Weeknotes 010

Ten weeks. The big 1-0. As my week notes enter double figures this week was another a busy one, as Christmas social events start to pick up and the lines between work and work blur as I put a bit of time into learning some new stuff.

This week, with the ‘big polish’ over and the big ‘wait for launch’ well underway (next week maybe?) I spent a big chunk of the week documenting the design I’ve been working on. This isn’t usually a task I love, but now my work is contract based, I have to prepare the project for life without me, and make sure any future designer or developer has some guard rails to follow and a good jumping off point for new work.

Surprisingly I found the process really useful, not just as a way to round off a month of work, but as a way to sense check the design decisions we’ve made. Having to think hard about questions like ‘why did you make the icons that size?’, ‘what’s the difference between these components you’re trying to communicate by making them differ visually?’. It lead to a refactoring of the work I’d done, and a ‘visual consistency’ pass on the whole product, redrawing a couple of illustrations, refactoring some code. It also sets us up for the next phase of work, hopefully starting soon. I’ll be building this process into my product and branding design work more deliberately going forwards.

The brand I’ve put together for the project is based on a few pseudo-3D abstract shapes, lovingly called ‘gems’, and it’s been really fun to use them as part of illustrations and design, almost becoming little characters themselves, but I’ve been a bit limited by my original drawings. So I decided it would be really fun to be able to make them in 3D, meaning I can manipulate and compose them in three dimensions, have shading and perspective be a bit more realistic and use them as reference, or to trace and turn back into pseudo-3D illustrations. Simple enough, right? Luckily I’ve always wanted to learn how to do 3D modelling, so I took a bit of time this weekend to start to learn the basics of Blender. I’m part way through a really good tutorial and have a beautiful donut to show for it! How I can get from this to my own little shapes is something to figure out next week.

Blender is hard, but progress is satisfying

And finally, for the first time in a long time I broke out Procreate and did a bit of art too. I discovered a little part-complete study of a photo I took back in the summer, and managed to finish it off over a couple of evenings this week.

Four-ish hours of noodling

For the longest time I couldn’t bring myself to stare at a screen any longer than the mandated hours that my job required, but it seems nature is healing, and my appetite for pursuits of the digital sort are back, for now at least.

Listening

We went to see The Chats in Wolverhampton this week, so they were front and centre on my headphones this week, and were fantastic live. This was also the week everyone got their Spotify Wrapped/Apple Music Replay stats. Mine were of no big surprise, with Tool topping my artist list for the third (could be fourth?) year running. Tool are one of my ‘go to’ when I want a bit of focus so no big surprise there.

Reading

I read a few Terry Pratchett books as a kid but I don’t really remember them, and after enjoying Isaac Steele the Discworld books started to get recommended to me through all the social channels, so I’ve started the Colour of Magic. It’s no surprise I’m enjoying it, and if this is the tip of the Pratchett iceberg I’m excited to start the journey.

Watching

Earlier this year I went through a Blake Crouch phase, so was excited to learn that Apple TV was releasing an adaptation of Dark Matter, but it didn’t grab me, and after four episodes I gave up. Now the backlog of TV has begun to shrunk I tried to pick up where I’d left off, but unfortunately it’s not grabbed me for a second time.