Anniversary Thoughts

It's July... and a thought flashed through my mind. It's the first anniversary of my blog!!

I never thought that I could keep this blog for more than six months. But it has survived, for almost an year! That itself is an encouraging sign for me. I feel good when I realize that my creative juices are still flowing despite a dry spell of work less period.

Since last one year I have tried to find similar design blogs and bloggers on this vast blogoshpere. Many helped me learn new things associated with my field. Some designers like David Airey and Douglas Bowman, influenced and inspired me a lot. Others like LaurenMarie of 'Creative Curio', Tara of 'GraphicDesignBlog', Michael Martin of 'Pro Blog Design' and Dustin Brewer are resources that I have found very informative and worth to be subscribed to. I have linked to their blogs under the heading 'Creative Resources'.

One more blog that I often check in my feed reader is that of 'FreelanceSwitch'. It is an essential resource for new and old freelancers. I have found the practical tips and advices to be of great value. I like the writing style of FreelanceSwitch and must congratulate the writers for sharing their "wealth of experience" in freelancing.

Thirty posts, handful yet encouraging comments and loads of inspiration. So what am I going to do next? With my wedding, scheduled to be held on the 25th next month, I have got a bit busy on the personal front. Yet, in the coming months I wish to implement my 2nd resolution for this year i.e., to learn 'how to build dynamic web sites from scratch'. Also, looking forward to find more interesting design projects and to improve my blog further. Wish me luck!

Design Talk: Taking a look back

It’s not been quite long that I started this blog. And I haven’t reached any blogging milestones either. No cool stats of comments and subscription. Yet I feel like looking back and ponder where I am. Not because I feel stuck but because I really want to know what my readers want.

Yes. My Analytics report says that I have many visitors from across the globe. Something that I didn’t even thought of when starting this blog! I’m really thankful to all those people from UK, Spain, France, Switzerland, US, Germany, Morocco, Canada, UAE, and Australia who visited and read this blog. And also to my fellow brethren from India, who form my major chunk of readers. There are also people from among you who have found my blog worthy to be subscribed to. Big thanks to you all again!!

Four months back on 7^th July 2007 when I published my first post I have not even had the slightest idea of what I’m getting into. No theme in my mind no content for the posts. It was literally a beginning from the scratch. It simply started off as an enjoyable hobby.

My first post ‘kurkure vs. kurkure’ was sort of an Ad-analysis. Discussing the package design of a popular snack-food, available here in India, called ‘kurkure’. I compared its ad-campaign against one of its rival brand ‘bingo’. It was after this post that I decided my blog to be themed on ‘design’ in general. Sounds like a blogging mistake that’s got to be listed in David Airey’s blog.

Since I am a graphic designer, this topic I felt, could be dealt with ease. But soon I discovered how vast this topic was. Where to begin what to write was the next dilemma. I thought of things pretty dear to me and which also in some way were related to ‘design’. That’s how I decided on writing about Harry Potter one of my favorite literary characters. A bit childish thing on my part! And I must say, rather confess that I strayed from my theme and wrote a movie review on the film ‘Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix’. And I did confess about this in my successive post.

Two more ‘Potter’ posts and I knew I was getting off the track. So I sat up and decided to start with the basics of design. Since then no straying off, thankfully!

After this 18^th post of mine I intend to start afresh and reflect upon a variety of design related contents. But before that Let me ask YOU some questions.

1. What is the most boring aspect of my blog?
2. What is it that makes you to subscribe my blog?
3. How do you rate my posts on a scale of ten?
4. What would you like me to write about?

The answers to these questions any others if you have, I hope and I’m quite sure, will help me improve the content and the presentation of this blog. Once again a big thanks to all of you who patiently read this post.

I earnestly look forward to some insightful comments from you. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Remember, there are no word limits!!