My Riverford organic veg box arrived last week. For those not familiar with Riverford, each box contains a newsletter written by Guy Watson (Founder of Riverford Organic Farm). In this particular newsletter he was talking his motivations behind Riverford. These were similar to those behind toggle and the article struck a cord because it coincided with our launch of the laundry service.

“As Yasmina triumphed over Kate as Alan Sugar’s apprentice, we hear Sir Alan is to become a Lord and government advisor on enterprise. Brash, competitive and aggressively selfish behavior makes compelling viewing but has precious little to with good business. I can’t help enjoying the show; I even suspect there is a fair amount of integrity and honesty in the down-to-earth, finger wagging, boy-done-good Sir Alan’s approach, but sales and short-term deal making are just a small part of business. Most successful businesses spend far more time building long-term relationships with their suppliers and customers than they do striking short-term deals.

I stepped out of school in the unbridled market mania of the Reagan/Thatcher years. After a few years milking cows I packed my bags, bought a snappy suit and threw myself into the throng in London and New York as a management consultant. It was lucrative and great fun, but, for me, ultimately soul sapping and it was only two years before I was back on the farm. The unquestioning idolatry of the marketplace as the only valid solution, whether in education, health, climate change or school dinners continued unabated through the Blair/Clinton neo-liberalism. Meanwhile I grew my vegetables and business with an increasing sense that there must be a better way - and a determination to find it. My beef with the Sir Alan approach is that by viewing every object, person and situation as a trade commodity we ultimately belittle the human condition and denigrate our lives as a result….I may not have done as well as Sir Alan, but the belief that good business should be based on serving the genuine, long-term needs of all stakeholders is gaining ground.”

A fantastic lecture called ‘Morals and Markets’ by Professor Michael Sandel (something Mike had already passed around the toggle office) was mentioned at the end of the newsletter. If you are not already familiar with it, it’s definitely worth checking out. The lecture discusses the need for politics that encourage a more morally engaged public life - it looks at the moral limits of markets and how there are some things money can buy but shouldn’t. But that’s another blog post…

Due to our office move and new site launch we didn’t get around to making any Open Source recommendations last month. To make up for it we will squeeze in two this month.

So far our recommendations have been desktop focused and primarily for the Mac (we are all Mac users at toggle). The Open Source movement extends way beyond desktop software and the Open Source business model is being adopted in some very unexpected places. Open Source cola, Open Source hardware and more recently an Open Source car.

A shift is occurring in the way we use technology and store our data, the shift is driven by the web and is moving the software we use online. The huge advantage to this is that our data follows us to any device we happen to be using. With this in mind we felt it was time to start looking at some of the best Open Source web applications.

OpenGoo

The sales pitch:

OpenGoo is an Open Source Web Office. It is a complete solution for every organisation to create, collaborate, share and publish all its internal and external documents.

In short, OpenGoo is a strong alternative to Google Docs, Zoho and Microsoft Office on the desktop. What really impresses us with OpenGoo is the amount of features available in the application. OpenGoo allows you to manage:

• Text documents
• Presentations
• Task Lists
• E-mails
• Calendars
• Web Links
• Contacts

From the looks of it they have more features on the way too. The application is the long lost cousin of ActiveCollab (a now commercial project) that we used to make use of in the early days of toggle. Essentially it is a mashup of many different Open Source projects rolled into one neat package.

We don’t make use of OpenGoo at toggle (yet) - we would need to have mobile access before jumping on board. OpenGoo could also be improved with cleaner interface, especially if our clients are going to be collaborating on documents with us. Playing with the demo we were really impressed and we will certainly be keeping a close eye on the projects future developments.

Pope Street, SE1

Pope Street is five minutes walk from Tower Bridge on the south side of the River Thames. Its a quiet street (except for the recent road works) and within a short walk we have some great places to grab lunch. We are still discovering new luncheonettes each day, if you know the area we would love to hear your food suggestions.

Worldview Space

The office is situated in an old London brick warehouse. Worldview Space is on the third floor and is a collaborative space inhabited by a whole range of businesses. One end of the space dedicated to team toggle. The blue paint used across the building pretty much matches the toggle deep blue which is a nice coincidence.

