The Plan

My original idea for photographing Build 2012 was to use the iPhone as the only device to shoot, edit and publish photos of this event. Looking back on it I realise that the iPhone was far more than just the camera, it truly was a publishing ‘Swiss-Army Knife’ for covering the event with photos, text and video. That's pretty powerful combination, and I know it would work for small web images, but I also wanted to know if I could get good enough quality images from the iPhone to obviate the need for a ‘real’ conventional camera.

I believe the iPhone camera has a huge advantage in that it is the viewfinder and the viewing platform - the very definition of WYSIWYG. The UI for the iPhone camera is rightly celebrated as very simple, easy and quick to use, typical Apple design attributes. The stripped down camera features really help me focus (ahem!) on shooting better images, rather than messing around with camera settings. Likely a major factor for the popularity of the iPhone on the likes of Flickr and Instagram.

So, with the iPhone ready as my fuss-free and ever ready camera I wanted to know how shooting, editing and publishing would work out in the real world - during the course of the day’s conference. I did find that I could not entertain all three working modes for an extended period, stopping to retouch and edit always means missing potentially good photos. For a shorter event, say a couple of hours, this would not be a problem, but for a full day the editing and publishing had to give precedence to capturing the photos in the first place - more on that later.

The whole point of shooting with the iPhone was to keep it as minimal, lightweight and as mobile as possible so, with that in mind the equipment I carried the following gear:

iPhone 4S: (my current handset). I’ve enjoyed using all the iPhone models, but this one was the biggest game-changer for me when Apple put that amazing 8mp camera into it. I have seen image quality from the 4S that is a match for ‘serious’ compact cameras (in favourable lighting conditions). Even in poor light the 4S camera produces some surprisingly good images.

IPad 2: I expected to use this mainly for a larger editing screen, but it didn't really work out as it slowed the workflow up too much to wait on wi-fi transfer via iCloud (especially in a conference environment). Connecting the camera kit for import was also too fiddly during the event itself, I didn't want to risk missing any shots.

Glif: Awesome little gadget, absolutely could not have done this without the Glif to securely lock the iPhone onto my tripod.

This is the Glif. from Studio Neat on Vimeo.

Tripod: Turns out this was one of the most essential components, considering the (necessarily) low light levels in the Waterfront Hall. I know this is the main reason why I never lost any images to softness due to camera movement.

Mini LED video light: Borrowed one of these, quite useful at close quarters as a fill-in light, but would really need modifiers and softening for most uses.

Mophie Juice Pack Air: After three hours of heavy shooting, viewing and editing of stills and video my fully charged iPhone was exhausted about noon. Not bad considering, but bear in mind if you set out to do a lot of shooting you will probably kill a fully charged iPhone battery after about 3 hours. As always, the Mophie Juice Pack Air was a lifesaver.

The right app for the job at hand is essential in being able to quickly capture good quality photos, especially under such challenging lighting as is typically found at conference events. Familiarity breeds success!

Camera+: My go-to camera app, mainly for the beautifully efficient UI that enabled me to easily shoot so quickly AND get the type of shots I wanted thanks to it’s fluid splittable exposure/focus reticules and lockable AE/AF. I really only use this app to capture the shot, since Snapseed is the fastest editing solution I’ve found. However the many onboard filters and adjustments in Camera+ are excellent and it is a capable all-in-one capture/process/publish solution. Check it out.

Filmic Pro: I don’t shoot a lot of video on my iPhone, but for me as Camera+ is to stills this is to video, an excellent and well designed app for good quality video shooting. And by good quality I mean great manual override controls for those who know how to use them. Check it out.

iOS Camera: I used this mainly for the Pano feature, I've used a few apps that do this but Apple's implementation just eats their collective lunches. The iOS camera is also the fastest camera available, thanks to Apple’s cunning lock-screen access technique, usually the only camera choice when an unexpected opportunity suddenly presents itself.

Snapseed: My favourite photo processing app. Ironic to think this was the only piece of ‘Nikon’ gear I had with me on the shoot! This was a ground-breaking iOS image editor when it was launched and still holds it’s position as one of the most comprehensive and easy to use photo-editors, mainly thanks to it’s terrific use of native touch gestures, which make image editing both swift and tightly controlled at the same time. Check it out.

