Design is a theme which is getting bigger all around the internet more and more. More and more people call them selfs designers and talk about design, inspiration and creativity — I’m not going to exclude me from that! But I found out that I can criticize design but creating something completely out of my own is nearly to ‘not possible’ — the effect is that I respect everyone who has that gift to create something out of his own — , at least not now.

Creating something for me, like a web-design or my business-card works great cause I have as much time as I need to get a inspiration but if I need to get something done for a other person with other thoughts on design it’s hard for me to come up with something creative — and that in a reasonable time. I don’t say that I’m not good at design — but I do not say that I’m good at design either. I think — like everything you have a passion in — you can learn it. Great thoughts on that were written by Michael Mistretta who wrote a post about ‘The Myth of Talent‘ and that’s how I think about my passion on design. Design is something in what, as far as I can tell, I don’t have talent in but if I spend time and effort I can come up with something great, it just takes time.

Design is a great thing, a great area and for sure a interesting theme, with information about it all over the internet. For me design is a passion, creating something can be hard and mostly takes a lot of time.

Some weeks ago, I decided that I will not spend much time into design in the next few month cause I need the time to learn other things but I definitely will not give up the design passion. I’ll train my skills and I’ll spend time and effort, just not now and that’s OK for me.

Next is Thoughts on Project Management. Stay tuned for part five of the series. If you want let me know your feedback or maybe tell your story.

1. My very first years with a PC (Posted: 2009-03-10)
2. My Way to Web-Development (Posted: 2009-03-17)
3. My Photography Story (Posted: 2009-03-24)
4. My Thoughts on Design (Posted: 2009-03-31)
5. Thoughts on Project Management (Posted: 2009-04-07)
6. Why I switched or My Macintosh Workstation (Posted: 2009-04-14)
7. My Way to Blogging (Posted: 2009-04-21)
8. The current situation and a look into the future (Posted: 2009-04-28)

One thought popped into my mind while I was writing this series: Why should someone be interested in all this, the story about a young man hitting the internet telling his way to all that?

I thought quiet long about this, coming down to three different aspects. First, I like to read similar stories cause I’m interested in the life of others, they inspire me and I can learn from them about how to life my life, what are their passions, the professions and the backgrounds, why they do what they do like they do it. Second, I wanted to fill my about page with value, doing this with some quick paragraphs was not my thought, I want that someone who wants to know more, can read an article about that special parts. Third — the last — is that I want to write an overview about my story that I can remember and read it some day, cause now I can remember the most parts best even though I don’t want to just write it down for my self.

I hope, the posts are well written, interesting and informative. At the moment my post schedule is one post on Tuesday at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin) and one at Friday also at 00:00 AM (CET, Germany — Berlin). I want to stick to that schedule this is why I publish this series Tuesdays for the next couple of weeks and still be posting a different post at Fridays.

Update: This series is over. All posts are published.

For me its like for many creative or freelancing people — OK, I’m still at school but hey, I do my projects on side. Working at a desk is just impossible if it’s cultured with papers and other crappy stuff. Which means, that I normally have nothing lying around, especially if I want to enter the creative zone. The only things which are allowed to be there, are my MacBook, secondary screen, phone, a folder containing papers belonging to current projects I’m working on and — of course — my Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and Graphic Tablet.

The Whole Desk

My Two Chairs

Little about my desk. It’s 2.4m (94.49 inch) wide and 90 cm (35.43 inch) deep. It’s white which is one of the colors I like most. There are usually two chairs in front of my desk, one with a back which is chilly and one without which I like best for long sessions cause it doesn’t let me lay back and forces me stick to the work to get done.

Like I already sad, having a clean workspace is key for me to get creative or even just to get some work done. I can’t concentrate if there are many papers — which don’t belong to the project I’m currently working on —, dust or other stuff lying around. If you look at the pictures you’ll probably notice that there are two colors which dominate the room. White and Red. I love the white because it lightens the room and I also love the red because it’s a strong contrast to the white which is supposed to let me think out of the box and makes me fell good.

In the end it comes down to a clean, ordered and uncluttered work-area which makes me happy and helps me to get work done. The best part is I’m happy when I can sit down at my desk to get work done rather than sitting at school at desks which are not that great designed and chairs which are not comfortable.

The MacBook plus Screen, Keyboard and Mouse

What is your thought about the workspace? Is it worth spending some time and money to design a great work-area and to keep it clean? Or don’t you care about the place you are working in? What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

The Why

I’m a web-developer and designer which means – for me – that I can’t just let the design like it is now and am constantly improving my website theme – even if I should be doing other things. I just can’t let it look the same if I get a new idea, I just have to implement the thoughts. That’s manly the reason why I updated the site’s theme.