We also have access to a tiny roof terrace, unfortunately the buildings around are a little higher than ours which restricts the view. With a step ladder you might just be able to get a glimpse of Tower Bridge and the Thames.

toggle

Last Friday we took delivery of a laser cut perspex toggle logo to hang on the back wall. This is the largest our logo has ever been and its great to see the intricacies of the typeface when it is blown up this big. The logo sits proudly above our desks.

We have four (and a half) desks to fill and a wall of storage cubes that are currently filled with lots of design inspiration and books.

If you would like to see more pictures we have uploaded a whole bunch to Flickr.

After weeks of quietly beavering away behind the scenes, we have a new website, a new office and are pleased to announce a new way of working - the toggle Design Laundry Service™

Office

Weve moved the toggle-plex down-river from its original site near Staines to just south of Tower Bridge. Its a lovely old London brick warehouse, tucked away down a side lane. It even has a tiny roof terrace for the one or two days of summer we may have!

This is a quick peek of our new office - well give you the full Cooks tour later in the week.

Website

The biggest change for our new website is that we have moved to Wordpress. This doesn’t mean we are abandoning Pixie, we just wanted to try something new. As soon as we have a couple of minutes, well write a separate post all about the intricacies of the new site. For now, here are some top-lines on our favorite new features…

Shop

By popular demand weve finally integrated our handmade craft skills into the business and launched a shop. Were currently selling iphone cases and gorgeous postcard packs - but keep checking back because we are planning to add lots of other toggle branded goodies in the near future.

Going mobile

We also felt it was time to build a proper mobile friendly version of our site - and so we did! Visiting from a mobile device will automatically serve you a simplified (but still beautiful) version of our website. We’ve tried and tested it and were happy, but would be very interested to hear any feedback you may have - good or bad…

toggle design laundry service ™

When we launched toggle we wanted to set up a different sort of operation. For a while now we’ve all felt quite deeply that to keep our standards high (and our clients happy) our business practise needs be sustainable - in the way we run it as well as environmentally. So after many late nights thinking and talking it through, we’ve changed the way we work - and this new way of working is called the toggle design laundry service™.

The main downfalls

Banking

As you all know, when you open a bank account you have forms to sign, you get posted pin codes, terms and conditions for banking, welcome packs, banking cards, cheque books, paying in books, login details for online banking, further reading for services you may need in the future, paperwork to close your old account - and all this information arrives in paper envelopes! About 3 months ago we decided to move bank accounts. Wading through old paperwork and replacing it with the new, really made us realise just how much waste paper banking generates.

Inland Revenue

We regularly receive information from the Inland Revenue (a copy of the same information is also sent to our accountant) about VAT , pay etc which usually comes in the form of an A4 envelope with a letter and a CD in a cardboard sleeve.

The need to get creative

Sometimes you just need to work on paper.

When given a brief I like to sketch. My head is full of ideas and I need to get them down visually and as quickly as possible. I find this much easier than jumping straight on the computer because it’s easy to get caught up with details rather than idea generation.

Useful tools and services

CD recycling

London Recycling service operate free CD and DVD recycling. All you have to do is post your box of CD’s and they do the rest,

“The CD material is delivered to the decollaion centre where the constituent parts are separated. Paper is baled, pulped and used in the production of cardboard. The jewel case is granulated and then fed into an extrusion system fitted with a laser filter for contaminant removal. A high quality Crystal Polystyrene pellet is produced and may be used for new cases or insulating foam. The discs are processed in another machine and paint, aluminium and data is removed from the surface. This is used to insulate electric cables.The clean discs are granulated, blended and compounded into a polycarbonate material. This is reused to make burgular alarm boxes or street lighting.”

Google Docs

We make full use of Gmail, Google Docs and the Google Calendars on a daily basis. The great thing about the apps is the collaboration; sharing not only between ourselves but with our clients too. Clients can just paste their content into a Google Doc which saves sending it on CD.

PDFs

Generating PDF rather than paper proposals and invoices wherever possible.

Not getting company stationery printed

We decided very early on not to get company stationery (letterheads and compliment slips) printed. One of the main reasons for this was that we were going to try and make use of as many digital services as possible to save on paper. There were also budget reasons - to get even simple stationery printed would have taken a large chunk out of our budget as there are minimum sheet orders.

Instead we bought some good quality paper and just print them as and when we need them. We will be moving offices in a few weeks (more details coming soon) and we are very glad we didn’t get them printed because we have sent less than 20 letters in 18 months of business.

