I bought a new external hard drive (my 3rd) as I seem to constantly be running out of room. This time I went for something a little more pretty and also something that may encourage me to buy a Mac Mini. I got an Iomega Minimax 750GB. At first the quality seemed a little rough then I noticed it comes with a very thin clear film plastic protector stuck on the top. Once you remove that I realised the marks are caused by that and the actual plastic isn’t damaged! I had no problems setting it up and partitioning it so I could leave 200GB devoted to TimeMachine. No eSata or FW800 but I’m not using it to work on, just as a backup device, so speed wasn’t as important as looks :p

So being able to instantly backup my whole computer I decided to re-install OSX, this time not enabling the annoying encryption that doesn’t work with TimeMachine anyway. Having re-installed OSX on my Macbook pro and therefore un-pairing it with my 8GB iPod touch of course it meant I could no longer sync them. The solution was to delete all the music on the iPod (which is fine as I have a copy of the mp3s on the external hard drive) but some strange iTunes programming means you can’t delete podcasts! I had about 2GB of podcasts I could no longer access through iTunes so the quickest and easiest solution I could think of was to restore the iPod, reformatting it and removing everything. This meant the firmware was reset to 1.1.4 but without my £12 software upgrade that I purchased through iTunes in January. Because I was using a re-installed version of OSX and iPod firmware iTunes kept hassling me to buy the upgrade — the software I had already purchased! I logged in to my iTunes account to try and download it again only to find you can’t. iTunes wouldn’t even let me purchase it again!

So I thought I’d take the opportunity to try jail-breaking the iPod so I could add the applications I had already bought as well as other 3rd party applications and themes. I looked at this option a few months ago but it looked far more complicated and risky. The other day I applied the jailbreak and have since been installing loads of themes and applications on it. It really is a simple and easy process and gives your iPod a lot more functionality. I’ll outline the process I took, which you can follow (of course at your own risk).

1) Restore the iPod using iTunes to 1.1.4 firmware then close iTunes before configuring the iPod or transferring anything to it (it can take a while to download the new firmware from Apple as I think it’s about 160MB).

2) Download ZiPhone and press the jailbreak button. The process is now complete but you will now want to add applications and custom themes.

How to add applications
Connect to wifi and run the installer application. It will refresh it’s list of default sources (you can add more sources for even more apps). Once complete you can add the Apple software upgrade (mail, weather, maps etc) by clicking the ‘install’ button on the bottom and go to the ‘all packages’ folder and search for and install: 1.1.3/4 iPod Full Features. Other applications I’ve added so far (you can add them from the default sources by just searching for them in the ‘all packages’ folder in the installer app) and found quite useful are:

• BossTool — for moving your fonts to another partition to free up space for applications
• Converter — for translating Australian measurements to the old fashioned English ones
• RainbowLight — for pretty colours
• SummerBoard — for applying themes, I’m currently using Katamari (pictured above), though not very useable it’s pretty
• weDict — for language translation
• Apollo — instant messaging, MSN and iChat etc
• Wallpaper — for browsing and downloading other people’s wallpaper images
• MobileFinder — for file management
• TapTap Revolution — guitar hero for the iPod/iPhone
• snes4iphone — SNES emulator
• iSolitaire
• Chess
• Raging Thunder — driving game using accelerometer
• MxTube — for downloading YouTube videos
• Sysinfo — for checking out running processes

How to access any file on the iPod from OSX
In order to transfer anything to and from the iPod (handy for installing ROMs for game console emulators) install the BSD sub system and OpenSSH application using the same method outlined above. Then follow these instructions on the MacRumors forum to install and configure the OSX application.

Bob Greenberg, co-founder of R/GA spoke at a D&AD lecture last night that I attended with a few friends. Bob spent the first half of the lecture giving an overview of what R/GA is and the history of the company, then played some videos of case studies, most of which I had seen before. I couldn’t help but feel most people in the room knew who he was and therefore the case studies and in depth background to the company wasn’t necessary. Personally, I would have preferred if he had have concentrated on some of the concepts he brought up in the end about the state of the design/advertising industry now and where it’s likely to be headed. Still, the overview wasn’t bad and I did learn more about the company, and remain a fan of their work. As an agency they definitely seem switched on when it comes to digital design and dynamic enough to move with industry shifts. One thing Bob pointed out was that the company re-invents itself every 9 years.

Later in his lecture Bob outlined that 50% of most brand’s demographic are watching TV, while the other 50% were using the Internet. Brands are still spending an average of 95% of their advertising budgets on TV, while only 5% goes to digital media. It’s therefore obvious that the digital advertising industry is going to expand rapidly as more money in transferred in to this market — especially as the way we watch TV changes. Bob went on to speak about the term ‘TV 2.0’, where films and television programmes are distributed freely in digital form — the same thing that happened to the music industry a few years ago. He refered to the site Quick Silver Screen, where you can stream loads of films and tv programmes for free, one of many places to download content in digital form. Bob recently detailed this concept in Ad Week, which you can read online here.

The shift in advertising budgets to digital media is not only going to come from TV, in the last few years above-the-line/print advertising budgets are being shifted in to digital advertising. This is happening here at Ogilvy, where 50% of their business is now digital and this figure is gradually increasing. This has meant they’ve had to start replacing print based creatives with digital ones (the process of how I got my job) so they can move with this trend to meet demands of their clients. All this means working as a digital/interactive designer is going to mean more opportunities and money in the future, something that obviously I am hoping for.

So, the advertising and design industry is constantly evolving as technology advances. One thing I like about R/GA is that 1/3 of the company are programmers and developers, and they involve everyone in the creative process, recognising the importance of technology in digital design. Many larger agencies are still stuck with the old structure of a copywriter and art director providing the entire creative concept, usually they are from a purely print background and often are unable to even use a computer. I don’t believes this model works with digital media either. R/GA also recruit a large number of writers and recognise the importance of story telling and narrative in design, another point I really agree with and try to include in my work.

Overall it was an interesting lecture and Bob certainly knows the industry well, however Sagmeister still remains the most inspiring lecture I’ve attended.

Holger Pooten and Lara Jade are two UK-based photographers whose portfolios have recently impressed me, specifically their personal work. I’m not sure what it is about having a disturbing element contrasted with a clean, fashion, styled aesthetic (like the image above by Holger) but for some reason I find it really engaging and comical - almost like black humour I guess. Holger’s personal work reminded me of Steven Meisel’s State of Emergency shoot for Vogue a few years ago. I really liked it but it created a lot of controversy when it was released, and I can see why, perhaps this was always the intention though and something that these two photographers are trying to achieve as well.