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Next Year I

By Gavin on January 1, 2010 in Design, Other Stuff, Work

I recently posted about my achievements in 2009, these were quite comprehensive as the year seemed jam packed full of ‘stuff’ from start to finish. A lot of people online have gone in to posts looking back on 2009 and looking forward to 2010. I believe, 2010 will be an incredible year for people within our industry. On a personal level I have a bigger journey to take in 2010 than I’ve taken before in my current profession. Next Year I…

Would like to buy a decent camera and learn how to use it.

Take more pride in my blog and redesign it (finally).

Create better content for my readers.

Read at least 3 fictional books throughout the year (I’m addicted to non-fiction).

Game less but play harder.

Purchase a 27″ iMac.

Go to more conferences.

Meet more people from the ‘online world’ in the ‘offline world’.

Start weight training (again) and look after my body.

Write a book.

Design more of anything rather than some things.

Teach myself more about design, there is so much more to learn that what you know.

Do more talks.

Do at least one design related talk.

Get Married (3rd April).

Read all of my design related books.

Give more back to the design community.

Do more for a specific charity that I know where the money goes.

Write more for other blogs/magazines.

Learn one new thing per day (no matter how small or trivial)

Create a typeface from scratch.

There is quite possibly a lot I’ve missed out or forgotten about and I’m never one to hold myself back when I want to achieve something. Hopefully in 2010 I will be able to achieve all of these and more.

How about you? What would you like to achieve in 2010?

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This Year I…

By Gavin on December 28, 2009 in Other Stuff, Work

I didn’t do this last year although I wish I had. We’re now heading to the back end of 2009 and it makes you think of all those things that you’ve achieved or done over the past twelve months. There have been ups and downs throughout 2009 however the ups way out number the downs.

This year I’ve done a lot and wanted to take the time to list my achievements, so here we go, this year I…

Turned 26.

Found an increasing amount of grey hair.

Abseiled 180ft for charity making my fear of heights disappear.

Handed in my resignation.

Joined Codeworks.

Was Car-Less for 8 months.

Bought a new car.

Went to Future of Web Design Tour (Leeds).

Played far too much Battlefield: Bad Company.

Played far too much MW2.

Wrote an article for Fuel Your Creativity.

Wrote an article for .net magazine.

Started a secret project which still remains secret.

Went to London for a TV Casting because of that ‘secret project’.

Planned a wedding (still planning the wedding).

Had some professional photos taken.

Went to see Al Murray and nearly passed out through laughing.

Moved in to our new house.

Had an operation which went a bit wrong but I survived.

Set up DIBI which is taking place in April 2010.

Worked my ass off day in day out.

It seemed like there was going to be so much more than the above when I was thinking about it. I’ve had a very very busy year and 2010 is going to be much of the same. Thanks to Jen for giving me the support through 2009, looking forward to 2010! Anyway, what about you — what did you do?

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It’s all change!

By Gavin on November 9, 2009 in Work

carrottocodeworks Its all change! It certainly has been an interesting few weeks, everything as I knew it has now changed. Contrary to popular belief, I am not nor ever have been the owner/founder of Carrot Media. I held the role of Creative Director up until Friday just gone, (November 6th, 2009). Nearly 2 years of hard work, long hours and awesome clients enabled me to grow and learn so much. I’ve evolved and shot off in a direction that I’m ecstatic with.

I’m a bit like Johnny Five, I need input. I need to learn and grow on a daily basis and if I don’t learn something knew I feel like I’ve let myself down. Recently I’ve yurned a change of direction, more of a re-alignment to be quite honest. To hone my core skills, the skills that I love and would do whether it would be a job or not.

The re-alignment is in fact me leaving Carrot Media and every involvement I had with them. They are going to take over complete control of Eliot Turner and the Ecommerce Experiment, obviously this was something I had to think about as I am still a huge believer in giving good ecommerce knowledge back to the general public.

I’m joining Codeworks as the Marketing and Creative Executive and primarily looking after the Thinking Digital Conference with Herb Kim and the rest of the team. I’ll be hopefully working very closely with the rest of the teams and project within Codeworks to aid their growth. There is a lot planned for the coming year so I can’t wait to get there and #crushit (Yes – I said it.)

Simple law of attraction?

It’s a strange one, when leaving Carrot Media I had the intention of staying freelance. I love what I do, so why wouldn’t I carry on doing what I do best? This is just a quick thank you to the people who have contacted me and I very much look forward to working with you in the near future.

Talking about future…

It is definitely going to be a busy time, but I love busy. It’s what I strive for. I’ll continue to be Beta Testing for WooThemes helping them make sure all aspects are covered before releasing their themes. I’ll be doing a few more talks to some larger audiences and working on a few more ‘other’ projects.

A late introduction

If you follow me on Twitter you will know I am a huge fan of anything to do with WordPress, I love the platform and its agility. About a year ago I said that I was going to create a theme or a set of themes for release. With everything going on at the time it was very difficult to do way too many things at once, never mind re-design my own site/blog which I am yet to get round to.

However, I have in fact finished the design of the first theme which will be released. I’ll be working with Rich, a great friend of mine and an extremely talented Developer to produce the themes.

The name of the first theme is ‘Spex‘ and will be a Personal/Portfolio blog theme. I’m extremely excited about it and look forward to getting it up and running.

I will write more about Spex, the more we get through the development process as well as the other themes which we have planned. So in the mean time, have a desktop wallpaper on me.

Spex Wallpaper

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My socks are in order

By Gavin on September 23, 2009 in Design, Work

31599361 My socks are in order Sometimes you just need a good ‘ol post with a really weird title, however it does have meaning behind it. I’ve spent the past 5 or so months wearing odd socks, not just literally but also mentally. Covering too many roles without too much time had me ran ragged, I was constantly tired without being able to focus properly on everything as well as I should have been.

My focus was diluted by the stress and tiredness that ensued and until recently it was only going to get worse, until something happened.

My life was made easier

Justin and I sat down and realised that the best way forward was to employ a new member to the team at Carrot Media. Ryan Downie and I had been talking for some time over Skype and I immediately thought of him as my preferred choice. Young, talented and able to communicate well, it would be an ideal choice to build my team. A couple of weeks later, the FOWD Leeds Tour was taking place and it was a perfect team to discuss what we were going to be up to over the next few weeks.

Know when to start managing

Natural progression, get over it. It happens. The roles I was talking about earlier, they change as well. The natural progression is constantly changing my core skills as a designer, marketing bod and manager. Listening to Colly at FOWD last week talking about his role within Erskine made me think about my own role at Carrot, and how over the next few months I will be changing. With the addition of Ryan to the team it means I can concentrate more on the things I love within the business whilst working on the creative strategy for businesses we look after.

My socks are in order

So my socks are finally in order when tonight while sorting out some clothes I finally matched up 3 pairs, something which I’ve not been able to do for months.

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