Moo minicards

Moo minicards are only 70mm x 28mm compared to the standard business card size of 80mm x 55m. Using minicards instead of standard business cards means we are using half the amount of materials per business card. Why are business cards so big!?!

Dropbox

Dropbox is a tool that enables you to sync and large files across the internet and computers. Dropbox has proved an invalauble tool here because it means we can share large files (like video) with our clients without the use of CD’s and DVD’s.

Reuse

Reusing old printouts for sketching on.

Conclusion

Anyone who claims to be paper free probably isn’t. How can you stop post coming through your door? Although we aren’t completely paper free, we are using as many tools as possible to continually reduce the amount of paper we consume at toggle HQ.

What makes it great?

If you have ever played with other media center offerings (Front Row, MS Media Center) you were probably let down. Out of the box, certain files wont play and to access web content (iPlayer, Flickr, YouTube) you have to exit the media center application and head for your browser. Boxee pulls it together by not only supporting every file I have thrown at it but by connecting to many web services as well. From one interface I can grab files over the local network, pull in tonnes of web content, download from BitTorrent and even check the weather. The Boxee interface is surprisingly clean and easy to use and the app is also kind enough to fetch film and tv show information from sites like the IMDB. Adding to the excellent experience is a remote control application for iPhone and the recently released Boxee app store which allows you to add extra functionality and content sources.

Boxee is available for Mac, Linux and Windows and requires a Boxee account to download. With your Boxee account you can share your content recommendations with friends on Boxee and other social networks. There is also talk of seeing Boxee ship on standalone hardware (think Apple TV) in future.

For the less technically minded it can be a challenge to get Pixie installed and setup so we thought it might be useful to offer a fully hosted environment which allows new comers to get setup quickly and easily. The package will include hosting, email, a domain name and support. We have not worked out the numbers in terms of cost, bandwidth or storage space as we wanted to gauge your interest first. If it is not too much trouble pop your thoughts into the questionnaire (we will post up the results to the Pixie blog soon).

Fill in the Pixie questionnaire »

On those rare occasion that we do need to make a disk (normally for backups or freebies) the tool of choice has been Toast (at least for the last few years). Toast is a great application but the version we have is three versions out of date and the cost of grabbing new copy cannot really be justified (it is a recession after all!). It was time to go find open source alternative.

Burn

Burn is a beautifully simple application (OSX 10.4+). The interface is uncluttered and making a disc is extremely straight forward. It supports all of the features you would expect: data discs, video discs, audio discs and also copying. We downloaded a copy of Burn a few months ago and they have already released an update… not only is it free and open source, it is also under active development. We cannot find a bad thing to say about this application and suggest you download a copy right now.

Simply Burns

Burn is not the only open source CD writing application we found for Mac, we also found Simply Burns. Unfortunately it does not have all the features of Burn and we had a hard time getting over the clunky interface too. It is worth a mention though as it does show some promise and it is always good to have options.

What is your favourite disc writing application?

This is the second year we have visited the exhibition and thought we would share some of our favorite pieces from this years show.

Green Protest Suit, UK

“Mullins has created the Protest Suit, whereby applying HollyWood Green Screen to the felt suit implies that it can display political messages when filmed. Therefore, by wearing the suit within the borders of what would normally be regarded as cut-off limits for displaying political messages, this suit can convey any form of communication when filmed”.

Jar Tops, Holland

“These are a simple but ingenious way of transforming ordinary empty jars into functional products. There are five variations allowing the creation of a milk jog, sauce jug, sugar shaker, oil/vinegar pourer or chocolate/herb shaker. The tops are made to fit jars designed using the ‘Twist Off’ standard, and international standard that is used for food jars with metal or plastic screw caps and can be recognised by two or more screw thread ridges on the neck of the jar”.

Workit Office System, Switzerland

“Individual work stations can be expanded as desired and flexibly combined with one another, where the accessible price range of the system is in part also the result of the design concept and product philosophy”.

Aesop Retail Stores and Branding, Australia

“The retail display units at the store on Flinders Lane, Melbourne were entirely constructued from the cardboard packaging, 3000 cardboard boxes in total, used to distribute and ship the Aesop products”.

