AlphaDesigner Blogue

I haven’t been that excited about someone’s music since more than a year, when I heard the last Róisín Murphy album. And that wasn’t exactly a mainstream album, it was rather arty for radio play.

It’s not because I’m too old. It’s because at some point during this decade, pop music became so predictable, so polished and so soulless that it lost all its genuine appeal. There’s nothing that really rocks the boat. That’s what I thought until I saw Lady Gaga for the first time. She has potential, she has guts, she’s funny, intelligent and not as constrained in her public persona as, let’s say, Beyoncé. She reminds me on Michael Jackson and Madonna before their kinetic energy ran out.

I wish her all the best! As of now, I am officially gagafied.

I considered putting some prints of my artworks and photos for sale since a long time and I think I finally found a great site for this purpose. It’s called RedBubble and besides a commercial online shop, it also hosts a very vibrant community of professional and amateur artists. I got a really warm welcome there – 3 of the 6 artworks I uploaded got featured on the main page. I have a RedBubble profile where you can take a look at what’s available. I will surely expand this collection but I’ll do it gradually and with an eye on quality, not quantity.

I just encountered an excellent article about UI design – a tight, handy presentation of the main principles you need to follow when you mess with all kinds of interfaces. It reminded me about my eternal dilemma, the one I crash into every time I try to update this site’s design. I call it the “simple vs. enchanting” conundrum. Every time I begin with a really minimalistic design and end up with something rather dramatic. I can’t help it, it’s just the way it is. Of course interface design is a slightly different animal than web design. They’re like cousins – they play together quite often but have different toys. Despite that difference, most of the mentioned principles are still valid. Especially the “Don’t Torture Your User” one.

I started the 12th version of AlphaDesigner the other day and I was thinking about something pretty clean. No bling stuff, no pompous environments, just few lines of text links and my artworks. I could do it in seconds and move on with my life but few minutes after I drafted the whole concept I stopped, scratched my head and got the feeling I was trying to lobotomize myself. Seriously, it’s not me. I’ve never been simple. I am slightly irrational, occasionally dramatic and often very complex. Not complex as in “Wow, that’s very complex” but as in “Wow, that’s a total mess”.

On the other hand, I enjoy simple things. Like Tweetie. It’s a tiny cleverly built iPhone app for Twitter and for some reason it reminds me on cold soda water. Bubbly, slightly sour but no flavor. Pure delight.

However, Tweetie doesn’t represent a person. It’s supposed to be a tool, not a design statement.