The Way I did it

Reading many different blogs, I learned that you risk loosing readers which come to your site constantly. New readers will see the new and just don’t care. But for the constant readers it can be hard to see your site change completely one day to the other, which means, it is much easier to through little changes out than a big update, moving all objects and change the colors, which was never my thought cause I’m happy with the design like it is now.

Thinking about not updating with one big update rather than pumping out little changes. I decided to updated my local copy, giving me a deadline in which the update should be ready. I started updating my local copy, thinking about the changes, updating again and looking at it again. Some days before the update went live, I stopped implementing new things and just got rid of all this validity errors and browser compatibility problems. After all the little update which hit the ground at Sunday morning was ready 2 days earlier than I thought – which never hurts!

I think this milestone updating of a website is much better than just sending out updates when they hit you and you just implemented the new ideas into your local copy. You never know which problems that update will bring you, or if you really like it.

Final Thoughts

I’m now planing on getting other projects done. At this blog I now want to focus on writing posts rather than updating the design. Following the advise which is spread at many places from various people: “Content is King”

I hope you like the changes – even if they are a little hard to spot. If you have some thoughts about it or have an additional thought about updating a web-site, please leave a comment.

That’s it, the way till now. Now I want to give you a quick preview on what I have planed to come in the coming weeks:

Design Update

The last month I have been improving the design locally and in a few days I want to get it online which will change some little things – like the sidebar, menu bar and Flickr hovering and improve the validity for some browsers. This will get it’s own attention cause I’m going to post something about updating your theme.

The About Page

In my eyes the about page is the worst part here at this website. There is no content and just some ‘coming soon’ text. That’s bad! Everywhere you can read that you miss getting subscribers and or readers if you don’t have a well done about page in the first place. I wanted to publish some posts about my passions and my workflow in the first place and update the about page with this posts. That was planed to happen in the first weeks of January. Well I didn’t made it. I plan to get that done in the near feature – it’s one of my top priorities for the coming weeks.

KwasK.com

This domain name is now no more under my control. After just one year, I shut the domain down – I already owned KwasK.de since July 2006 and last year thought I would need KwasK.com which now seems like a wrong decision. But I think no decision is wrong if you learn out of it. I learned and now I know that I don’t need that domains anymore. I think I’ll get some other domains in the feature and this two are hooked to an history which I lived, but not to the feature I want to live now!

To come?

There is much on it’s way to come and I just started out. I hope everyone reading this blog stays interested and my content stays interesting. I would love to get your oppinion about my writings so that I can improve through your thoughts!

What is the Creative Commons

If you already know this, you can go on to the next heading.

The Creative Commons is a license free to use and in my opinion it’s absolutely easy to understand. You just need to leave a link to the creative commons homepage, with a phrase at the end (such as by-nc-sa) which indicates the exact license and the person looking at that page instantly knows what he or she can do with the work and even what is not allowed. This is written down in a great amount of different languages, which means that really everyone can understand what’s allowed and what’s not.

Why I use the Creative Commons

The reason why I use the Creative Commons is that the license is free to use for everyone, not just just that, the Creative Commons is understandable and absolutely easy to use. You leave a link attached at your work with the license and the user will see an easy to understand list of thing he’s allowed to do an what not and under which conditions, which makes it really easy to know what you can do with this work and what not. Which is great because you don’t have to read through pages and pages of licensing.

Differences

The reason I use different licenses is that I think that different content should be used differently. At the moment I’m using a system of 5 different types of content sorted in 3 categories of licensing.

Photography & Web-Design & Design

About one of my passion, the photography, I’m going to post soon but now it’s about the licensing. I struggled a lot with the licensing of photography, cause I want to make it possible that anybody is allowed to publish my pictures but if that person is going to make a great amount of money I really want to get a peace of that sweet cake. But if a blogger would like to use one of my pictures in one of his or her posts why shouldn’t that be possible? Well there is a problem with the bloggers who make money with their blogs. I want that a little blog making a little money – like I’m – should be allowed to use my pictures for his posts. That’s why I use the ‘NonCommercial’ in the photography licensing. Even though I want to specify the word ‘NonCommercial’. In my eyes ‘NonCommercial’ means that you don’t make a living of what you are getting money for. But even that is not clear enough. I think about getting a post written about the clarification of ‘NonCommercial’ usage but for now, if you want to use one of my works with the ‘NonCommercial’, please feel free to contact me and ask if you can use even if you make money. We’ll find a way. With Web-Design and even just Design it’s just the same.

Web-Design should be easy to understand, in my case I think of WordPress themes and PSD templates as well as simple easy one page HTML and CSS layouts. Simply sad every homepage theme I create. Design it self for example is a Wallpaper, a Business-Card as well as a Logo. All this things are free to remix, share and use. If you’d like to use it and just make a decent amount of money with the project, please send me a short email, we can discuss everything!