Appeel, Germany

Described as,

“A virus spreaing through interacting individuals”, Appeel demonstrates the basic principles of interactivity largely reliant on the behaviour of the user. A surface is covered by a large number of coloured stickers, positioned in a grid. People are invited to remove the stickers, leaving white dots in the layout, as a result individually and collectively changing the walls appearance”.

Music video for Radiohead House of Cards, UK

“A ground breaking technique is employed in which no cameras or lights are used. Instead the three dimensional images are captured using scanners which use two types of technology. The first being Geometric Informatics, where scanning thechniques produce structured light to capture three dimensional images at close proximity…the second technology is Velodyne LIDAR, a system that uses multiple lasers to capture larger environments”.

So if you haven’t been aleady, pop along! The exhibition runs until 14th June 09.

The incident got us thinking about ways in which we can better communicate service issues to our clients. Before Tuesday we had been relying on an small status message on the hosting page of our website which was accompanied by an RSS feed. While this worked for announcing planned server maintenance it was not much use in emergencies. Last October our main server suffered a hard disk failure on both disks, the server was taken offline immediately and repaired within two hours. During those two hours our site was not reachable and we could not update the service message to inform people of the outage. We had considered moving the updates to an email based system, however during the Google outage email was not a viable option.

Today I am pleased to announce a new way in which we will be delivering our service notifications: Twitter. Using Twitter we can deliver the status updates in a number of ways and as the system lives away from our core technology it should be online when our site is not. Here are the options for following the updates:

1. You can subscribe via RSS.
2. You can subscribe via email.
3. You can follow the account on your Twitter.
4. You can check the support section on our website.
5. You can visit our Twitter page directly.

Twitter offers a simple, concise messaging system for delivering service updates and while it has a reputation for being slightly flaky, it has now overcome the majority of its growing pains.

Update: In response to Tuesdays downtime Google have now launched their own service status website. Once an RSS feed is available for this we will pipe it into our support Twitter account.

We have opened a toggle shop on Etsy (a community of people who make things by hand). At present, we have iPhone and mobile phone cases for sale, but plan to launch more handmade items in the future.

Here is a sample from our first batch:

Providing this phase goes well we will be looking at expanding both the shop and the products we sell into the year. We look forward to welcoming our first customers!

Last year we posted up some of our favourite Mac applications, and in that list was Parallels Desktop; a visualisation software that allows you to run Windows as an application on your Mac. Visualisation is an important part of our web development process as we check all of the websites we create on a range of browsers and operating systems. With software like Parallels we can run Linux, Windows and Mac OSX together without the need to constantly reboot or own a bunch of different computers with varying software configurations. Shortly after we had purchased two licenses for Parallels, the software was upgraded to version 4 and over the last 6 months our version has become increasingly unstable. It was time to look for an alternative.

Enter VirtualBox, developed by Sun Microsystems and distributed under the GNU GPL. VirtualBox may not be tricked out with all the eye candy of Parallels but it is extremely stable, fast and in my opinion much easier to use. You will need to make sure you have installed guest additions from the menu within VirtualBox to get the most out of the software. Guest additions makes integration between the two operating systems much more seamless, features included mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest OS window).

From the main VirtualBox window you can easily control the amount of system resource available to each guest operating system, organise snapshots (e.g. revert to a point where Linux still worked before Scott broke it) and install new operating systems. I have both Ubuntu and Windows XP installed so far. VirtualBox even handled running a few games too (for testing purposes of course!).

Overall we are really impressed with the VirtualBox and suggest you give it a try. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Jay Street subway

Old signage from the New York Transport Museum

“Walk” / “Wait” - New York Transport Museum

59th Street subway

Signage from the New York Transport Museum

Old signage from the New York Transport Museum

Cinema typography

Our first toggle project was to build this very web site and as we completed it the enquiries for work began, as the year moved on our work load grew and unfortunately that led to fewer blog posts. New years resolution #1: Write more.

Our first year has been a success, we have had ups and downs but on the whole we go into 2009 on a positive note. We have projects to start, pitches to attend and a few 2008 projects to finish. The most important thing to come of this year has been the knowledge we have acquired about running a business and in particular how to work with our clients. They are all different, with different wants and expectations… in short: one size does not fit all.

Rather than write a post that looks back on the year that has passed I want to focus on looking ahead, what will be important to toggle in 2009?

