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Veerle's blog: full articles


Testing the Wacom Cintiq 12WXJanuary 6

As some of you know, I’ve been testing the Wacom Cintiq 12WX for about a month. The tablet has been returned to Wacom Europe about a week ago. Time to share my experience and thoughts, and why I’ve decided not buy it.

My left-handedness

This was a very meaningful experience for me. You see, I've never used a tablet before and I've always been very curious about it. People often rave about it and say once you try it you don't want to use the mouse anymore. I've always been very skeptical towards those statements. Probably because I'm left-handed when it comes to drawing, but I'm using the mouse with my right hand. I'm born left-handed, but I've been taught to write and use the scissors with my right hand when I was little. Some things I can do with both hands, still, I feel I'm left-handed for most things.

Testing with trial and error

When this opportunity of testing was offered to me, I took it with both hands. At first, I tried to see if I could use the pen with my right hand, but that didn't take me very long to realize that it wouldn't work as well when I compared it with my left hand. I knew this would take me a while to getting used to. It felt as if I had to start all over again, clicking and selecting menu items etc. When I was working directly on the Wacom display, it felt more natural, but the switch between 30 inch and 12 is huge: all the space in the world, versus not so much

Inspiration series: Interieur08December 30 2008

It has been too long since I blogged about Modern Home Design, but this post will kinda make up for it ;) At the end of October I visited Interieur08, the 21st international biennale for creative interior design in Kortrijk. I have been too busy to go through all the pictures to make a good selection. No time like the present, so I just took a break to get the ball rolling and use these as another inspiration series.

Interieur08

Interieur is a happening that takes place every two years. I find it cool to visit to transfer to a completely different design world. It was an inspiring trip. I especially liked the hall where Jaime Hayon, the youngest and the first Spanish guest of honour ever showed his work. You'll see in the pictures that there were cool illustrations on the walls in that area. Hope you like the pictures and they inspire you as much as they did for me :)

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Abstract, my WooThemes designDecember 22 2008

Begin September Adriaan of WooThemes asked me if I would be interested in the creation of a WordPress theme. Last week WooThemes announced the theme on their site, which is the perfect opportunity for me to to share some of my design process of this project.

The briefing

As far as briefing was concerned, this was very limited to "Design a theme consisting of a homepage and a secondary page". They gave me complete freedom over the concept. Since I haven't developed for WordPress before, the client suggested that I only deliver Photoshop files. So CSS/XHTML conversion wasn't part of the scope.

Complete freedom over the concept

Having complete freedom over the concept sounds nice and it has its advantages; you can do your own thing. Like in most good things there is also a 'but' that translates in a disadvantage in my opinion. Having no boundaries or direction in terms of concept or style feels a bit to me like designing blind. You need to find your own direction. In my case, I always think they want my typical design style: bold, colorful, playful etc. On the other hand, I was considering the commercial aspect as well. A design that looks too much like a personal blog might not sell very well, only a few people might like it. As I could read from the comments on WooThemes, I noticed there was a spot left for a th

Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte testDecember 16 2008

A while ago Donna of Nokia WOM world sent me a Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte to try out. From what I understand, it is a premium phone that uses high end materials. My current phone was a Sony Ericsson K750i that I have been using a few years. It’s not a bad phone, but I only use it to make or take a call and on occasion taking a picture.

Expectations

Donna also mailed me a link (flash site so I can't directly link to the movie) to watch a video about the device so I would know what to expect. After watching the Nokia 8800 Arte inspiration video I must admit that I had very high expectations of how this phone would feel and look like.

The specs
  • High end materials
  • 3G/Tri-Band
  • 420x320 OLED Display
  • 4GB Internal Memory
  • Bluetooth
  • 3.2 Megapixel Camera
  • Battery: 3h talk/300 standby
  • Extras: Leather case, Bluetooth handsfree and table stand/dock.

The package

It all starts with the package, because in my humble opinion that's a part of the experience. I always love receiving new things from Apple just because of that. The Nokia phone arrived in a branded handbag with a black box inside. The outside box of this Nokia is black and looks stylish but once you are past the flap with the phone in wireframe shape the experience falls short, it breaks with the high end image of the phone. You i

Scroll magazine designDecember 9 2008

Just about 2 months ago I posted about the design process of the logo for Scroll magazine. Today I’ll tell you a bit more about the general process of the design and layout of the magazine.

The briefing

The briefing was given based on the questions I asked Maxine, since this was her first magazine as well. Besides the look & feel I asked her about the content (see further below) and the necessary technical info I needed to exclude unexpected surprises.

Look & feel

As for the style and look I knew it should be timeless/classic, elegant, minimal, concise,... You can read all the info in my article about the logo design process.

Technical info
  • Cover and inside pages all in full color (quadri/CMYK)
  • Dimensions of magazine: 210 mm wide x 245 mm high
  • Binding: perfect bound
  • Thickness of spine: to be seen later
  • Use bleed of 5 mm
  • Files delivered as Certified PDF file: inside pages and cover plus spine as 2 separate PDF files
  • Source files Adobe InDesign CS3
Content

I received some basic information about the content of the 64 pages. Real content would be avail