Monthly Archives: September 2011

My First Hard Drive

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The “Hard Drive” is a wonderful thing. Capable of storing phenomenal amounts of rarely-used-yet-priceless stuff, they’ve become so cheap and huge that we take them a bit for granted.

Not me. I still remember vividly the thrill of my first hard drive. Mid-Eighties. Five megabytes, ladies! Before that, if you wanted more storage, you got a second floppy drive, dammit. The convenience and sheer amount of storage that a hard drive could handle kept me giddy for about a year.

And then it crashed. Taking with it a year of bad poetry and song lyrics that I had for some reason typed into this computer.

That’s it, right there. Under the display. Behind that strange excuse for a computer.

Now, to put this in perspective, my phone stores 6000 times more data. And my Mac, far more than that. And these devices contain (arguably) far more important stuff than bad poetry. They contain years worth of pictures, videos, music, client work, and more. Priceless stuff, irreplaceable stuff.

So really, this is just a reminder to back your stuff up this week. Cheers.

Our California Visit

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We had the opportunity to visit California this past weekend, on the occasion of a family wedding. We made time to see some sights, and of course, our friendly iPhones were running Instagram the whole time.

We arrived in San Francisco and immediately set our sights on the best tourist attractions in the neighborhood.


Going to SF

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Friends, as fall descends on Portland, Needmore is heading to San Francisco for a couple days. We couldn’t be more excited to stop in to one of our favorite cities and breathe in the ocean air.

We’ll be back in the studio on Monday. Have a lovely weekend…

QuickTime X, Lion’s Underrated Gem

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Last month we upgraded to Apple’s new Mac OS, Lion. We’ve been overall very happy with this release, and it has plenty of new features, but one of the most underrated (for us) has been the new version of QuickTime.

It’s great for media playback, of course. Always has been. But what makes the newest version so helpful to us is its ability to record your screen. It’s a bit misleading, because it’s actually called “QuickTime Player.” Don’t let the name fool you.


Get Out and Be Inspired

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How stepping away from the computer can make you a better designer.

We often have aspiring designers ask us about the best path to becoming a web designer. Almost without fail, question number one is: “Which school or program one I enroll in.” And, sure, there are likely many good programs out there for web design. (Although I still find myself arguing with teachers who teach Flash as part of web design classes.) Just know that web design as a field moves very quickly. And so, what you learned a year ago in school could be obsolete today. (You can always keep your skills fresh online at places like Lynda.)

Here at Needmore, we’ve taken remarkable different paths to get to where we are today. Raymond, with a programmer for a dad, was practically born to web design. I, on the other hand, meandered through anthropology and linguistics before landing softly in the arms of this field.

When I look at our paths and those of folks that I most admire, it becomes evident that the most important thing you can do is to develop an aesthetic point of view. If you want to be a designer of any kind, do whatever you can to expose yourself to as many different sights, sounds, and tastes as you can. Take every opportunity to travel, read, visit museums, notice architecture, talk to your clients about what they do, etc. And, by all means, get away from that computer and give yourself time to imagine.