Thomas Byttebier blog feed

Inspiration is for amateurs

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

American artist Chuck Close on the topic of inspiration:

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.

If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.

I first read this quote a few months ago and it changed my attitude on those days when I don't feel creative. There's no such thing as a designer's block. Quit the excuses and just get to work.

A beautiful history of typography

Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Really loving this beautiful paper-letter animation about the history of fonts and typography. Apparently 291 paper letters went into it, 2454 photographs and 140 hours of work. It shows.

The movie was created by Ben Barrett-Forrest. Respect to you, stranger.

Finally, a redesign

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Finally, a redesign. It was about time. It's hard to believe I never changed my previous site's look since it was released mid 2008. What a shame.

So much has changed on the internet since then. The single most important thing probably being the fact that we're now connected 24/7 through handheld devices. No new web technology, HTML update or visual trend can beat the impact of that.

But even more has changed on a personal level. I'm in my thirties now and I've sure had my share of misfortune. But I've been on two foreign continents and I have a truly beautiful kid now. I work for better clients, produce better work and have less but better friends, so that's great.

It's all things that shaped my vision on life in general and web design in particular. This renewed site is an extension of that: much simpler and to the point. It states what I do and what I believe in. Nothing fancy. Also: the domain name is now my own name. No more quaint company name, it's just me anyway. (I've archived the old version much to my own embarrassment.)

This site runs on my new simple CMS of choice: Kirby. Coming from an ExpressionEngine background, Kirby is a delight for the small personal website this is. Kirby's biggest plus is the absence of features: no database, no extensive configuration, no control panel. Just well-structured text files, easy updating and full design freedom. Love that.

In the next few weeks I'll take the time to update the contents of my portfolio pages and do a few required tweaks here and there. Get in touch if you feel like. I'd sure appreciate it.