I was listening to the ambient radio channel Groove Salad tonight (I still think there should be a law making people play ambient music after a certain time of night) and it hit me how important my own sanctuary is. I am talking about the way I’ve created my own island space where I see out most of my day. Having a home and office combined means I’m lucky enough to be able to decide my own space in this way.

One the things you always want to do as a business and as a person is to optimise yourself. There are so many things ‘going on’ and we all accumulate baggage that just hangs there like left over Christmas bulge. For some reason the onset of Spring has this weird shedding and readressing effect in me. I don’t think I’m the only one that gets the urge to spring clean and my cleaning usually surrounds my sites, my business and less actual getting soap and water out to clean down cupboards.

Part of what keeps me interested in design is the attention to small details that gives things a lift. I really like the little features you can add that take things to another level. One of the historically yawnsomest areas of website design has been forms. Whilst with css and other things there are always ways to cheer up forms, it’s still often a last minute thought. Not in the case of Frooition and their register interest form.

In the society we live in it’s often easy to assume money is the only thing that matters. We all have things we need to pay for and the system in place is financial. Whilst I don”t deny this, I also see the value in other non-money things. I also think these things are possibly far more worth than cold hard cash.

One of the things with design is that everyone has their own perception of a particular style. Along with actually making designs as a skill set you need to have a bit of the magic 8 ball psychic ability going on. The key is to understand the concepts that are likely to get asked for in a broad sense and use the design consultation to drill down what exactly they are meaning by that term.

Over at 9rules notes there was a recent post about what music do you design to. I have been thinking a lot about my design process as I’ve started to train someone again. A big part of my process involves getting the ‘zone’ using music. I have this odd habit of listening to a type of music depending on my project - actually it seems from that thread I’m not alone in this.