The exhibition wasn’t massive, but we still managed to spend there good hour and a half. I think we were caught in interactions :) Interactivity was one the major theme of the exhibition and it was a good fun and interesting what people can come up with. So yes, I would definitely recommend visiting it while it’s open.

Will took some pictures there, and few of my pictures from the V&A are also below:

It was a pleasant compliment and sure, I agreed to do ‘the shoot’ for the section they call ‘What’s in your wardrobe’.

So the other (late) night it was me, tripod and a pile of clothes. I wasn’t into shopping lately, so was a bit worried about what I could pull out, but I guess the result is not too bad.

Below are couple of images from emergingfervour.com, and if that got you interested head there to read the rest of the post and see few other clothes ensembles I put together.

www.golden.lv

It was one of my first clients when I started freelancing about 7 years ago. No surprise by now the website needed a redesign (yes, it was built with tables), what I was asked to do few months ago.

I wanted to create something very special, to stand out from competitor websites, and also to try myself in a quite unusual for myself, illustrative style. I went for bright colors, playful feel and used jQuery to add some animation to make website more fun.

To be perfectly honest, I think, I was too ambitions. I was working on really tight budget and realized that it ran out in the middle of the project. And I still had to deliver two more languages… It was a bit of a gamble from my side, but I really wanted to design something beyond client’s initial brief and expectations.

In the end I still had to cut down on few ideas to be able to implement all languages and fully working CMS. So don’t judge me too harsh. Also, hopefully website owner will not forget to keep it updated, with 3 languages it can get messy…

Just like with the other website that was launched around the same time, I made use of CSS3 properties to give an extra touch to the website, so view it in a modern browser (not Internet Explorer 8 or lower) to get the best experience.

Coming as a late update… www.commonground.se

A month ago or so I soft-launched a new website for Dan Hegelund, an long-time client of mine. This time it was a website for a church in Sweden, where he is currently based.

We started working on the website about 2 years ago, but had to stop at one point due to a number of reasons, and then a few months ago the project was restarted.

Needles to say, since we started the design has changed. A lot. At least twice. It’s always very hard to pick up on a project if it was on hold for a long period time, and also during these 2 years my design ideas and skills also changed (hopefully, evolved), so I just did not like what I had come up with initially . I believe it was quite frustrating for Dan to hear me saying: ‘We have to wait a little bit more. I need more time. I am still not entirely happy with the design.’ But client’s trust is the best thing in your relations. Just don’t push it :) And I believe his wait wasn’t in vain.

The site is built using Wordpress engine, like the majority of the websites I build nowadays. Essentially it’s a combination of blog, news and event poster. The core requirement for the project was to be content managed as much as possible, and this consideration required extensive Wordpress customization and hacking.

Dan is still playing with website’s structure to adjust it to the church’s and users’ needs and hopefully I will get a green light very soon to add final design touches and some extra functionality. It feels like it is going to be a quite big on-going project and I still got few ideas up my sleeves.

Note: I used some CSS3 properties in this project, so the website looks best in modern browsers, like Firefox, Chrome or Safari. Hopefully, Internet Explorer will also catch up soon.

We wanted to throw a party for quite a long time, and what can be a better chance to do it than a New Year eve? The perfect cause. And what can be better than a fancy dress party? Said & done!

It was also quite a special celebration, since everyone was from our hometown, back in Latvia and it was such a good fun we can’t remember having anything like this in the last decade. No kidding. Our party people really made an effort to make it a memorable night - from the costumes to the home-made, mostly traditional (yammy!), dishes. And we had whole 2 V’s, both Olegs :)

The rest is a history, quite well documented in still images. Have a sneak-peek:

Special thanks goes to Marita for being a tireless camera-girl :)

In a year time we are back at O2 Arena. This time it’s a legendary Depeche Mode.

I hate booking tickets 6 months before the event and even more I hate paying extra money for no extra value added at ebay, but hey, these are the rules of the game. At least we did not go buying tickets for Michael Jackson’s show (yes, I was contemplating it).

The show was great. No surprise here. I must admit, I wasn’t a big fan of the band’s latest album, well, apart from a couple of tracks, but hearing the songs live definitely changed my perception of them.

They started with “In Chains”, which actually gave me a bit of shiver:) Then few more songs from the “Sounds of the Universe” followed. “Wrong” was another powerful track, which also ‘looked’ great, accompanied by blood-red flash lights.

