By MacNessa, on August 20th, 2010%
What do you utilize as a door chime?
Do you go with the standard ‘ding-dong’?
Or do you prefer a hokey little tune? I’ve always thought that a door chime is another great way that we can sound our individuality to the world at large.
I imagine for example that Bill Gates might have a large Chinese gong at his front gate, just because he can. Or that Donald Trump has a ‘ka-ching ka-ching’ sound when you press the buzzer to one of his amazing properties.
What would be the best expression of yourself – if you were able to pick any kind of door chime at all?
I suppose for myself it would be the Superman theme song. Just because it has that great introduction, and really builds to a crescendo. How would you feel stepping over the threshold of my house if that was my door chime?
In for a fun time?
You betcha!
By MacNessa, on August 10th, 2010%
It’s my eldest sons birthday next week, and oh boy would I *love* to get him an awesome wooden swing set like this one I just discovered online.
 Did you know that installing things like wooden swing sets and sandpits etc can dramatically increase the likelihood of selling your home to interested buyers? It can make a huge difference to a potential buyers to see how child friendly a house can be, and in this market, one needs all the help one can get to make a house sale as attractive as possible.
Our current rental house doesn’t have a large enough yard to warrant the purchase of one of these absolutely gorgeous wooden swing sets, but when we buy another house again in the next two years, one of these will definitely be on my radar!
Having two small boys, I can really appreciate how they need as much physical activity as possible to keep them busy and occupied.
Especially when the weather is as good as it has been, even though it is Winter here now.
Do you have this type of thing in your yard for your kids?
Is it more of a jungle gym than a swing set, or both, like the one in the picture?
By MacNessa, on July 1st, 2010%
So that little fledgling design and advertising agency you started in your guest bedroom…?
Yeah.
It just got huge.
You have totally rocked at the freelance gig and decided to take it to the big game.
You buy office space, you furnish the office with the coolest and trendiest gear you can find.
Then the interior designer corners you and asks you which of the hand dryers you prefer for the ladies bathroom.
Really?
Really.
There are so many things that we as designers don’t realise about running our own businesses especially when they expand to such an extent. Yes suddenly there are thousands of decisions demanding your time, time away from designing, which is why you went to art school isn’t it? Not to manage nitty gritty day to day operations and office space queries like this.
It kind of puts the whole cubicle scenario in a slightly better light doesn’t it? Heh.
By MacNessa, on June 29th, 2010%
A lot of blog posts talk about the importance of having a great home office, but few of them talk about optimum lighting and this is one area in which virtually every home office can improve.
 Home offices are notoriously poorly lit, because after all, the lighting required in a home that has ambiance, is unlikely to be sufficient for an office environment, so this is a tricky situation, particularly when the home office is part of say, the family dining room or sitting room, and not it’s own separate room.
Murray Feiss lighting offers a huge range of home lighting that can be repurposed to suit a home office area. Both uplighters and sconces can be used to great effect to ensure sufficient lighting for an office environment, and of course, don’t forget the desk light too.
If you are a graphic designer, think about investing in a Screen Callibrator so as to ensure perfect colors depending on your lighting situation, and the time of day.
Don’t underestimate the usefulness of this amazing little gadget that sits on your screen and ensures that the color you see in the morning, is the same as the one you see at midday when the light is brightest. It can make more difference than you realise to your color choices for projects.
By MacNessa, on June 28th, 2010%
What girl doesn’t love talking about wedding related decorations and things?
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn’t!
Having been married for 6 years myself, my excitement at planning my own wedding has long since waned, but being a graphic designer, I often deal with invitation designs, menu designs, even designs for wedding napkins on occasion, though mostly these are simple monograms and such. I didn’t go over the top at my own wedding, preferring instead to go with a very basic Winter wedding involving lots of white draping, (non-poison) ivy, a roaring fire place and lots of candles. It was awesome, but this does leave my creative brain free reign to design the most fantastical things it can think up, when drawing up designs for my clients.
Love it!
What theme did you have for your wedding? Was it over the top? What would you have done differently?
By MacNessa, on June 22nd, 2010%
There are a couple of ways to generate a harmonious color palette.
There are several great reasons why you would want to do this:
- Creating a card, which uses a photograph
- Buying new soft furnishes for a room which is a blank canvas – and knowing which photographs are going to be on the walls (e.g. match the throw pillows to the red in the photo etc.)
- Designing a website, and using one of the clients photographs as inspiration
- Digital scrapbooking – this one is the biggest no-brainer, knowing which papers and embellishments (even though they’re digital) to use as accents/backgrounds etc.
