I was recently talking to someone who has to constantly reinstall Windows on his PC. After a bit of chatting it emerged that the root cause of his problems was the downloading of pirated copies of state of the art music production software. Something he wanted to learn but could not afford. The pirates had done the pirate thing and used the software installs to place their own nasties on his PC. The result was a system so unstable he wasn’t really getting any where with it.
I’m not going to talk about the fact that software piracy is wrong (it blatantly is) – but rather on the problem that comes with the perceived need that only the biggest and best software is worth having. That if you are going to be digitally creative you have to have to top of line software in order to succeed.
Here are the problems.
If you steal software you run the risk of your computer being attacked – stopping creativity.
If you go straight to the super pro software you run the risk of not learning the fundamentals and also – and this is the real kicker – you learn the risk of not learning how to creatively push software to get something really cool out of it. You see the power of top end software is not just the gee whiz features. It is the way in which you can combine functions to create something truly original. If you only use the features as are and do not learn how to push the software – what you create will be limited. Ultimately what you make will not be of the high standard needed to truly stand out.
So the message is – start by pushing consumer or open source software. Do great work, get it noticed and then upgrade and upgrade and upgrade. Each time you upgrade you do better work and you succeed.
So don’t pirate. Learn instead to be original.
I’m starting a process of updating and renewing Findingviews. My aim is to improve both the content and the how easy it is to use Findingviews. The first phase has been to fully integrate my art shop on Red Bubble so that you can seamlessly both view and buy my photography and artwork. Over the next few weeks you will see layout changes that will allow you to learn more about myself and mywork. Once that is done I have new work to introduce to the store.
I hope you like these changes. I think that by the time I am finished that Findingviews will be a much more useful resource for you
Design Evolution in Progress
Findingviews is changing. This is the second part of my account of this change. Last time I wrote about deeper integration to Redbubble. This has now progressed some what.
I’ve decided to make the shop the home page of this site. I want to make fuller use of this shop and hiding it in the menu won’t help there. I also want to talk more about photographs and pictures I work on so putting the gallery front and centre makes a lot of sense to me. It’s not just about seeking sales. It’s also about arranging this web site in a manner that better reflects it’s job.
I’m sticking with keeping the shop powered by Redbubble. The reasons for this are very simple. Redbubble do a great job of printing and posting my work. I thought about keeping stock and selling it directly. It turned out that conflicted with my belief that we should only use what we need. Creating stock and hording it is not as environmentally as printing images and T-Shirts individually for each and every customer.
The blog itself continues to expand and is improved by the new look. Its made up of two components, thoughts about my work and comments that should be published here on Findingviews and a stream of discoveries and thoughts from Sharedcreation. Sharedcreation seeks out to discover and publicise things that people are creating and publishing. Its a look at the expansion in creativity that has been perpetuated by the Internets ability to enable low cost distribution. I believe that this is changing bout how our culture operates and also how we get our entertainment. I feel sure that this can only get more interesting.
The actual black on white design itself is meant to enable reading. I hope it achieves that.
There are other updates and changes to come. I’ll update this blog as these happen.