Freelance UX and UI Designer based in Brisbane. Passionate about typography. Clients big & small.
© 2024 mauloni.
Powered by WordPress
Mesh by ThemeZilla
Apparently @PunchdrunkUK have a ‘smell technician’ that goes around the set of Drowned Man before it’s open to the public spraying Channel No5 & putting out fag butts in the appropriate rooms for added effect. Hector Harkness speaking from Mother London HQ for #nicerTuesdays (@itsnicethat)
We put together a little mission statement to remind ourselves what we’re all about and to help navigate the decisions we make as we continue to build Savvy. Read it below. We believe… That in this age, outdated, industrialist, ideas of human resource is no longer effective. That job security has become an oxymoron. That all of us now have a choice; to choose what skills we learn and who we work for, enabling us to combine our work and our passion, producing results that are highly creative. We want each developer to be more than just their CV. We want each organisation to be more than just their logo. We want to help exciting employers and passionate developers find each other… It’s time for an update. How We want to work with innovative and forward thinking organisations who understand that developer search is more than posting jobs […]
“Do the words need changing?” I finally got a set of Oblique Strategy cards! I have wanted these since I heard about them years ago, and recently purchased a deck. If you haven’t heard about them, “Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas”. Each card offers a decisive action intended to help artists break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking.
The following passage from the book I’m currently reading is interesting to me. Strange timing after a surf on the web earlier today led me to Maslow’s pyramid of needs. “Evolution is a kaleidoscope, not a pyramid: the shapes and variety of species are constantly shifting, but there is no basis for assigning supremacy, no pinnacle toward which the system is moving. Five hundred million years ago, every species was either adapted to that world or changing to become so. The same is true today. We are free to label ourselves the end product of evolution not because it is so, but because we exist now. Expunge this temperocentrist bias, and the neocortical brain is not the most advanced of the three, but simply the most recent.” A General Theory of Love (Vintage)
Today @farez and I had a fantastic OnSavvy session. We are finally at a stage of tying together all our research and learnings into the core offering, and expressing this through wireframing and a prototype. We spent the day sketching up flows and user journeys. It felt so good! Like some kind of purge of a build up of thoughts and ideas. We were totally on the same level about what we are where we’re heading. This is the case the majority of the time, but I still appreciate how lucky we are in that way. It was really obvious to me that our research and investigation work was well worth it. It gave us the confidence needed to make decisions about key features and which paths to take or leave behind. We were able to piece together elements that were previously very fragmented in our minds. The vision shone […]
We are in the process of a complete overhaul of our startup, Drupal on Savvy. At first, this was a pretty daunting concept after two years of working towards our existing product. We always knew it would evolve and change, but we’ve decided it will be easier to wipe the slate and start again. It brings up something I’ve come to realise in the last couple of years – an awareness of how temporary our work in this industry is. It can be frustrating to come from a place of knowing something you have spent countless hours on may be thrown out in the very near future. I’m sure I’m not alone – it’s natural to want your work to last and be worthwhile – to add up to something meaningful and complete. I recognise though that this process is important, essential even to make the next steps we are […]
I’m captivated by a book I’m reading called ‘The Seige’ by Helen Dunmore. The subject of this story is the siege of Leningrad during the second world war. Dunmore writes so descriptively that it feels like a firsthand account. She manages to make a very bleak world colourful. I’ll transcribe a short passage from the book which gives some indication of how beautifully and eloquently she writes. Suddenly and sharply, it’s obvious that cities only exist because everyone agrees to let them exist. It’s crazy, when you think of it, for millions of mouths to pack themselves into a couple of hundred square kilometres, without a pig or a potato patch between them. It only works in the way that fiction works, by making people collaborate. All its life, the city has had the power to demand. It asks for milk, and before dawn milk arrives. Field after field furs […]
Blissymbolics are the invention of a man named Charles K. Bliss. Born with the name Karl Blitz in the Ukraine, he arrived in England in 1939 coincidentally along with the Blitz. Many people remarked how unfortunate his surname was convincing him to rename himself ‘Bliss’. This was a much better fit for his personality. He was described by people who knew him as a ‘loveable character’ and from a few audio recordings, you can hear the cheer and joy he emits. He and his wife made a trip to Shanghai, where he was exposed to Chinese writing for the first time. He saw that the symbol for ‘man’, a simple stick figure, actually translated to meaning ‘man’. This had a profound effect on him. He had an established mistrust for language going back to his early childhood and also later in life. He experienced the rise of Hitler and noted […]
A friend of mine has been considering giving up his post in a well respected digital agency and jumping into the unknown waters of freelancing. He’s been entertaining the idea for some time now and has asked me for advice. My initial reaction was without hesitation. ‘Yes, do it. You won’t look back!’ Thinking on this caused me to do some reflecting myself. My transformative leap was not one I bravely made after much deliberation but rather it ‘happened’ to me. About 7 or 8 years ago, was working in a digital agency in West Hampstead (who shall remain nameless). They had a terrible habit of making a member of staff redundant about once a month. This went on for some time and working there became reminiscent of an episode of ‘Americas Next Top Model’. Not because the staff were particularly good looking or spoke in American accents, but that […]
As the second day of the Cannes Film Festival drew to a close, the lights went up on the new London Film School website. Some months ago towards the end of last year, LFS contacted my friend and fellow co-founder Farez to ask if he would submit a proposal for the job. Farez and his connections are Drupal specialists (or shall we say Drupal Savvy, which is our project together, more on that later), and this was the CMS they were considering. Farez asked if I would come onboard as designer, and I eagerly accepted. The subject matter interested me greatly. I thought of it an honour, after all, Duncan Jones (as well as many other heavyweights) had been through their doors! Working on content that engages me is always an important consideration when choosing projects, particularly for the longer stints. We weren’t the cheapest submission, but a combination of obvious enthusiasm and a good track […]