Still the warmest audience’s welcome received Depeche Mode’s classics and all time favourites, like “In Your Room”, “I Feel You”, “Enjoy The Silence” etc. I was also very glad “Precious” was on the list.

“Personal Jesus” concluded the night and we were ready to leave, feeling satisfied and pleased we had made it.

“Question everything generally thought to be obvious.” Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams is in town. Well, not exactly him, but there is an exhibition in the London Design Museum with many of his appliances and gadgets on the display.

For those of you who does not know, Dieter Rams was the chief of design at BRAUN (German manufacturer) and was the man behind most innovative and iconic designs of that time.

And if you are not an Apple hater (there could be a number of reasons, I am not judging you), you would definitely appreciate the simplicity and minimalism of the design that inspired Apple’s Jonathan Ive himself a lot.

The exhibition is like a designer’s candy shop. To see those reel and vinyl players, video cameras, radios, lighters etc, is like travelling back in time (well, no surprise here - this is how it is supposed to feel like at museum exhibitions, right). I must admit I am quite fascinated with those times of 70-80s and would not mind to have my own house decorated accordingly and with those kind of gadgets.

Apparently, the biggest ‘problem’ of BRAUN’s design and the reason why it’s not market’s leader anymore, is their design philosophy - to produce products which wouldn’t be out of fashion and will physically serve for a very long time. Sadly, modern approach is to keep producing inferior quality products to make people replace them all the time.

Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design:

• innovative
• makes a product useful
• aesthetic
• makes a product understandable
• unobtrusive
• honest
• long-lasting
• thorough down to the last detail
• environmentally friendly
• as little design as possible

Amen to that.

If you are in town, I would highly recommend to see the exhibition while it’s on. Read more about the exhibition and Dieter Rams.

London Design Museum itself is located, as you might know, next to the Tower Bridge. So I also took an opportunity to take a couple of pictures of the London’s icon from a different angle than usual:

From time to time I came across galleries of ‘cool iPhone photography’, but either shots were made in quite a perfect environment and good lighting, or required quite an extensive editing or were not that awesome at all.

So I just said to myself: don’t bother. And I didn’t. Until the moment a few days ago my work mate introduced me to an app, which changed everything.  It is called ShakeItPhoto and you can get it from the iTunes. It is everything I need for just £0.59 (well, iPhone is not included :).

So what exactly do I need? Ideally it’s a gadget, small enough, so I could carry it around with me at all times, which wouldn’t intimidate anyone if I point with it at them and which would be capable of taking pictures of some artistic value. I don’t need my everyday pictures to be of outstanding quality, but to capture the mood of the moment. Yes, my DSLR can take great photos, but lately I have been even considering taking it with me when going on holidays. Cause it’s BIG and heavy. I also don’t have guts to point it at some stranger’s face. It just gets too much attention. On the other hand, phone is just perfect for this.

One more thing. I have quite a fascination with retro photography with it’s offset colours, occasional blurriness, lack of focus, with its imperfectness. Just like our life is - imperfect.

So here we are, I got it all now with ShakeItPhoto.

It’s a simple app. As a mater of fact it’s so simple that it does pretty much just one task. And this is exactly why I love it. It takes photos in a polaroid style. You point, you shoot, and… that’s it. It adds just one filter and the frame. Brilliant!

What also great about this app is that it’s a great fun to use. It takes time to ‘develop’ the photo and you can even shake ‘the picture’, just like the real thing. There is also always a bit of luck factor involved, which again, is what you get with an instant photography.

The first few days after I installed it, I just went crazy and took ,probably, hundreds of pictures, but they were mostly about what I saw at work or on my way to/from work. Naturally I ran out of things of interest, so settled down a bit, but still remain quite enthusiastic. I really feel like it brought the joy of everyday life photography back into my life and encourages me to experiment more and not just run through my life, but stop and have a look around and notice little things, to see the beauty in details.

These are just a few shots I did lately (I have also converted those few pictures I already had on my iPhone, which for me were DOA, but now they look great). I also started a new set on Flickr and constantly update it with a new material. Definitely go and check!