Simplicity

I have always been a fan of simple: Less is more and more is often unnecessary. Having just read “The Laws of Simplicity” by John Maeda I am convinced that businesses and consumers need to start focusing on simple. Its no secret that the world has hit a tiny bit of economic difficulty and while the media will have you believe that this is a bad thing I can personally see a number of benefits to it. With less money it becomes more important to streamline and simplify. This means cutting out the unnecessary and focusing on simpler solutions that are easy to use and implement. For example we recently stopped our Basecamp subscription in favour of using email and Remember the Milk, this not only saved money but was easier for our clients (who are not all technically minded) to use.

We are also in the process of switching our business banking, its not an easy thing to do once a company is in motion but once we have done it our banking setup will become much simpler to manage: two bank cards becomes one, one online account becomes many and a number of our bank charges will disappear.

Simplicity is hopelessly subtle, and many of its defining characteristics are implicit… Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. - John Maeda

Design

We built three CMS systems (Pixie, a toggle CMS and a property management system) and delivered numerous technical specification documents in 2008. It would seem that most clients are after “features” and that leads to conversations on development, not design. While we cannot get away from technology it is necessary to focus on the people that use it and not the technology itself. Design will solve problems that technology creates.

We aim to spend more of our time researching target markets, usability testing and researching our clients’ competitors. Letting design lead the development process will result in great experiences and better brands/websites. With current economic challenges it will be an attention to design to makes your product, service, brand or website stand out against those around you.

As part of this focus towards design, we will be heading to the Future of web design conference in April. 2009 is all about design…

Open Source

The idealism of the Internet manifests itself in Open Source. Open source proves that people from all over the planet can come together to make something greater than what is possible alone. I find Open Source to be inspiring and fascinating at the same time. On May 1st 2008 we launched Pixie as our first Open Source project, it has been downloaded over 8500 times and is in use all over the world. The people who use it are free to take our work and improve upon it and put back into the project anything they feel is missing. Pixie has improved over the course of the year and as a result everyone has benefited.

The WordPress team have proven that Open Source can be extremely successful and it is one the projects we watch closely with eager eyes. The new WordPress interface for version 2.7 has been thoroughly researched, tested and community driven. For the first time I feel I could give a copy of WordPress to a client and be confident in them using it and with that in mind we will be developing our first WordPress plug-ins in 2009. Beyond WordPress we would love to see how design can play a major part in the future of other Open Source projects, more designers should be giving time to projects in the hope that we can create greater software, that is simpler and easy to use.

The Internet is driven by people who donate time to projects such as PHP, MySQL and jQuery. Its time that everyone plays a part in giving back to the projects we use daily. If you feel the need to donate money in 2009 I would recommend you send a few pounds to a project you cannot do without.

We are already running two Linux servers and over the course of the year we will start testing both design and development applications that are Open Source. By 2010 I have a secret desire to be using nothing but open technology (web applications with at least an API or considerations for data portability and Open Source software)… is this possible? I intend to find out.

Thanks

So its 364 days until 2010 and I’m pretty sure we should all be wearing space suits and driving flying cars by then, we certainly have a lot of work to do! We are hoping to grow toggle beyond our comfort zone this year: A new office? New staff?… New clients! and of course continuing to work with those who have supported us so far. Bring on 2009!

Like so….

Then you get your score…the lower the number the better. I think the perfect colour vision is partly due to the fact that I have my screen on maximum brightness, so it’s much easier to see the difference bewteen the colours :)

Then you can see where you rank in relation to other people of the same sex and age range.

Has anyone else tried this test? Let us know your scores!
Take the colour IQ test »

Naming

One of the main routes we explored for the naming of this site was Latin. The reason for this was that it gave us something a bit more abstract to work with. We had decided to create an invented name (examples: Tesco, Frijj,
Hoover, iPod) in order to avoid words often associated with sites of this type (green, natural, body mind spirit etc). We found a three key Latin words:

• Pondera: meaning balance
• Terra: meaning Earth and land
• Animo: meaning nature

We started to cut these words up and splice them together. The name anderra was created by merging ‘pondera’ (balance) and ‘terra’ (Earth & land).

Logo

After we had created the name, the next step was the logo.