IPhoto iOS: I only used this to polish up the Pano shots. I find iPhoto iOS generates smoother images with less noise than most of the other iOS editing apps. It is an incredible App, but, unusually for Apple, needs a fair bit of learning to get the most from it, hence it is not as speedy to use - and has loads of features that I don’t use on my iOS device (yet). Check it out.

Instagram: I must admit I was an Instagram hater at first, it took me at least a year before I could see any value in this service for me. Turns out community and networking were my killer features in Instagram and not so much the filters. Instagram is most definitely king of the hill for community and social sharing, how could I not use it for this project! Check it out.

645Pro: An amazing iPhoto app with unmatched features for capturing the very best from your iPhone camera. BUT I'm not sold on the 'classic' camera Skeuomorphic UI, I find it to be too fiddly unless you've got plenty of time to set up your shot, definitely not the case at a busy conference.
I would have liked to use 645Pro for all my photos at Build, but had to go with Camera+ for best balance of speed and features.
*Update* The developers of 645Pro (Jag.gr) have recently launched another App called ‘Pure Shot’. This appears to have all the high-end capture features of 645Pro, but with a stripped-down modern UI. I like it and expect to use it a lot more than the 645Pro app. Seems I wasn’t the only iOS Photographer to want this. Check it out.

ColorSplash: Although I only used this for one image (not everything I shoot suits this treatment) I think it is the best App for applying spot-colour effects, especially version 2 with the greatly improved UI. I’m looking forward to the new version showing up for iPad. Check it out.

Echograph: Very impressive App for creating animated 'Cinegram' style images, which are very interesting images for using on a website due to their unique controlled animated zones. Typically these would be GIF files, but Echograph uses Mp4 video files as its default format, they look great but are a little bit fiddly to export them as standalone files, more on this later. Check it out.

Even though I consider myself a fairly experienced photographer (and particularly with the iPhone) shooting Build on the iPhone was a terrific learning experience (thanks Andy!).
This blog post was always going to be a long one, so I’m posting it in three parts. This is the end of part one, I hope you enjoyed it and learned enough to come back for part two, which covers the shooting techniques I employed.

I've had a few requests recently to design covers for eBooks. The format of an eBook appears to obviate the need for a cover at all but, even though an eBook 'cover' is abstracted from the text itself, it is still an expected part of the reading experience. More importantly an eBook cover design will be the first opportunity for potential customers to see the book, as a thumbnail image in the online store. This thumbnail image is the first thing a potential customer will look at, even before reading the reviews, so it is very important that the thumbnail/cover image is as clear (and persuasive) as possible. While reviews and recommendations certainly influence an eBook purchase this first glance at the thumbnail image has a tremendous influence on any next steps the customer takes in their buying decision. A good eBook cover needs to be appealing, persuasive and legible primarily as a small thumbnail and, to a lesser extent, a mood setting post-purchase affirmation to the customer. With this in mind I created an eBook cover design for a new publication from Northern Lights PR entitled: 'From Student to Salary with Social Media'.

The eBook cover artwork.

In addition to the usual design iterations this really was a case of less-is-more, as a fairly ruthless process of reduction was necessary to distill the design into something simple enough to work as a thumbnail, yet presentable enough to work at full size on the Kindle/iPad.

I'm pleased with how the completed design looks and also that Northern Lights PR went with my suggestion for the title - a surprisingly difficult thing to get right, but important! 
And once again I am thankful for my Advertising background.

Maybe you can't judge a book by it's cover, but it still pays to have a good thumbnail!

Seminars and conferences are still amongst the most effective ways to meet and network with new clients and collaborators. Their effectiveness, however, is mitigated by the random nature of meetings at such events. Shhmooze is an app (and service) designed to remove the randomness from conference meetings - and has been part of my standard collection of iPhone apps for ages now.

I've met the developers of Shhmooze (Mehdi El Gueddari and Michelle Gallen) a few times at various seminars in Belfast and was delighted to be tasked with redesigning the icon for the Shhmooze App.