It would be a lie to say the app is perfect. The navigation is not particularly intuitive for the user, even for such a simple app - there is an extra step to get to the image folder, and the button which leads there says ‘Cancel’ (must be default interface used, but that does no make a lot of sense); it would be much better if the whole screen was a Shoot button, not just that tiny little one; and, probably the worst of it all, it crashes occasionally, while processing the picture and you can never recover that shot. But the app got a great feedback from other users and a warm reception so I hope the developer will continue to work on its flaws.

It also helps to have iPhone 3G with a letter S with its much much better focusing. I saw few shots and they were beautifully crisp (can’t get that with my phone).

One last thing. Of course there are tons of other similar apps in the Apple store, free or more advanced, and you should feel free to try them, but exactly the simplicity of ShakeItPhoto is what attracts me. Having said that, I would really recommend you to download an amazing Mill Colour app for a more advanced colour correction. It’s free and I use it sometimes on a picture before taking it to the ShakeItPhoto. They work really well in tandem.

A couple of months ago a good friend of mine offered me to go with him to the Get Loaded in the Park festival in South London. Lots of electronica on several stages, and one of its highlights was Royksopp. Well, of course I would go! :)

I discovered the band back in 2005 after listening to The Understanding and being in love with their work since, and that was the first time I saw them performing live. They had a 40 minute session and with their unique sound, feel and look it was awesome.

Later that night I was checking their website and found out that my favorite Scandinavians would be performing soon in London, O2 Academy in Shepherd Bush. Well, that was an easy choice for me, since it’s just 10 minute bus drive away from my place. I booked tickets immediately.

Time went by and here is the night and here we are. We decided to skip supporting act and arrived just some ten minutes before Royksopp began their act.

It was a mix of the material from all of their releases - from famous Elpe from Melody A.M. to, of course, What Else Is There from The Understanding and, well, naturally to the songs from the latest CD, Junior. Also Robyn made her appearance on Girl and the Robot and everyone was very cheerful about it. Everyone had their compacts and mobiles phones out and up in the air :)

No doubts the show was great, but I felt the set could have been a bit longer (even though they were encored twice). Also I must admit, the performance was pretty much the same as at the festival I saw, just a longer version of it, but I must be blaming myself for that, I should have had a bigger pause between the shows :)

What next? Well, Depeche Mode in O2 Arena in December. I just need to find the tickets, as I can’t remember where I put them…

You can also see the bigger version of these pictures, if you go to my Flickr set.

Ac couple of weeks ago I received an email from itdomainnames.net, basically saying ’skrinshot.com is coming available for sale in a few days. If you have interest in acquiring it, please fill up priority notice, and we will contact you when the domain is available.’ Right, that is interesting! So I followed the link in the email.

The first paragraph was saying ‘SKRINSHOT.COM will be listed for sale in the next 24 hours. This domain has been flagged as a premium domain and we expect it to sell quickly. Since you received a priority notice from us, you will be given first chance to acquire this domain.’

Nice, that feels like VIP treatment, and I like it. But also seems too good to be true. A premium domain? I doubt it.

Anyway, I started filling the form and came down to the ‘Your offer’ field. Hmm, my offer… What’s my offer?… OK, 20 bucks. But got an error message - ‘The minimum offer is $97′. Oh, screw you then! I don’t really need it that much (even skrinshot.co.uk is still just a holding page so far). Oh well then, I thought, I’ll stick to .co.uk.

They kept sending me reminder emails, hoping I was going to change my mind, but I was firm. Then a couple of days ago I received an email from another domain name seller, traderdomains.com, and this time ‘it is available for a one-time fee of only $49 USD’ as they ‘were able to secure it’.

Well, that’s definitely a good news! Looks like I saved myself $48, just by waiting a little bit and ignoring the initial price offer. Just like a good haggler. And this time it looked like a fair price to me, which I would be quite happy to pay.

But wait a second! I thought itdomainnames.net had already had that name at their disposal, so how have traderdomains.com managed to ’secure it’? Well that looked suspicious to me. Looked like scam.

And scam it was. I went to the first ‘cheap domains’ website, checked that skrinshot.com was available and bought it for just around $10. And that’s the end of story :) Done. Never just trust emails/internet, check first.

I will be transferring my one page ‘website’ to it’s new address in the next few days. I will also be happily ditching skrinshot.net and skrinshot.info I have bought a year ago and don’t need anymore, since I’ve got .com, the coolest one. Nice.