We had done masses of brain storming and sketching for the anderra logo, but felt we weren’t quite there yet. I was having a shower one
weekend, I picked up a body bar to use and noticed some suds that had been left on and dried. The pattern these suds formed made me think of anderra…so I took a photo.

We took the photo into illustrator and started looking at the organic shapes left by the suds.

Although the image was of soap suds, we felt the organic shapes were a good route for a number of reasons: The Earth use to made up of a super continent called Pangea. Pangea started to break and separated to create the oceans continents as we know them now. The shapes are also organic forms that feel very natural - there is no rigid ‘man made’ grid to which all the shapes much align. Much of the focus on natural body care is on the ingredients, and we felt these organic shapes also resembled molecues - the separate parts making something greater than itself.

We developed the logo as much as possible in black and white because we wanted to create a strong logo regardless of the colours or effects applied. We work on the thinking that if it looks good in plain black, it’ll look even better with colour applied.

Although the idea originated from soap suds, the final application of the mark to the logo suggests natural and organic.

The final solution

Then we added the polish! We chose blue and brown - colours of land, sea and sky.

You can see more of the anderra project in our portfolio or visit the site.

Google Apps

• By: Google
• Cost: Free

Google Apps needs little introduction these days. We make full use of Gmail, Google Docs and the Google Calendars on a daily basis. The great thing about the apps is the collaboration; sharing not only between ourselves but with our clients too. If you want to know more about getting started with Google docs then I suggest watching some videos on the subject. We have also transferred some of our clients over to the platform as well.

Remember the Milk

• By: Remember the Milk
• Cost: Free or a pro account for $25 a year

Remember the Milk is one of the newest apps in the toggle tool kit. After deciding to leave Basecamp we needed a robust to-do application and found Remember the Milk. The great thing about it is the fact you can add to-do items from a whole range of devices and services; our favourites being Gmail, Email and via the iPhone application Todo <- iTunes link.

Pixie

• By: Toggle
• Cost: Free

Shameless plug alert! - We use Pixie every day (I am writing this post in Pixie). It allows us to easily manage the content for the sites we make, and our clients can join in too. For those of you who have not tried Pixie, it is our open source CMS. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Delicious

• By: Yahoo!
• Cost: Free

Tired of never having your web bookmarks with you? Try posting all your favourite sites to Delicious. We have been using Delicious for quite some time now, its one of those services that quietly gets on with its job and works flawlessly. The tagging is great and the recent re-design has made it even more of a pleasure to use.

I think that just about covers the really important applications we use, other honourable mentions go to Flickr, FeedBurner and Google Analytics.

I think it is very easy to become over saturated. I read design magazines, I subsribe to design feeds, our office is full of books, we have posters on the walls and I collect lots of things that inspire me. I feel that looking for inspiration in these places can sometimes be part of the problem. You are bombarded with nice typography, great layouts, colour schemes and fantastic ideas. This gets your creative juices flowing and you start to think about all the little elements you want to add to your final solution. But no matter how hard you try to shoe horn them all in, they just don’t fit.

Talking

Sitting silently at our mac with our tunnel vision hats on not suprisingly doesn’t do much good. When we get a new brief, we’ll talk about the project, our ideas and usually come up with ideas we wouldn’t have thought of if we’d just sat in silence. Sometimes I can be talking about something I am having difficulty with and from doing that I can end up answering my questions I didn’t think I had the answer to.

Doing something else

…even if it’s just answering emails. We often find having a short break and doing something else for a while gives us a fresh perspective on what we are doing.

We have been doing some branding for a natural body care site we will be launching very soon. We had done plenty of brain storming, sketched, looked in plenty of books but didn’t feel like we had quite arrived at our solution. At the weekend when I was in the shower that I noticed the way some some soap suds formed on a bar of soap. Seeing this then gave me some ideas and we went and created the final brand.

Eating

toggle loves eating. If we get stuck, we will grab some food - usually Cadburys buttons from the local shop :) Taking time out to feed our brains seems to work wonders for producing ideas.

Walking

We are lucky enough to have the River Thames at the back of the office. Not only a great place to eat lunch but also a great place to go for some ‘thinking space’.

Sketching

We think sketchbooks are a great dumping ground for ideas. I think it gives you a different kind of freedom than you get from the computer because it’s a quick fire round of ideas. By looking at these ideas in their most basic form, you get a better idea of whether it is going to work or not. I think jumping into Photoshop too early can lead to more focus being placed on colours and effects rather than the actual idea.