My initial concepts were quite abstract and along the themes of simply ‘meeting’, since the whole scope of what Shhmooze is capable of is too complex to represent in a single icon. (visual of early ideas here). But after discussing these concepts with Michelle and Mehdi we agreed to pursue a direction based on icons that would also serve as a prompt for what the app actually does. This was an important aspect of the icon design as, due to the frequency of seminar attendance by the majority of Shhmooze users, there could often be long periods during which the app is not in use, so a visual prompt as to the app’s purpose was considered essential.

Some early concepts for discussion and development.

Another issue with such generic themes is in trying to come up with a different way of illustrating concepts such as ‘handshake’, ‘meeting’, ‘talking’, etc. I believe we arrived at a good solution here with a combination of ‘talk’ and ‘meet’ icons, representing the two main features of the Shhmooze service.

I felt the original colourways for Shhmooze lacked contrast and definition, so I proposed a more deeply toned and saturated alternative for the darker colour, but I did like the green (refreshing to see it in a world of predominately blue icons), so tweaked it for intensity and lighting effects.

The new Shhmooze icon - and as seen on the iPhone.

I really enjoyed developing this new icon for Shhmooze and I must say that Michelle and Mehdi are terrific folks to work with. Their genuine feedback and discourse was an essential part of the process in creating a design solution that looks professional, marketable and answers the brief.

If you attend any conferences or seminars at all it’s well worth checking out Shhmooze, find out more about it on their website.

The Shhmooze app is free and available on the Apple and Android stores.

Only a few short years ago we were mostly content to allow the ‘expert’ tech Journos/Pundits/Analysts to tell us all what type of Smartphone we ought to buy. Many of the leading tech pundits in those pre-iPhone days boldly claimed that a Smartphone (and the iPhone in particular) wasn’t a Smartphone if:

• it didn’t have a ‘real’ keyboard
• it didn’t have GPS
• it didn’t multi-task
• it couldn’t edit Word docs
• it didn’t make toast! ;-) 

…etc.

For back in the ‘Pre-iPhone Era’ handheld devices were absolutely the domain of the hardcore nerd - in fact you pretty much had to be a nerd to even attempt to use one of these devices, which were about as user-friendly as a rabid cornered pitbull.

These industry analysts were not just nerds, but Alpha-Nerds, and they did love their tech gadgets, especially gadgets stuffed with shiny new tech and an ever-expanding list of impressive specifications. Nothing less that the very bleeding edge tech would suffice, bizarrely not just for themselves, but for all users. But the problem with relying on an ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink’ spec-sheet philosophy is much like having a great cake recipe, without ever having actually baked one. Sure that recipe looks great, easy enough to attempt and you have the ingredients to hand, but it’s pretty meaningless until the cake is baked and you can actually taste it.

It’s fair to say now that the spec-sheet fantasies of the tech media analysts have lost out to Apple, who have successfully fulfilled the promise of a powerful, robust and easy to use device. Millions have voted for the iPhone with their hard-earned cash, which is all the more surprising considering Apple weren’t even in the smartphone business when most of the competition were considered mature products.

I’m not bashing the nerds here (and I consider myself one) but the smug attitude of the media ‘analysts’ and ‘experts’, inferring they have the insider smarts for what the public really need, that bothers me. Neither is there anything wrong with having an elite techie club (for those who are obsessed with that kind of thing). But these experts were recommending devices to the general (most definitely non-nerd) public and expecting them to put up with hideous user experiences for the sake of ticking off boxes on a spec list.

Of course, as has often been quoted by Upton Sinclair, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it’.

I expect that this type of defensive thinking, plus perhaps some ‘creative’ and ‘promotional’ activity by some vendors, would result in the sort of recommendations and analysis that we’ve come to expect from some of these tech market analysts.

Surprisingly, and even in the face of concrete evidence, this type of Apple-bashing persists today - but at least now we can see what’s happening in the real world for ourselves. Just have a look around next time you’re in town and notice how many iPhones you see people using compared to any other types of mobile. You’ll probably be surprised how popular this sophisticated device is amongst the ‘normal’ folks.

Here’s a few gems that put it all into perspective:

Trevor Gilbert’s post on Pundits and Analysts

From Daring Fireball: Tomi Ahonen on iPhone Sales

And also: Apple should just ‘pull the plug’ on the iPhone, from John C. Dvorak

A shocking article from the Forbes site(!) by contributor Louis Bedigian knocking the newly launched iPhone 4S. Good to see that many of the commenters have really taken him to task on this.

