CD Tracklisting

For all those wondering 'Who' or perhaps in some cases 'what' was that, my CD track listing from Wednesday was as follows (where possible I've added links to the iTunes store):

Let's Get Ready To Rhumble - PJ and Duncan
Everybody Hurts - R.E.M
War - Edwin Starr
Fixing A Hole - The Fray (Radio 2 - Sgt.Peppers 40th Anniversary)
The Worst Out Of You - The Freaks Union (First album unavailable on iTunes)
My Girl - The Temptations
Tendency - Battle
Eleanor Rigby - Thrice
Frontin' - Jamie Cullum
With A Medium Into Trance (Dropout Mix) - Pete Namlook and Pascal FEOS
Empty Rooms - Gary Moore
Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies - The Ataris
Eanie Meanie - Jim Noir (It was used for the Adidas adverts not so long back too)
Lighthouse Keeper - Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
Run To The Hills - Iron Maiden
Feeling Good - Muse

I hope everyone enjoyed at least some of it, and hopefully someone found some new music to like (even if it was 'mainstream' according to Craig)

Why Blue-Green Is The Best Colour Combination

Blue and green are very natural colours. Green is of course the colour of plants and blue is of course the colour of the sky. If you look at a picture of the globe from space the most predominant colours you will see are also blue and green. Both colours are all around us and by using these colours in design it gives a much more natural look to your product be it a website or printed piece of work.

The blue-green combo is a valuable colour combination to use, and to ignore it would be a foolish mistake.

Of course if my word, and the powers of nature aren't enough to swing things for you, perhaps some industry professionals may change your mind. In a book published by Jakob Nielsen entitled 'Designing Web Usability' the front page of the book uses a blue and green colour scheme (see below)





As well as this Microsoft also use blue and green quite a lot in their programs. For starters the task bar on a XP PC has a green start button and the rest of the taskbar is blue. As well as this Windows Live messenger uses a blue 'buddy' and a green 'buddy'.



So with so many big companies using the blue-green combo, and with nature adopting it's own colour combination of the two, to turn down the use of blue and green seems quite a stupid thing to do,

It is the definative colour combination.

The Designers Republic Job Vacancy

Third post in a week, just like old times.

Anyway, The Designers Republic has a job vacancy going:

I thought after our previous blogs regarding interviews and such I thought it may be interesting to see what a 'real' design company would ask for, just for applying. Besides the basic criteria (3-5 years experience, etc.) the thing that stands out most to me is the 'Your 10 of favourite things - and why'.

Obviously this is just a way of assessing your personality and perhaps in some ways creativity but it got me thinking what sort of things they would be looking for.

So the question is, if you were applying for this job, what would you put as your 10 favourite things...and why?

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Photos

Below are some of the photos I took from the sculpture park. I've not had time to resize them properly so apologies for the large file sizes. Most are around 2MB so beware when viewing the large images.



This turned out to be on of my favourite photo of the day. It was taken inside 'The Basket' and although by accident I really like how the grid is sharp and in focus yet the background behind it is blurred and fuzzy.







This was a picture of the famous 'skyspace' which I (ahem) 'love so much'. I actually quite like this image as it captures the clouds nicely in the window of light shining through. I think if I used this picture as a basis of a design then I would probably come up with quite a good design from it as the potential is endless. My first inital thought was some sort of CD cover.






And finally we have our famous shadow puppets photo. This was taken with Craig, myself and Scott all adopting random positions and taking photos of the results. Although I think Scott has some better pictures this was one of my favourites from my camera. The shadow on the right I actually think could be one of the sculptures but who knows.

I will upload more photos soon and host them from my website, link to follow shortly.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park Visit

Today we visited the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and once again I began to wonder if we were artists or designers. Visiting a sculpture park seemed to suggest we were in fact 'artists' but my complete lack of understanding of any of the 'art' or sculptures at the park proved the fact I was a obviously a designer (or perhaps maybe just a very bad artist).

Walking for 2.5KM to visit a gallery with various pieces of work called 'sheep shit snowball' (literally) seemed to me to be a waste of time, and as the main galleries wouldn't allow for photographs to be taken inside them we decided to take our own pictures on the long trek back. I'll upload them soon.

After spending a just over an hour in the park our creative side began to come out however and we tried to create some of our own 'artwork'. This began simply with Craig and Scott kicking leaves to create lines in them showing the grass beneath. Though this sounds nothing special, neither does a wooden hut or a sculpture of a man when that is all that's said about it.

We then got the idea to create our own 'leaf angel' and as no one wanted to get dirty I decided to be the one to do it. Although it didn't turn out as well as planned, the idea was definitely there. Scott and Craig took some photos of it so hopefully they will post some on their blogs or send them to me to upload.

We then began messing around with our cameras, burying them in leaves, setting the timer and throwing them between us and spinning them around again whilst on timer. These pictures created some quite unique shots which do actually look quite good and could possibly be used for various design pieces (hopefully over the next few weeks)

We also began using our shadows to create pictures including us standing behind each other to make it just look like one person, and us basically being stupid sticking our arms out in weird ways and taking photos. Again these worked out quite well and again hopefully Craig and Scott will upload some of their pictures soon, as will I.

In the end I was thoroughly enjoying myself in the park, more so than on any of my previous visits, and was quite disappointed that we had to be back at college and would of happily continued to spend time in the park just being creative. As Scott quite rightly said 'It sometimes takes hours to be creative, it can take just a simple thing to set you off.

Oh, and I still don't understand the big fuss about the sky space sculpture - after my third time of viewing it.