I spend a lot of time in in a digital environment, creating and designing using my computer as a tool, and so it becomes an extremely important space that I try to make both functional and beautiful so that it supports my creativity. Today I’d like to share two tools that I’ve found boost creativity as well as One Small Change for a greener digital life.

Concentrate

Concentrate

Concentrate is a simple and intuitive application that helps you eliminate distractions so that you can focus.

Concentrate lets you create Activities, which are groups of actions that help you focus on a task. For example, you may want to create an Art activity that quits social networks, launches your favourite software for creating art and changes your desktop to an image that makes you feel creative. If you like you can set a time for the activity.

Activities in Concentrate

Here you can see the different activities I’ve created with Concentrate.

There are activities for blogging, writing, art, economy, general focus, but also an activity that turns on social networks and my RSS-feed.

For a visually oriented person it’s wonderful to automatically switch desktop wallpaper to indicate that you’re moving into a different space. I love how it makes me feel like there are several spaces in the same digital environment, and as though I’m moving from one space to another when I switch between activities.

Below you can see my desktop dressed up with its regular wallpaper as well as the solid black I like to use when I focus on art and design.

This is software for the Mac. There’s a free demo of Concentrate and the application sells for $29 with a money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

Desktop for play and desktop for focus.

ColorSchemer Studio 2

ColorSchemer Studio 2

When you create art using digital tools, you use the colour wheel with its endless possibilities for selecting colours. I like to limit my palette when I start working on a piece and pick a group of colours as a starting-point. This is where ColorSchemer Studio 2 enters the scene.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is a professional colour-matching application that helps you build beautiful colour schemes with speed and ease. It can help you identify colour harmonies, create unique palettes based on photos or images, find related colours, mix colours to create a gradient blend and work with RGB and CMYK colours in a colour-managed environment. But it doesn’t stop there.

With ColorSchemer Studio 2 you can preview colours on a variety of layouts, view colours through colourblind eyes and analyze contrast, readability, and accessibility!

This is an incredible tool for handling colour, again this is software for the Mac there is both a version for the Mac and for Windows and although the price-tag might be steep for a hobby I think it’s well worth it for professional art and design work. ColorSchemer Studio 2 costs $49.99 and there’s a free trial available.

One Small Change

Lastly, in February I’ll be making One Small Change to make my digital life more sustainable. I’ve already got my laptop set to be optimised for high energy savings, but I tend to leave it on and charging over night, so I can just flip the lid open in the morning and read my e-mail over my morning coffee. Of course it’s ridiculous to leave it on charging at night! So, no more of that.

Seashell, stones and a plug

Tags: art, blogging, climate smart, colour, creative process, Creativity, design, earth friendly, ease, eco, environment, focus, green living, Mac OS X, review, simplicity, software, sustainable, technology, utilities, Windows, Writing

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about my photography and here’s the scoop. All of the photos on my blog are shot with my iPhone. I often use an app called CameraBag that recreates the magic of film without all the chemicals needed to manually use and develop film. There aren’t any settings or choices for each filter, you just decide which vintage camera you’d like to use, some of my favourites are the instant camera (that I used for this Polaroid of vintage graffiti), as well as the Lomo (in action in these over-saturated photos) and Holga (that I used to put a dark and moody edge on some of my summer photography). But sometimes I don’t use any additional software at all. Just raw iPhone photography, iPhoneography.

Tulips at night

Last night I thought this bunch of tulips might wilt before I got round to taking some photos of it, so I took a few pictures with the camera in my iPhone, although it was almost midnight and the camera doesn’t have a flash. Tulips are an early sign of spring for me, even if you have to buy them at the store because the ground is still deep with snow and it’ll be months before they blossom here! I find these tulips so inspiring, but with all the excitement over Apple’s new iPad and the administration and economy that I handle at the end of each month I’m way too busy to do much more than capture them on film.

Blurred tulips

I really like the rough quality that the low-quality camera of a mobile device can bring out! And the immediacy. There’s something very appealing to me in this blurred photo of tulips. Perhaps it’s the almost painterly quality… Normally I wouldn’t post this photo, but seeing as I’m talking about photography, and some of the unexpected beauty of the imperfections of lo-fi photography, I did.

I absolutely refuse to spend time in Photoshop editing photos. If I’m going to be creating using my computer as a tool, I’d prefer to work on my own art. There’s something endlessly satisfying about the simplicity of lo-fi photography, trusting the moment, seeing what happens. Finding moments of serendipity. It’s a liberating contrast to the sometimes laborious methods involved in designing icons and the endless and complicated options and settings available in the tools of my trade, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I first got an iPhone because I was designing icons for the platform and I needed to see what they actually looked like in their own environment. At the time, I’d never guessed what a huge inspiration the iPhone turned out to be for me! A digital playground and a canvas to experiment with and to capture ideas with the built in camera, notes and voice memos. It’s become the place where my creative process often begins. But my favourite source of creativity on my iPhone is finger painting with Brushes! More about that another day!

Tags: apps, CameraBag, creative process, ease, imperfection, Inspiration, iPhone, iPhoneography, lo-fi, Photography, serendipity, simplicity, software, technology

Black boots and Italian basketweave scarf.

Autumn. Boots and scarf and hat and gloves. Shiny street, wet from the rain, sometimes black with a little purple or blue.

My head is still spinning from this week’s adventure with natural media software, Painter 11. The way the paints interact with each other and the canvas, the texture and detail is mind blowing! Exploring the brushes, markers, chalk, pastels, watercolor and oil, just to mention a few, and if this isn’t enough you can make your own brushes with the RealBristle tool. You can control the width of brush strokes by the tilt of your pen, just like when you use a real, traditional brush! It’s amazing… You can decide to leave a layer of digital watercolor in wet mode, so that it’s still wet when you continue, whether you continue working on your painting a month or a day later! It’s like having access to all the natural media you can imagine, without having to take it out of storage, wash the brushes or deal with the toxins, mess and expenses! There’s a free demo of Painter that you can download to give it a trial run.

This weekend I’m looking forward to visiting the blogs of fellow artists in The Fish Bowl. Seeing Julie and Julia at the beautiful cinema Skandia, designed by Gunnar Asplund in 1923. Creating a reading corner with a grey sheepskin Lamino armchair in the living room and washing the kitchen floor.

I hope you have a wonderful and restful weekend!

Red leaves and berries.

Tags: autumn, black, grey, natural media, orange, Painter, red, software, technology, watercolours