I think [this post] (http://flyosity.com/ipad/the-ipad-is-for-everyone-but-us.php) from Mike Rundle really nails it on who Apple really has in mind for the iPad (and iPhone)

An excellent summary on how device specs have become meaningless from Drew Breunig.

Production notes: This post was written entirely on my iPad (including links and researching web pages for the quotes) using the excellent Writing Kit app for iOS. The header illustration was also created on an iPad using the iDraw vector illustration app. How far we’ve come, in so short a time.

For three years now Andy McMillan has been running what is widely regarded as one of the world’s best design and web industry events right here in Belfast. The conference is called Build and features five pretty intense days of educational/entertaining/social activities, culminating in a main conference day of formal presentations. Build attracts the best designers and developers in the web design industry, both for the main speakers and the attendees.

So a while ago I suggested to Andy that it would be worthwhile ‘officially’ covering Build with myself as photographer. Of course there have been some great photos taken at previous Build events (most of the creative attendees are themselves pretty handy with cameras!), but those photos are usually captured in ‘downtime’ moments by people otherwise concentrating on the actual events. In contrast my attendance at Build would be exclusively for the purpose of capturing good high-quality images from as much of the event as possible, running over the whole four days.

I knew this would be a lot of work, both in shooting the photos and in the follow-up processing, but I was happy to add my support to the impressive work that Andy and his team undertake in putting Belfast on the international design map.

Build is a really significant event and I wanted to do it justice with images that conveyed the scale, atmosphere and excitement experienced by all who attended it. If you weren’t lucky enough to get to Build this year I hope my photos give you a sense of what it was like - and whets your appetite for Build 2012.

I have posted a small gallery of images in a new Photography section here on my blog. The main body of images from Build can be seen on my Flickr and Pix.ie accounts.

I first met Jonathan Cusick, the owner of Digital Robot Software, at one of the Belfast Xcake developer networking meetings. I recall trying to impress upon some of these nascent developers the importance of employing good design and branding in marketing their new apps. I was pleased that Jonathan seemed to 'get it' as, a short while after the meetup, he contacted me to discuss creating branding for this new software company.

Jonathan specifically wanted a fun iconic robot image incorporated into the logo, of course being an ardent Sci-Fi fan the subject of robots is close to my heart so I had a lot of fun trawling through my favourite movies, books and comics while digging up the reference material. Robot icons have always played a huge part in mainstream popular culture anyway, and never more so than in today's world, so I thought this was a good direction for the creative.

I wanted to reduce the icon to the most recognisable aspect of a character (robot or human) - the face. An image of a face is powerful and, whatever the viewer's reaction is, the connection to the image is readily made and usually memorable. I was aiming for; 'Smart and fun, with attitude' - with the intention of showing some personality in the face element of the icon. I also had some fun in 'drawing' the face using numerals from the typeface.

I chose 'ITC Avant Garde Gothic' for the typeface, trading numbers for letters in a few instances, and editing some of the letterforms further to give the complete logo a more bespoke and geometric/industrial look. For colourways a fresh green matched to a muted navy blue worked well in defining the logo elements. These strong colours also make for a good reversed-out combination, very important for the likes of website mastheads (or any implementation of the logo beyond white stationery printing).

I really enjoyed creating this logo, I was happy with it, Jonathan was happy with it - and the robot looks happy about it too!

I’ve been a long time fan of Adobe’s Creative Suite, from way back when they started binding together their various apps to slay the mighty Quark Xpress.

I’m a CS5 user myself and, despite the frequent criticisms of growing bloatware, the CS Suite is an awesome and comprehensive set of tools, in fact it covers pretty much everything a graphic designer needs. But the accelerating development path (and more particularly the expense involved) of the recent CS Suite upgrades has raised a few heckles in the Creative Industries. It’s understandable that a company of Adobe’s scale needs a certain degree of profit to sustain their considerable momentum and also that they clearly wish to be seen as catering for the ‘Pro’ market, but the entire concept of software ‘Apps’ is currently undergoing serious re-evaluation as the platforms, marketing practices and the Apps themselves continue to evolve.

