshop and Illustrator without a doubt, beyond that I really don’t think I need any more. Occasionally I do a little work with After Effects but it’s quite a rarity. I never use InDesign, have no need for Muse and Dreamweaver had its day a long time ago.

Could I really drop Photoshop and Illustrator?
The idea that I could stop using the two pieces of software I use more than any other does seem a little ridiculous but it is possible. I’ve read various posts on users dropping Photoshop or Fireworks in favour of Bohemian Coding’s Sketch (which costs around £35), and that was before the new pricing structure. Other options are Pixelmator, a very capable app that I have yet to use in any real capacity but does show a hell of a lot of promise. Photoshop does a lot of stuff that I simple do not use for web based layouts, in fact I’d estimate that I use less than 10% of Photoshop’s features.

The main problem…
The biggest influence on whether I actually will be able to drop Photoshop and Illustrator from my toolset is the fact that I have to supply files to design agencies that other designers can work with and likewise I have to be able to take other designers files and continue working on them. Realistically I think this will stop me, but it seems like such a poor reason. I’d be far happier to continue using Adobe’s software if it provided something that the alternatives don’t. I’m not convinced this is true though.

I’d be really interested to know what other designers out there are doing and whether they have considered dropping Adobe products from their toolset.

The Beginning
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Netscape Navigator was one of the most popular browsers, I landed my first job as a web designer, despite the fact that I’d never even been on a website before. The year was 1999 and I was an enthusiastic 20 year old with a mission to redesign the internet (well, sort of). The subject matter for my first website project wasn’t particularly inspirational, an office park in Manchester – but I wasn’t going to let that hinder my progress. I started out looking for inspiration, trawling the depths of coolhomepages.com to see what was currently considered to be cool (this is pre-awwwards kids!) – without a doubt the site of the moment was hoover.com – an all singing, all dancing flash website that was visually streets ahead of the competition.

The Project
The decision was made, I was going to design something that offered a similar experience for an incredibly bland office park on the outskirts of Manchester – what could possibly go wrong? (I’m actually cringing writing this). Using my limited photoshop skills I started to put the design visuals together, a lethal combination of overlaid transparencies and drab office park photography- the lemon yellow I used is still burned into my retinas to this day!

The Result
To look at what I produced today (and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone) it would be considered a relatively straightforward website build, but back in ’99 I had designed a site that was incredibly difficult to code – transparencies and rounded corners were luxuries that web designers dare not use. The build was a series of nested tables and almost entirely image based (any front end developers reading this will be wincing), there was no responsive layout, no @font-face and no CSS! Still, at least I didn’t include a mouse trail (big at the time).

The Saving Grace
Fortunately for me and you the readers there is no trace of the hideous yellow beast that I designed. It was redesigned many years ago and in the best interests of my design career I opted not to keep the design files or indeed any reference to that project. Its clear that I’m not particularly proud of my first project but I’ve learned that that is a good thing. If, after 14 years I looked back on a project and liked it then it would show a huge lack of progression and development on my part – sometimes I can barely even look at work I completed a month ago without thinking of ways I could improve it!

Initially after leaving school I went on to study illustration, followed by design so I guess it makes sense that I still have a desire to create non-commercial pieces of art. I’ve tried many times to get back into both sketching and painting but something always stops me – either forgetting my sketchbook or just not having the time to set up the necessary equipment. After completing a recent digital painting project in Photoshop I started looking around at alternative solutions. Photoshop was just way too cumbersome for the task – step forward ArtRage.

So far I’ve had the demo of ArtRage 4 for just 48 hours but I’m completely blown away by it. It just works exactly like it should – I didn’t need any tutorials to get up and running. The best thing I can say about it though is that it feels like painting, from the texture of the canvas to the paints mixing together. It just feels great to use.

If you’ve never tried ArtRage and have any interest in making art I would highly recommend it, it’s around $50 to buy.

Here’s a quick painting of Ted Danson* that I did…

*Ted Danson should have been Hellboy.

I have been abusing and generally over-using Langdon ever since I downloaded it and I suspect I’m not the only one (free fonts are generally awful).

Grab it while you can…

Passive Income

The idea of passive income is incredibly appealing, what could be better than a steady stream of money that requires little to no maintenance on your part? There are countless blog posts out there talking about the subject, here’s my approach…

Affiliate Deals

The first thing I want to say about affiliate deals is that I will only recommend a service that I believe to be good. This is the key. If you start distributing affiliate links for any old service, you’ll quickly find that people will stop listening (and rightly so).

FreeAgent
My main source of passive income over the years has been affiliate deals, and the champion in the stable are my referrals to online accounting software FreeAgent. I have no issue making referrals to FreeAgent as first and foremost it’s a fantastic service, I would recommend it even if it didn’t pay its generous (20%) referral fees.

Average income from FreeAgent: £70/month

Shopify
This is a new one for me. I’ve never taken on ecommerce sites for clients as its not really my area of expertise, over the years I’ve turned away probably hundreds of ecommerce projects. Step forward e-commerce platform Shopify and its partner program.

Shopify pays 20% of any generated income from your referrals, rather than just flat turning these projects down, I now introduce the client to Shopify.

Average income from Shopify: £0/month (this is new to me and I expect it will start generating money shortly)

Selling Digital Goods

This is another new one for me. I’m a big fan and long time user of 3D software Cheetah3D. In my spare time I’ve been known to produce the odd Cheetah3D video tutorial which I’ve distributed freely through my YouTube channel. The reality is that these tutorials take time to plan and produce so I have recently started selling my tutorials. At this stage it’s difficult to gauge how much money the sales may bring in, but what I like about this is that it’s a scalable model – the amount earned is directly linked to the amount of tutorials that I produce.

Anticipated average income: £20/month (based upon a short-mid term target of around 7 tutorials)

Other Possibilities

Many designers look to sell either graphic templates for items like business cards, WordPress templates etc using online marketplaces such as ThemeForest and GraphicRiver. At this stage in time, these aren’t areas that I’m looking to explore as I think they’re either incredibly saturated and/or involve a lot of maintenance that takes the passive element away from the income.

Obviously at this moment in time, none of the sources I am using are generating huge amounts of cash but it’s a case of building them over time. I’m not expecting them to produce thousands of pounds but if they can contribute anything at all with minimum involvement on my part then I’m happy. Smart readers will have spotted my affiliate links used throughout this article!

Back in November I met with a potential client to discus a new website. It sounded like a nice project with good opportunity for a little creative freedom, pretty much the the exact kind of project that I look for. Just one problem, the pre-Christmas deadline. I told the client that I didn’t think it was achievable and as a result I didn’t get the project. The email I received notifying me of this stated that the site must be live before Christmas and this was the decisive factor against using me. I couldn’t argue with that, I didn’t believe that I could meet the deadline.

As Christmas approached I was busy with other projects and somehow squeezing in my Christmas shopping too, but it occurred to me that the client’s site would be live and I was keen to see the end result (I think you know what’s coming). I quickly typed the URL into Chrome and sure enough the site wasn’t live. I have to admit I wasn’t hugely surprised, this has happened to me quite a few times over the past few years.

I have to admit, I’m not entirely sure on how to avoid this in future. I’m not at all comfortable telling a client that I can complete a project within their deadline if I don’t believe that I can. So for now, I’ll stick to being honest and miss out.