Getting A Move On

I’m now writing the final draft of the final article of the final part of Project: New Part I. I’ve had to do this one quicker than I usually do as Naomi (my wife) is now down to T-minus 14 days and counting until B-Day (thats Birth Day) but she’s been having contractions for the last two or three days – not of the Braxton Hicks variety (sounds like a team of celebrity web designers!) – but the real thing so we don’t think its going to be too long now.

I’m going to try and get this issue done and out the door (so to speak) as soon as possible and then it won’t be preying on my mind. I _hate_ unfinished things hanging around!

I thought I’d write down a few things about how I found the process of writing it all down and what I got out of it – it wasn’t an entirely selfless act of generosity I can tell you.

I have to tell you the truth and say that writing it was an act of will unlike anything else I’ve ever done and you’re talking to a man who gave up smoking five years ago! What I mean by that is that it took an act of will to commit to writing it and to keep writing it. As must be obvious by my recent spate of redesigns I get bored pretty easily and I was worried that I’d do the first couple and then it’d just tail off into a dusty half-finished site.

But that didn’t happen. As I said it was an act of will but it also became fun committing ideas and concepts that I’d learnt sometimes years before to ‘paper’. Somebody wiser than me once said that the concept of thought is only complete with an act of actualisation and doing this certainly taught me the truth of that statement. We, as designers, get so used to doing things on instinct as thats a large part of what we do – making instinct about an idea/concept/service/product respond in a positive way – that actually stopping and thinking about why we do these things doesn’t always come easy. In some instances I’ve said things that I’ve never thought of in such literal ways before and in some instances I’ve had the help of a great bunch of people to say things better than I ever could.

So this has been a positive learning experience for me too. I feel much more ‘plugged in’ to my profession that I have for a few years. Deciding to concentrate on Flash so heavily 4 or 5 years ago was a big mistake in lots of ways. In terms of my thoughts of processes and adaptability that decision cost me heavily. In terms of my ability to build websites that clients and users like rather than other designers like it also cost me heavily and I feel that I’m still not in a position to really say I’ve caught up in that respect even now. But I do feel that writing Project: New has brought me to a position where I can participate on a level that will enable me to start pushing myself to catch up.

After my baby’s born, obviously ;o)