There’s an increasing number of alternatives cropping up to seriously challenge Adobe’s products and, while Adobe always had competition, the nature of their competitors has changed significantly. As the Mac OS has gained in popularity (including an overlap with the booming iOS world) developer resources have grown to reflect this. The big guns of the software market have always had competition from talented independent developers, but now those independents have access to a very mature programming ecosystem - and online marketplaces on a scale that they could never have dreamed of just a few years ago.

Granted these competitors are usually stand-alone applications and no-one is producing the convenient all-in-one toolbox that Adobe offers. However, a set of well designed single-focus applications, operating to industry standard file types, can achieve similar results and often with only a little more inconvenience. But by far the most compelling reason to try any of these competing apps is that they’re only a fraction of the cost of the Adobe products, so even if you have to buy three or four apps it’s still a huge saving over the cost of the complete Adobe Suite.

In the Creative Industries, as with many others, the trend driven by ever-improving digital toolsets has been towards a low (and decreasing) cost of entry for new talent. This has helped reveal some amazing new talent in Music, Design, Video and the Arts in general. But Adobe’s pricing policies for their Creative Suite appears to go against this low-cost trend, most noticeably with the new services and extensions to their existing CS Suite, intended to encourage content development for iPad/tablet publishing.

Currently the potential of the iPad as a publishing platform is generating a lot of excitement, with some very interesting start-ups making their intentions known. For example, this post (from the Adorama blog) on the impressive work from Pushpoppress, initially for Al Gore’s ‘Our Choice’ iPad book:

A team of ex-Apple engineers have created a specialized book publishing service for iPad. Originally created for a one-off multimedia version of Al Gore’s environmental opus, Our Choice, Push Pop Press has emerged into a full-fledged development platform, which promises to bring drag-and-drop simplicity to the process of creating multimedia books. It’s an obvious competitor to Adobe’s suite of digital publishing tools for iOS, which have a prohibitive price barrier and learning curve, suited more for developers than artists and writers. Now you don’t need an engineering degree to design an attractive user experience.

Of course it has yet to be seen if they will eventually sell this software to the public - and if it really will be as easy as it appears to produce such specialised content. But, like a few others, they see the opportunity for a lightweight dedeicated authoring App and I believe their approach to this is definitely on the right track.

And this from Wired Magazine:

The 800-pound gorilla in this digital space is Adobe, whose tools are used to create some tablet periodicals (including the iPad version of WIRED magazine). But the complexity — and expense — of Adobe’s Creative Suite is an opportunity for new entrants in the self-publishing game.

Sadly I think it is very unlikely that Adobe will attempt to make their pricing more competitive, as they still appear focussed more on the established (and presumably better monied) Pro market rather than those struggling to become the next generation of that market.

So what do you think?

Are you an established Pro who can easily afford the latest and greatest from Adobe and could care less about their costs?

Or are you a design graduate trying to balance your need for quality software tools with your bank account?

Are you sitting comfortably?

...then I'll begin, but you may not like it much.

I expect many readers of this blog already know they spend way more time than is healthy sitting working at a computer. For those who are solo freelancers, like myself, there is even less reason, or even opportunity, to move from our workstations as frequently as those of us working in communal shared office spaces. The swift evolution of my computer's capabilities has been matched by it's increasing influence in my physical world. My computer is now loaded with all sorts of software and can already do pretty much everything I need to produce a huge range of work. With most of my work also delivered digitally I don’t even have to go visit any supply companies, as I used to do with print projects. Of course the more efficient my computer becomes at doing almost everything the less reasons I have for moving away from it. I'm realising the old cliché 'chained to my desk' is taking on a whole new, and very unpleasant, meaning.

The legendary Kurt Vonnegut made a great observation on our increasing reliance on the computer to 'save' us from unnecessary 'work'. When Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope...

Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

And 'So it goes'

So there you are happily sitting at your desk all day, content in the knowledge that you're Getting Things Done, but, as Admiral Ackbar knows all too well: "It's a Trap!"