Moodboards

Moodboards are great guides for a brief becuase they stop you going too far off from where you need to be. This goes back to what I said earlier about becoming saturdated with ideas. It can be quite easy to get carried away and lose sight of what is really appropriate; moodboards are a nice visual reminder of where you need to be.

Having a process

Processes are probably one of the most important aspects in design and they don’t have to limit your creativity. Having a process means you have all of the key elements you need in place. For example, when we design websites, we create tone of voice boards, site maps, work out what type of content will be going on the site - video, plain text, images etc. Once we have this information we start to create wireframes. All of these steps ensure we have really thought about the funcationality of the site. After we have got this right we move onto the design, colours schemes, imagery and typography. Working in this way means we don’t leave anything out and we have a site that works the way it needs to as well as looking great.

What are your tips for creative block?

We have spent a great deal of time looking for UK hosting that is either partly or completely powered by renewables and not found a good solution yet. For now we have to choose reliability over sustainability. All is not lost though, last month we purchased a very cool device called Watson, Watson is described as a “Home (or Office) energy monitor” and that is exactly what it does.

It may look a little bit like a coffee table that glows pretty colours but Watson is an extremely useful and clever device that monitors (and logs to your PC or Mac) your energy usage. It’s actually much smaller than it looks in the photo and has been sitting quietly in the office for last month recording our electricity usage. Before Watson we had no idea how much electricity we used or how much it was costing. The day it arrived we turned off every possible appliance we could get to and then slowly introduced each one, logging how much energy they use. By that evening we had already found two appliances that were consuming about 140W continuously (on standby) and that are now switched off at the wall when not in use. That alone should save us about £170 a year!

We now have an idea of how much electricity our local test server is consuming and which lights are best to turn on first. Each week we are looking at our logged data to see what days are the worst offenders and trying to figure what devices caused it… we are already up £2 on last week! We may not have green hosting (yet) but the toggle office is no longer humming all day (and night).

We felt it was like putting a designer into the office of every client, a way to improve communication and bring them closer to the design process. Eight months later and we have decided to change the way we work… Basecamp no longer rocks our socks.

I think our biggest problem with Basecamp has been getting clients to accept it into their workflow. The truth is that nobody wants to sign in to yet another website to see a visual or make comment on it. Basecamp will send out a notification that a new file has been added to the project and that notification is delivered via email. What’s wrong with that? Well it would have been easier to simply send an email with the visual attached in the first place. Email is something everyone understands, its integrated into our lives and the way we work. Making use of it is not only easier for us, but for our clients to0. The more I think about email the more I feel the modern web needs to make MORE use of it, take a look at Posterous (they understand completely).

Having learned the lesson that email works much better for our clients we decided to keep using Basecamp for ourselves. The main sections of Basecamp we used frequently were the to-do lists, writeboards and occasionally the time tracking. By far the most important to us were the to-do lists. Both Gemma and myself are big fans of creating to-dos, nothing feels better than checking off an item from the list, you can feel the progress rush every time you do it. The thing is with Basecamp your to-dos are all over the place, each project has its own to-do list (which makes sense on first look) but in reality all we wanted to know is: “What needs to be done today?”. Navigating back and forth between projects to check the various to-do lists is slow progress in Basecamp (why is it so slow to load a page?) and it simply was not working for us. We also did not have a project for “everything else”, a place where we could set non-project related to-do notes such as “ring the tax man”. So we created a nice generically named project called “General” and set up a to-do area that looked a little like this:

It worked out very well for us, suddenly the time we spent clicking around Basecamp fell dramatically and my internal productivity monkey was smiling again.

Over time our usage of Basecamp began to fall, the writeboards were not as feature rich as Google docs (or as convenient) and the time tracking kept being forgotten. We found the best way to manage our time is with Google calendars and its built in reminders. The only thing we could not replace was the to-do lists until I decided to investigate Remember the Milk and found that it now integrates with Gmail:

We now have all our to-do lists right where we need them, they are shared between us and can be added to very easily via Gmail, Email, mobile phone, Google calendar and even Twitter. So the time has come to say goodbye to Basecamp, our new setup is simpler, fresher and most importantly saves us time.