Mindset of a Web Design and Illustration Past
Posted on August 26, 2012
I have relics. It’s that simple. Relics in terms of mindset and how I work and use equipment. My personal philosophy is never buy anything from Apple at full price and buy a version behind. My personal and professional philosophy has been to buy as big and fast as you can, so you’re not annoyed with the “beach ball of death” when working in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. And large, honking machines meant G5 towers and 8-12 GBs of memory and 2 large monitors. Command central for my web design and illustration awesomeness.
The problem is that nowadays with the scale of technological growth and the mobility of working, connecting, collaborating, and consuming, my mindset has changed . I can and do work anywhere regardless if there is an internet connection. I don’t want to be tied to a traditional office and stare at metal and Formica furniture. I don’t work on a production line. Even the traditional production line has changed! The other problem is that this PowerPC that I have at home for my personal web design and illustration awesomeness mostly sleeps. The MacBook Pro that I bought several years back, refurbished and at a discount, gets more action even though it’s a 17 inch laptop and weighs as much as a toddler. Another issue with this PowerPC and my personal and professional philosophy is that I bought that sucker right before Apple went to Intel. Doh! The hardware and software can only be upgraded so far and I can’t bring it with me easily.
What am I hanging onto with this personal and professional philosophy about machines? The type of work that I do? Workflow? File sizes? In reality I only do video and animation work at work. And for that type of work I use the tower—at work. I mainly work in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop is relegated to web page images. The photos that I do edit once they are released from digital purgatory come from my second-hand Leica Digilux 1. Working on those photos aren’t going to make the fans fail. Why do I keep dusting the PowerPC? I barely turn it on. It has a secondary drive that is 1TB and holds my work and music files. At this point in my life, only the personal photos and the music files are relevant. Everything else can go!
Frank Chimero had a post over a year ago about the same issue and it’s been in the background of my mind for some time. I need to look at what I do, how I do it, and where I do it and leave the old philosophy behind. Everybody knows that spear that the Nazis coveted was a bunch of propaganda anyway. The mindset worked at the time to convince people that it was special and had powers, but eventually it shed it’s true light. Just like my old philosophy has shed it’s own light. These machines that I coveted and the way in which I worked are the relics of a mindset that is no longer relevant.
Am I still concerned about power and performance? Absolutely. However, I’m more interested in flexibility. I want technology to support my life rather than define it. Did I feel limited with my stationary objects back then when I purchased the PowerPC and laptop? Nope. I don’t really think so and if there were any times that I felt limited they were probably few in number. When I look back though I see how it defined my life and when and where I worked. I see it more clearly now because my personal and professional mindset has changed. I am much more interested in flexibility and being on-the-go. I want to go. Walking the same goat path everyday has gotten really old. There is so much more to experience and I don’t want or need to wait to get home or to work to able to share ideas digitally.
I loved this post. I think it shows your growth over time. I believe some people struggle when technology changes. Ultimately, it shows your versatility. I would be curious to see a similar post five years from now
Thanks! I’m curious to see a similar post in a year or two and compare. I think that it’s the start to working, interacting, building, and communicating in very different ways.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, too. When the time comes to retire my iMac, I don’t think I’ll replace it with an iMac, or a tower but with a drobo, and elevator stand for my MacBook. The two things I use my iMac for can easily be replaced by high-end single purpose devices (like a drobo) at a fraction of the cost of an iMac.
I’ll keep the second display, keyboard, and mouse because I think I’ll always prefer to “work” that way but the MacBook in my bag has more than enough horsepower to do the work now.
I’m thinking about selling both of my Cinema Displays, but I definitely like the second “monitor” for my palettes and layers and such. I can easily use the iPad as a second monitor for those tasks in conjunction with my laptop. I think that I can get over selling off the 2 displays. I can take the 1TB second drive from my tower and pop it into an external enclosure for mobile use and backup. Perhaps the PowerPC will become something else, like a LINUX box, or the most over-designed planter on Earth.