Since my last post around 9 months ago my personal life has been dramatically re-designed. My wife and I moved out of our very comfortable sea-facing flat, bought and drastically renovated a house in suburbia, and a month ago had a baby son called Maximilian, all the while I’ve been hugely busy at WooThemes which has been growing exponentially.

I’ve been in two minds what to share on my site lately, that’s when and if I found the time, now with the realisation that my child might one day stumble on it! My archive of posts is an assortment of personal journeys, snippets of online entertainment and sweet nothings. All of which makes for quite a conundrum in deciding what direction I should now take with my site and should I start afresh…

I decided the best starting point in getting me back on my feet was to re-design my site. I’ve minimised the theme styling, going for a responsive layout, and included a strong focus on Twitter and Instagram on the homepage, as most the time it is much easier to micro document the activities I want to share on these platforms.

I decided to keep my archive, albeit it’s volatility, as it captures my maturity as a designer, and the internet as a whole since 2005. I like to think of it as a time capsule, not one that Max might find entirely interesting, but one that and can be tweaked and re-engineered over time.

A beautiful mid-winter sunset sky, shot from our balcony on Saturday 16th July. Part of a longer series I’m shooting in and around Sea Point, Cape Town that I hope will see the light of day at some point…

Very much experimental, and lots still to learn, but if you are interested in the setup:

• Canon 7D with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L.
• Shot at f/2.8 Aperture Priority with a 6 second interval between shots. 817 photos – until the shutter speed > longer than the time interval, and it shutdown…
• GBDeflicker used in After Effects to help with perceptible brightness fluctuations.
• Photo-JPEG Compression.
• iMovie for sound and titles.

http://designers.mx/lorem_icsum

The Lorem & Icsum design.

I recently submitted my Designers.MX mixtape of music I love listening to when pushing pixels around. It is now available on the site.

I love the concept of this site and have spent the last couple days listening to music that inspires other designers!

My album cover and title “Lorem & Icsum” is a play on the dummy text we often use when mocking up page layouts. The design hopefully encapsulates the style of music.

Enjoy.

http://www.africancartel.com

It has been months in the making, but it is with great pride and excitement that I can finally announce the launch of our latest website venture – www.africancartel.com.

Ours being my wife, Xenia and cousin Hugh. African Cartel hopes to be a market place for African Artists – discovering, showcasing and marketing their work and biography to a global market.

We launch with a feature on the Robot Artists, watch the short film to find out more about this creative, humble bunch of mainly Zimbabwean artists.

The site built on top of the powerful content builder and Listings directory theme of WooThemes, with Cart66 integration. More on this to follow soon.