The Daily Mirra

It made sense to me that if so much sitting is inevitable then I'd best get a really, really good chair, and one of my first blog posts years ago was about finding the best chair to work from. Knowing I was likely to be spending an insane amount of time in my work chair I bought one of the best I could find: a Herman Millar 'Mirra' chair. It was expensive, but it was money well spent as I soon gained almost complete relief from some truly horrible back pains I suffered when using a basic cheap chair at my desk. But even the best chair in the world is still a chair and growing medical evidence reveals that sitting down, even for modest periods of time, can cause swift and significant deterioration to our health. This is not just another trendy health topic, since for a while now I've felt a gradual, but noticeable, increase in minor aches and pains due to my own sedentary habits. Of course age will play a part in this too, I'm fifty-one, but on rare days when I'm away from my desk I'm a much more mobile, ache-free and happy fifty-one. Comfortable though my chair is then, I need to ensure that I'm sitting in it as little as possible.

The inevitable Info-Graphic

Thanks to recently discovering Dan Benjamin's excellent 5 by 5 podcasts I’ve now read Robb Wolf’s book, The Paleo Solution. This book compounded a lot of nagging thoughts I'd been having recently that could be generally classified under the ‘Getting your Shit together’ category. Robb's book covers a lot of health issues in tremendous detail; diet, exercise, sleep, etc., all important components of our overall good health, but his information on the effects of sedentary behaviour was particularly well presented - and truly frightening!

And then I found this:

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

(Thanks for those nightmares Twitter!)

If you take a look at this graphic you'll see the health risks resulting from 6.5 hours of sitting per day - but I can easily clock up 12 hours on a typical day, how about you? I knew I had to start reversing my descent into a slothful 'Millar-Chair' potato and the obvious first step for me is to...

Stand and Deliver!

For a start I'm making some changes at my desk which will oblige me to perform more physical activity, starting with creating a standing workspace. Although my main type of work is in visual design and the creation of images (normally requiring me to be seated with careful control of my mouse or Wacom pen) I can still work on the more 'admin' and project management type of tasks while standing and using a laptop (or iPad). There is a substantial amount of admin work like this in my day so I ought to be on my feet quite a bit.

A standing workspace is a relatively easy change to effect, but it should make an immediate noticeable difference to the detrimental effects of the endurance sitting sessions. This means finding a high-level working surface for the laptop, ironically for me this turns out to be a big drawing board on a floor stand - exactly what I used to work at before the Mac irrevocably changed the design world. As an added bonus I will once again have a proper angled drawing board for sketch work and rough concepts, I haven't enjoyed one of these in a long time, having made do with spare desk space around my keyboard for basic notepad sketching. I'll not be standing all the time I'm working though, but will certainly aim to stand more than sit during the working day.

I've seen that there is a trend (particularly in the USA) for using a Treadmill while working at a laptop, but I'm not quite ready for that yet, I think actively walking and trying to concentrate on a screen would not be very efficient, for me anyway. I've seen what appears to be the ideal solution: the Geek Desk a smart move by a company who have picked up on this trend and are producing motorised variable height desks. It's a great idea, you can either sit or stand at the same desk with all your tech in it's usual place, with the desk itself changing from sitting to standing height in minutes. Geek desks are expensive but I'd say a worthwhile investment, for now though I'll see how I get on with my desk/drawing board arrangement.

I've been following some interesting discussions on Conor O'Neill's blog too as he works on creating a standing workspace.

Onwards and Appwards

As the meme says: 'There's an App for that' and I've found a few that can help break the bad habits of the endurance sitting sessions. One of my favourites is 'Time Out', a timing application that dims your Mac screen at (your choice of) pre-selected intervals. To get the best from Time Out though you really have to respect the breaks that you programme into it - if you keep hitting the snooze button and ignoring those breaks (not that I'd do that!) you're wasting your time. This app is Mac only, although I believe there is a similar app for Windows.

The Pomodoro Technique: This is a useful for helping you 'Work the Dash', meaning you work diligently for a specified time, then enjoy a short break. The combination of hard work (in short bursts) followed by the guaranteed reward of a break (in which you are recommended to do something enjoyable) is a great motivator. For the purposes of this post though the real benefit here is in the breaks rather than the 'dashes'. There are Mac Desktop and iOS versions of this app.

