somhairle macdonald

The cycling season is in full flow and I can’t wait for the Tour de France opening prologue in Monaco tomorrow. If the Tour can live up to the brilliant Giro d’Italia earlier this year we are in for some seat of the pants racing. The grand tours in my opinion are some of the greatest sporting spectacles on Earth. Full props to the guys who compete in these races they are quite literally super human.

I’ve managed to be out pedalling a little bit, where time allows or when the elusive pull of peace, quiet and physical excersion proves to much to resist. My uncle Bill has set himself the challenge of cycling John o’groats to Landsend down the west coast, fairplay to him I say. You should check his blog if your interested it is highly amusing.

On the design front I bought myself a graphics tablet and it’s a revelation. Hopefully it will save me loads of time, cutting out the lengthy draw, scan, edit cycle that has long been a drain on my productivity. Expect to see lots of organic sketchyness on the go for the next wee while why I try to master all it’s various functions. At first using the pen to navigate the computer system was a little odd but it’s amazing how quick you get the hang of it. The only problem is the wacom driver doesn’t work very well with my old mac system 10.5.2 but I’m sure I’ll sort that out post haste.

Well, it’s been over a month since me last post and with good reason, things have been hectic. I have been back at full time fathering the past month or so, if anyone’s ever doubted how hard it is to keep two young bairns entertained, let me assure you it is a formidable challenge. As a result production of graphical wares from the factory of schmo has been curtailed some what. I have been working a day and a half a week (plus evenings, weekends) on projects and although progress is slower than before I feel that i have a developed a greater perspective on my work which translates into a more expressive and personable approach. Design time is so limited now, I have to make the most of it and as a result the  process has become more focused. Solid conceptual foundations are established for each project before any pencil touches paper. This means a lot more chitty chat with clients, discussion and mulling over, which is great for giving a clearer line of passage through the design process. So it’s going to be interesting to see how the finished results will stack up. There’s certainly plenty in the pipeline just now. A couple of album covers, a few wordpress based web sites and various pieces of promo print. So i’m hopefull that with my rejuvenated approach will create some of my best work yet. Time will tell…