The licensing for this is simply the – in my eyes – nearly standard Creative Commons License. The Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (by-nc-sa), which allows to use it for non commercial usage, share it and remix it as long as you name me as the author.

Writing

In short the category writing is pretty much every text I publish, weather it’s a post or just a page here at my blog or some other arrangement of words like a e-paper. I wouldn’t stop anyone of quoting me – if he or she wants to do that – but I don’t want to see writing created by me somewhere else with just some paragraphs rearranged. That’s the reason I’ve chosen the Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported (by-nd) for writing. This license allows to share the work but have to name me as the author and you are not allowed to create a derivative work of the writing.

Code

Code in most cases is licensed under the Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (by-sa) but I also often use the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (by-nc-sa). The reason for this differentiation is that I think some scripts can be used by everyone – like a CSS framework – but some PHP – such as a database framework – script should only be used for NonCommercial projects if the person using it also gives it away for free. The license which is used, is normally mentioned in the code file.

In Short and what if there is no note?

Under this paragraph you see a list with the licenses described above in a short version, with the rights and the link to the license page. But what happens if I haven’t made a note at the work which license is used? If there is no note with the license named, the license listed in this list is used. That means for example, every text I publish is automatically licensed under the Creative Commons by-nd license. If I used a different license I’ll add that for sure. Just at pictures you’ll never find a text where it says ‘licensed under the Creative Commons by-nc-sa’ cause that breaks the whole picture. For that reason please contact me and I’ll tell you which license I used for the particular picture.

• Photography & Web-Design & Design
  • URL / Short: by-nc-sa
  • In Words: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
• Writing
  • URL / Short: by-nd
  • In Words: Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported
• Code
  • URL / Short: by-sa (sometimes: by-nc-sa)
    
  • In Words: Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Conclusion

Different licenses is a great thing but like everything, it has some cons. It can be confusing, caused by the use of different licenses, but also is great cause different works should be used in different aspects and for that the different categories of works need different licenses, like in my list above. To prevent confusion I decided to write down which licensing I use for what, for that reason I just have to look at that paper and decide which is right for the work. But that does not mean that I’m going to stick to the licensing given for every and all works. I’ll decide each time, especially if I do client or stock work. The last thing is that I don’t guarantee that this licensing system never changes, that being sad means that this can change!

If you read this and although have such a system or just use one license or have some other thoughts, please leave a comment and let me know your opinion on that licensing things.

Business-Card

If you take a look at my business-card (here) your going to see that it’s pretty empty and that there is not that much information. Normally a business-card contains:

• the Name of the person who gives the business-card out,
• the Address,
• the Phone-Number, Mobile-Phone and maybe Fax
• the Email-Address
• and if existing the Domain of the web-site.

At mine you’re searching two of this five pints without success. The fun thing is that persons who I showed the design, – nearly all – have been mentioning why I don’t have the 2 missing parts of my data included into the business-card. The two parts are:

• the Address
• and the Phone-Number, Mobile-Phone and Fax

Business-Cards Christoph Spiegl

The next logical question to ask is why did I do that. Just before I decided to get a own business-card printed, I’m not able to get new business-cards every time just one of the information changes. So one main part was that I don’t want to print new cards just because my mobile-phone number changed, for that reason I decided to just print consistent data which I think is the email and my two web-sites. The other ‘whys’ of my decision have been this 3:

1. It may change
   I pointed this out before but it’s important enough to be mentioned again. The data I didn’t include could change very fast. OK, the address not but mobile-phone could. The data I decided to print is data I’m hoping to hold for a long time from now on. It’s a great way to get your own concentration focused to some few parts. In my case it’s just my email – cspiegl@cspiegl.com – and my two domains – cspiegl.com and whereischristoph.com. I want to concentrate my stuff at this two pages. And I even have the possibility to change my mind but than I can link the domains up to the new sites.
2. It’s to personal
   Phone, mobile, fax and address is in my eyes very personal data. I think nobody needs my address in the times of email. The same is for phone, mobile and fax. I’m willing to give you this data if you send me an email and ask for phone or any of the others. But email is my main part of communication and there I can check when ever I want and answer.
3. The most important is there
   Like I already mentioned, the most important information is included. If you are willing to contact me you find your way, if though the contact page or via the email, is your personal decision. The only problem could appear if you want to call me and don’t have internet and email. But how many people are out here without email and internet? Nearly none. And I have to tell, the people I’m interested in mostly have email and internet.

These 3 reasons are why I decided to get my business-card the way I did and I hope you get the point. If you want, you can download the front and back to print it or do just what ever you want but all in terms of the license.

Please feel free to comment or email me feedback or your own opinion, I’m really interested.