There is also this useful site (now in my browser bookmarks bar) detailing a few easy exercises for the desk-bound. Bonus points if you do these exercises during the breaks prompted by Time Out ;-)

Hopefully by now you are suitably shaken and stirred to take steps (literally) to get out of your chair for more regular breaks. These simple preventative measures you can take while at your desk are important in breaking unhealthy habits, but a significant part of the overall solution to the sedentary trap is a good exercise routine. Such an exercise routine is beyond the scope of this post, but I highly recommend you look into it, soon - and preferably while standing at your computer!

Whatever we're reading on the iPad, iPhone/Kindle/Pretender to the Throne etc., it's not a book.
I feel we need a new name for this type of media, after all we've already created a variety of names for other categories of printed matter to distinguish them from books, e.g., A Newspaper, A Magazine, A leaflet,
or A brochure.

So, apart from cultural inertia, why do we still cling to the (increasingly inaccurate) name of ‘Book’ for long-form text content we read on an iPad, or similar device?

As always: Change is the constant.

Related: Terrific article on the future of the book by @craigmod

Much as I love using my iPad it’s only as good as the apps that run on it and ‘good’ for official ‘business’ apps is especially important as these are not for casual entertainment. Efficiency and fit-for-purpose are the main reasons for buying business apps in the first place.

A while ago I was looking for a good mindmapping app for my iPad and, while waiting for the ‘official’ Buzan app, I discovered iThoughts HD. The Youtube demos were very impressive and it was further encouraging to read some very positive testimonials to iThoughts from a lot of folks whose opinion I respect, including one of my heroes, Steve Krug.

IThoughts HD makes great use of the iOS touchscreen, offering an intuitive and fluid experience that makes it easy to focus on the work of actually building the mindmap, rather than the tools being used to build it. I’m convinced the touch interface actually makes for much more efficient mindmapping experience than a desktop UI, there is something unique in driving data around the screen directly just using your fingers. I find this with many of the more ‘mature’ iOS touch apps, where the developers have taken full advantage of what iOS is capable of. Some tasks seem to be a natural fit for a touch-driven interface, if the apps themselves are designed well.

Most good developers will put their best into programming and coding their app, which is the right thing to do after all, but some surprisingly neglect the presentation of their app (and it's usefulness) to potential customers. Unfortunately neglecting the presentation of an app could significantly hobble the sales potential of the finished offering.

The iTunes App Store is an eye-candy battleground, with the bar already set high for quality of presentation. When faced with a row of competing and similarly featured apps a potential customer will be easily swayed by a more polished, professional and 'expected' icon for an app, rather than a weak ‘DIY’ attempt from someone who is obviously not a designer.

I have actually bought some great functioning apps that display poor branding and icons, but only after fairly exhaustive research in gaining enough trust to overcome the mis-matched branding. Unfortunately most potential customers won’t undertake that amount of work before deciding on buying an app.

So I contacted Craig Scott, the developer of iThoughts, and suggested that improvements could be made to the core icon for his app and the presentation of it via website, iTunes Store, etc. Craig was under no illusions about the quality of the existing icons for iThoughts HD and readily understood the need for improvement. Although I’m familiar with mindmapping apps I asked Craig to brief me on how he wanted iThoughts HD presented and, taking this into consideration, I proceeded to develop some concepts for a new icon style for iThoughts HD.

From the initial pencil concepts Craig chose one to take to a more polished visual treatment, he had a clear idea of the elements we should use in the icon as he primarily wanted to convey the purpose of the iThoughts HD app itself. So I worked on the concept of branched nodes, a fairly direct visualising of what a mindmap typically looks like. I particularly wanted to keep the elements strong and simple, for swift recognition and clarity at the smallest image sizes, such as document attachment icons. We both agreed on a strong contrasting colour scheme, saturated blues and a bright orange, for contrast on the finished icon. The icon works best when it is quickly identifiable, to help sales in the iTunes Store and for actual use on the iOS device itself.

I’m pleased to have heard positive feedback from Craig that the new-look icon was well received by his customers and it’s also good to see that the presentation of the iThoughts app now more closely matches the experience of using Craig’s excellent software.

Craig was lucky too when iThoughts was chosen to appear as a featured app on the iTunes Store. I created a few banners for this and enjoyed seeing iThoughts displayed prominently on the storefront, for a short while.

If you’re familiar with mindmapping, and are an iOS user check out the iThoughts apps, for iPhone and iPad.