I found this website today and I’m trying to work out how I feel about it…

Wonga – Short Term Loans

They’ll lend you up to £400 for up to 30 days to help you pay a bill, and they’ll approve it and transfer the money in under an hour.

The APR sounds shockingly high, but as the loan is only over the maximum of a month the repayment isn’t horrific, i.e. if you borrow £200 over 15 days you’ll have to pay them back an extra £35.90. You can even get them to pay direct to your service provider.

I certainly think in the past this could have helped me out, although it’s worth considering if the interest charges are going to be more or less than the bank charges. I guess time will tell if they’ll become a useful service for people struggling a bit with their cash flow, or if they will horrifically rip people off when they are needing help.

So, make any web page look like it was made by a 13 year old in 1996, huh?

You know – that is better than the first site I made when I was 17….no, I’m not going to EVER let anyone see it.

Geocities-ize your site

I love arts and crafts in general, but one of my main hobbies is knitting. I love that it is so relaxing, then at the end of it you have something beautiful, original and generally useful that you have made yourself.

Check out all the adorable little knitting things in this smashing magazine post – The Beauty of Knitting. These kinds of things always give me inspiration. Here is a few of the adorable creations.

Eye of the Beast by kathrynivy.com

Daphne and Delilah the Momma and Baby Monster by Rebecca Danger

On February 7th 2010 I fell out of a plane. I can’t really claim to have been the one to jump out of it – the instructor did that for me – I didn’t really get the choice once I was up there.

Anyway…I’d been wanting to do a a parachute jump for a while, so when my friend Gill said she was going to do it I thought it would be fun. Always easier to do these things when you have someone along with you. We booked our ‘first’ appointment wa-a-a-ay back in September 2007, but thanks to the wonderful weather we have in Scotland we had to go up another 4 times to get the right weather. But what a beautiful day the 7th of February was. Gorgeous clear blue skies, a little cold though, well only -22°C in the sky!

We learned from our experiences to get to the centre sharp, to ensure we were one of the first to jump, so, nice and early we got all our gear on. Looking rather ridiculous in our dodgy hats, goggles and jump suits, but that’s all part of the fun. At this point we’re really not that nervous – after so many times going up the nerves just fade away. Off we shuffle to the little plane, my instructor Bob with his rabbit fur hat leading me out by a strap, like I’m a puppy on a leash. I’m jumping after Gill so I get into the plane first with Bob behind me – all snuggled up in the back, further away from the gaping hole in the plane – oh yes, the plane has no door – just what you need flying in below freezing skies.

As the plane lifted off the ground my nerves started up a little, but after about 20 minutes of looking at the beautiful scenery you kind of forget what you are about to do. At 8,000ft things start happening (We jump at 10,000 ft). We get ourselves strapped to our instructors tighter, and our goggles come down. Right – no time to think! Gill’s instructor shuffles forward to take her to the edge of the door. This is it! Before I know it Gill’s instructor has gone and I see Gill fall in to the sky. “Aaaaaah! What the hell am I doing?!?!”, but before I know it Bob is shuffling forward too! We’re on the edge of the door and I’m thinking ‘Don’t look down! Head back. Arms crossed. Legs under the plane’. Then I tip over…..and I’m gone. There’s nothing you can do now. I think I screamed for a little bit, but then I realised there is absolutely no point to it, and thought I’d better get myself into the right position. Free fall is amazing. Wind is just flying past you and you can barely see, then before you know it, you feel this gentle motion and then you are vertical again, lightly floating down to the ground. It felt so calm and relaxing, so even when I looked down at my toes wiggling thousands of feet above the ground it just felt nice. We did a bit of spinning round in circles, then started to prepare for the landing. We came in fast and bumped to the ground, no harm done. Then we pick up the parachute and trundle back to the hanger. And that was it over, it all happened so fast. I’m ready for the next time…I just hope Scotland’s weather is.

This article was sent around my office the other day causing a little bit of a stir…5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code.

I think what caused the fuss wasn’t the actual content, but rather, the context it was sent in, i.e. by a developer to the whole company. It was seen as an insult, implying that the design team aren’t doing a good job, rather what it should have been, which was a comment on how we could all work better together. I do agree quite strongly that every designer should understand how websites are built. It can only be a good thing that the designer understands the capabilities of the tools to build websites, helping make best use of them to create a richer user experience.

On the other side of this though, the developer should also understand design. We can often battle against the belief that us designers are just styling. What we are really doing is attempting to create a good interactive user experience; considering a whole barrage of things, including content, structure, client brand, how to prioritise content and create visual cues, for example, by using contrasting or consistent colours and styles, using white space or even round corners to make it easier to distinguish between components.

Well, the list could go on and on, and I’ll hopefully get around to writing more on it another time, but the main thing to consider is that each member of a team has a role to play, and with good communication and understanding we would all create better websites.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing some ‘thinking time’ for some new projects. It has involved researching the brand, target market as well as the competition, then creating a concept that provides the user with something a bit more unique; something that has a point of view, rather than just a nice looking design.

It’s been a little hard going trying to keep my ideas fresh, but I’ve actually really enjoyed getting into creating the brand concepts for them. I’ve also been doing my emotional thinking, that I was talking about in my last post, to make sure that I’m doing something that users can identify with. Well, I still need to push myself in this way for all the design work I do, but it does feel nice that I’m progressing as a designer.

I’d been getting really fed up with the silly amount of spam comments I was getting. Decided it was time to take some action!

Installed the Simple Captcha plugin. Very excellent so far!

Anyway – aside from that I do feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog for a while. Got a couple of things I’d like to write about – I’ll get to it soon.

I’m still working on a few freelance projects. I’ve been learning how to make an Adobe Air application (frustrating, yet still rather enjoyable – DAMN YOU AS3!). Still have an illustration to do – it’s been sketched out on paper, but I still have to work on it in Illustrator. My blog theme has been woefully neglected. Really need to get all these things finished, but instead I’ve had a lovely morning and early afternoon relaxing and reading a good book.

Monday is going to be a productive day. I’m certain.

Are you a marketing super kid? Ideas just stream out of your head at an exponential rate? I’m certainly not. Despite occasionally having a great idea pop into my head I quite often struggle to create exciting and interesting concepts. So, if you’re not a marketing genius, or are just on a bad day, what do you do?

Well, for me it’s all down to research, brainstorming and hardwork.  I try to soak up as much as I can about the subject, target market, brand or whatever, then start doodling, writing and sketching whatever comes in to my head. It can also be really useful to sit down with a bunch of colleagues and just bounce ideas off each other. All you need is a few not too bad ideas, then just work on developing them. I think with that you’ll get there in the end, and sometimes it will even turn in to that genius idea you were looking for.

Well, I have to say that I’m glad May is almost over. My poor little brain has been working on overdrive, although I have really enjoyed the projects I’ve been working on.

The main project has been a wonderful Flash interactive feature. A little mini educational game for kids. It’s really stretched my coding skills, and the timescale has been tight which as added extra pressure, but overall it’s been fun. I’ve also got to animate fun little bits of it, which I always love doing. And, it’s given me a bit more motivation to think about creating another game for myself on my own time.

But anway, June is almost here. This is my favourite month, mostly because my birthday is in it. Celebrations (and much shopping) shall ensue!