cre8d design

Growing up, I hardly ever used the desk which sat in my bedroom. Well, I did for storage but hardly ever for sitting at. My workspace was sprawling across the lounge or bedroom floor with everything spread out. At the end of the day, I’d put everything back on the desk. I loved having space and not feeling confined to a spot. I liked being around other people, other things going on in the background and a change of scene.

Ever since I started cre8d, I’ve pretty much employed the same type of habits – working all over the place: at the kitchen table, on the couch, on the floor, in the bedroom, outside, at the coffee shop. The time has come though for me to grow up a little and have a formal office space of my own. With cre8d growing, I need somewhere to file all the computer equipment, design inspiration ideas, books, magazines and arty pieces I’ve been collecting. I also need a bit more separation now Mr Toddler is on the move!

So I’m taking over a spare room in our house and can’t wait to get in and organising my very own office space! I’ve been hunting for a new desk (I probably will still roam!), couch and some bookshelving (an ongoing issue, since we don’t have IKEA here and I’ve been lusting after their Billy cases ever since I first stepped into an IKEA years ago). I’ve been looking on Etsy for some new art to inspire me when I’m working (I love this and this!). We have already painted one wall a gorgeous deep blue and put up three invisible shelves from Umbra which look fantastic.  I’ve had these cute little wooden pegs and want to put up some wire to hang pictures off.  For more ideas, I’ve been looking around Design*Sponge and lots of other little design blogs from all over the place.

I’m excited for 2010.  Delving into a whole new bunch of content-rich blogs today made me re-realise the wonder of blogging, of connecting with people all over the globe.  Over the past year, a lot of my personal “blogging” has been done inside the walled garden of Facebook and while that’s great, you just don’t get inspired by meeting new people in there.  In Facebook, I’m cautious about accepting friend requests from people I don’t know or have friends in common with.  Through blogging over the years since 2002, I have met some of the most wonderful people and some of my dear friends.

So I’ll still continue with blogging about the work we do in cre8d, but I want to share a bit more of my life through this blog so you get to know me more and hopefully I’ll meet lots more fantastic people throughout the year in return.

Here’s to new friendships, discovering and creating gorgeous new blogs!

Welcome to my new look site inspired by warm summer days, fresh growth, my undying love for all things lime flavoured and the beauty of nature.

The new logo uses the gorgeous font Stag from Christian Schwartz which was released earlier this year.

We’ve updated our portfolio to give you a much better glimpse at the type of projects we work on and will continue to update this as sites go live. New Zealand television actress Kimberley Crossman’s new site launches on December 15th their team is just so excited about it, it’s been such a fun Drupal project to work on.

Thanks to all our clients for another fantastic year of creating and working so many interesting different projects. We’ve loved working with you and can’t wait for 2009!

On a personal note, 2008 has been filled with so much joy, thanks to the birth of our first baby, Eli, on 08/08/08 at 08:34am. Here’s a photo of us from last weekend:

Do you jot down ideas and thoughts for blog posts while out and about? I’ve been thinking about blogging, blog design and the web in general over the long weekend here and ended up with a list like this to remind myself of things I want to write about

• Home grown tomatoes
• Vitamin D and sunlight
• My first bedroom posters
• Rearranging furniture

I will elaborate on these cryptic scribblings shortly.

In the meantime, I’ve been inspired by a quote and an interview:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” – Roosevelt

Thanks to Joshua Porter for blogging it!

The interview is with Auckland’s mayor John Banks and most of that stuff I never knew about him.

Thanks for your kind wishes, cards, flowers, prayers and thoughts over the last month. Tomorrow it’ll be 5 weeks since the operation. I’ve gone through so many feelings, emotions and heartache but have pretty much completely come through the other side now and looking forward again to what the future holds.

I have found some new sites (for me) which have been a great source of help over the last little while. The internet is amazing – the connections you can make, the people who can share their stories and can be supportive along the journey with you. It reminds me of how powerful online communities can be for people at different points in their lives. It encourages me once again how blogging, forums and the like are helping people communicate with each other all around the world and designing them is a worthwhile thing to be doing.

Aside from topic-specific sites that I’ve found useful, I’ve recently discovered Facebook. It is still practically unheard of here in New Zealand as Bebo is the most popular social networking hub, followed by MySpace.

The little designer-snob in me finds MySpace and Bebo so frustrating. The errors I get on MySpace are endless, let alone the number of clicks I have to do in order to achieve anything, the difficulty in organising my “friends” or remembering who on earth they are, the hard-to-read pages, the spam comments… need I go on? Oh, and privacy seems to be minimal by default on MySpace. I tried so hard to get into the MySpace world which others talked about endlessly, but I failed. I decided just to go there to listen to music, to search for a long-lost friend and see what they were up to if I was bored.. and that’s about it.

Bebo is similar. All the kids I know are on there and their pages are usually just as hard to read. It’s less buggy than MySpace, and seems a bit more user-friendly.. but I’m just not hooked on it. It’s scary reading messages kids are sending each other. I could find out a lot of info about people, without doing anything but read their Bebo comments.

Facebook, however, has such a clean and simple design. It’s easy to use, easy to organize your friends, great for tagging of photos (one of the only times I’ve gotten really into tagging), and privacy seems to be more important. So I’ve gotten a little hooked recently on Facebook. I’ve caught up with long-lost friends and enjoyed the connections via Facebook.

But is the design that important? Or is it the people? Or is it both? With people constantly saying “MySpace is so 2006″ when talking about Bebo here, I realised that it’s firstly about the people. Social networking sites fail without lots of your friends being on there too. But it’s also about being the cool place to hang out, a place that works, a place that is easy to use.

Facebook, the first social networking site I may just be getting hooked on using