Anyhoo the reasons why are pretty self explanatory, and they are such fun tools to play with! Plus, having great free tools like this on the web is like finding loose diamonds because they are so valuable to us as designers and color enthusiasts.
Here’s the first one:
Color Palette Generator from DaeGraeve
and this is how it works…
You simply enter the URL of the photo in question (think for a moment of the multitude of photographs you may have already stored on line through the likes of flickr, Drop Box or Photo Bucket etc and click the button that is humorously entitled ‘Color-Paletify’
Then the second option that you can play around with all for free and without having to register anywhere is here at:
Color Hunter
Then there is another free one at Big Huge Labs, who have a multitude of fun cool stuff that you can skillfully avoid work with, by playing around with (although it will still feel like you’re being productive), over there:
That’s a pic of Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett from Robin Hood…the cool thing with the Big Huge Labs tool is the fact that you can download your palette as an adobe swatch file and plug that sucker right into photoshop. Easy Peasy, and boy do I like easy.
Last, but certainly not least is the color palette generator from Color Lovers. Though the use of this one is also free, it requires registration beforehand, but the great thing about creating your own account is that you’re able to save your palettes to your profile and either share them, or save them for later use. Remember that anything saved online – is better than saving it on your hard drive particularly if it’s a) free and b) if you’re on a computer prone to crashing (though this is only pertinent to windows users, because all good designers should be on a Mac anyway!
Have fun playing – and remember to click the *links* that I’ve created, NOT the pictures to visit the websites mentioned. Cheers!
By MacNessa, on June 18th, 2010%
I originally started this website as a catch all for cool and awesome things to decorate your home office with. Particularly since I had just gotten my first ever Macbook, and felt like I had to redecorate the entire space where I had just started freelancing, simply to make it look as cool as the Mac. Hence the “Ultimate Mac Office” portion of the title.
So! I made a discovery!
Check out these awesome cable organizer thingys!
 Just imagine how easy it will be to keep your desk tidy and free of cable clutter!
You can check out more awesome geek related products after the jump.
I’m particularly taken with the fact that they only cost 10 euros for a set of six, and you get a choice of ‘bright’ colors and ‘neutral’, but I’d definitely go with the fresh bright selection (pictured left).
As a graphic designer, I have a larger than normal number of peripherals that I use on a daily basis, and I therefor use more than the average number of usb ports for peripherals such as printer, scanner, tablet, keyboard (not a fan of the wireless version that came standard with my iMac) and then of course there’s the usual camera compact flash card reader that needs to go in, the cord that I use to synch my Blackberry (still going to get an iPhone) with, and the list is endless.
Getting some of these awesome cool goodies (and they’re SO CUTE too!) would definitely make me happy because of the resulting organization, but also because of the cool color selection.
Again, you can check out the range of technological accessories here. Please note that this is not a paid endorsement of any kind, I discovered these guys quite by accident, and also sent them a thumbs up from Stumbleupon, because I liked their stuff so much.
 Here’s another shot!
Don’t you just love the brights?
The neutrals are okay for blokes I suppose (or boring Windows users!) I can just seem them in use on a hi-gloss white desk, with a swish new iMac on top, and a few similarly colored accessories as embellishments. Like a hot pink stapler, or some lime green storage boxes.
As an aside, if my site looks a tad odd at the moment, I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and I’m not sure that my social bookmarks plugin has been updated accordingly yet, which is why there is a line of dots below instead of the usual share this on facebook/twitter/stumbleupon/digg etc.
However if you’ve enjoyed this post, please do share it by cutting and pasting the url into your preferred service. Thank you!
By MacNessa, on June 15th, 2010%
I read a post yesterday written by a friend on a private blog, who lives in Germany. She took some photos of how someone had gift wrapped a gift for her, which was totally unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
 This got me thinking in general, about the differences in gift giving around the world. Around these parts, it’s natural and normal to take something with to someone’s house if they say, invite you around for a barbeque, whether that be something of dessert-like nature, nice wine, or even snacky starters.
In other cultures, there is a very big trend in giving friends and neighbors personalized gifts as a housewarming/welcome to the neighborhood sort of gift.
I was also once invited to a Pantry tea, which though similar to a Bridal shower, you’re only asked to bring specific items with which to stock the Bride’s pantry, i.e. exotic expensive spices such as saffron etc.
Isn’t it amazing how gift giving is so different all over the world?
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