Netdiver Mag

Since repurposing Netdiver Mag and opening Netdiver Mag – I have been quite busy working in kinda of stealth mode to tweak-tweak-tweak how to present new content, production of this FANTA (code name) project which intends to afford a robust and playful outlet for creatives around the world to express and promote themselves. No due date yet.

Curious? Read more in-depth in this just released interview I did for FUEL magazine (for iPad). No iPad? Download as a .pdf which sports one of my illustration on their launch issue cover :))

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Netdiver Mag is all about sharing what catches my eyes both as inspiration and creative lessons that probe and push me to excel in whatever I enterprise. I need the visual stimuli as the air I breath.

Through the years, I realise that I have been very discrete about other passions in my life – apart from everything design – but this is about to change. Like.. now.

Five years ago I took the despotic rule of the CTRL+Z universe out of the equation and started painting large abstract canvas. Why? To play with pretty colors for sure, and keep learning about chromatics. But also to learn about new problem-solving and decision-making processes. By painting would you say?

Well once you’ve applied a spot of paint and don’t like the result – can’t delete it right? So this forces me to think and ultimately, find a way to recuperate the ‘mess’ and make it part of the emerging visual. Sometimes the sum of my painting is just a string of corrections. Sometimes it is pure insight.

Also, since my little bro passed 1.5 year ago, he was a musician and experienced with the music production industry – he admonished JF and I to stop ‘researching’ and start ‘doing’.

We had a band 20 years ago and worked 7 years on our projects. When came the www opportunity – we jumped in and for the best of the past 15 years – it was our main focus. JF became a FED (front-end developer) and I a publisher. We had and still have much passion for what it means to be connected 24/7 to the world via technology. I am in awe every day.

We don’t care so much for technology as we care for content distribution and leveraging the creative industry (all disciplines confounded) through disintermediation and circulation of works like never before in the history of our creative culture.

Throughout the years we composed music / songwriting (and piled up a good amount of sketches), invested in new instruments and in the digital music studio parnophelia required to do a decent demo. All the while JF was (and still is) re-learning the new era way of music recording and production. Michel serving as a catalyst, kind of signified it was time for us to go back to it.

We are currently working on two albums. First one is an ‘in memoriam’ album with lots of instrumental tracks to be freely distributed to people going through the agony of losing someone.

The second is a compilation of new and revisited songs, that dip into what we think is now ‘our’ sound and style.

If you read this far, thank you. You visiting is the reason why I am pursuing everything I’m doing. I am no longer a closet publisher, artist nor songwriter.

Expect that the mix of ‘content’ on Netdiver Mag to include from now on the daily mix of creative inspirational projects plus bits and pieces of what I am doing, such as takes (snapshots) of on-going canvas, design experimentations and music.

You ok with that?

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showing: Take #3 untitled

After spending the week-end reshuffling the (music) studio and moving heavy and / or fragile stuff around to and fro that room to another and back, struggling with one table leg that wouldn’t stay levelled for a couple of hours, until we found the solution (ain’t Google essential?), finding the right new place for instruments, mics and wires (lots), hiding an hideous closet door with a black opaque blind and using hardware from another.. whew!

I can assure you – this saying is now true to us (hats off JF):

We Can Do Hard Things

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The sign is hanging in the Etsy offices in New York City.
And here now, virtually.

We are in the business of creating the future. Technology unprecedented explosion of advances is shaping the landscape – in fact, preparing the playing field, for us.

But we, creatives of the world, are the ones populating it. Therefore, we must take full responsibility of what we will cast and broadcast.

Only us, can insure that visual media and design culture does not become a huge consumerism wasteland.

Let’s make sure that that one idea at a time, we affect the world, our world.. for the better.

The best pitch ever! Frank Chimero a designer I admire, has used Kickstarter to pitch for an upcoming book he wanted to write. Watch the movie and learn. Firstly, finding a creative way to get the message across – read the brief. Secondly, engaging emotionally the viewer – watch the video. Thirdly? Succeeding!

He was asking for 25k and he received a staggering 112,159$!!!

Can’t wait to read The Shape of Design.

Your taste is why your own work disappoints you

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

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via: kottke

Designer’s Poison by Frank Chimero

I feel compelled to present a few designers’ poisons. In my opinion, these are the dispositions and mistakes of the field that I saw both addressed as problems and manifested in behavior in One Day for Design’s live stream.

There are important issues that need to be addressed that have a great influence on the future of our profession.

Must read!

Good Design Practice is a campaign by the Design Council to improve professional standards within the design industry created by Paul Fox. The taglines do resonate don’t they?