9th Dimension

Hello world!

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

This is my first blog with you and one in which I will be putting down my thoughts and ideas for my new venture – www.9thdimension.co.uk

This is my embryonic new business venture in which I am going to be drawing together all my many various skills and talents that I’ve accumluated and developed over the years into one identity and brand, and to be able to offer those skills to a variety of businesses, individuals and organisations in a commercial capacity.These include my many years of music making and teaching, my DJing, my hobbies and interests, and also the many years of web and graphic design.

I also want to documment my new skills and projects that I am currently working on – as well as a bit of personal info which I think can shine a light on who am I am, where I’m coming from, where I’m going and what I want and hope to achieve. And also those failures which are often painful and anoying, but which good lessons can sometimes be learned.

Mostly this is going to be a catch-all for my thoughts and ideas for my projects for myself and my clients. See works in progress and so on. Also through this I am obviously wanting to attract and maintain my clients and enable my fledgeling new business to grow into whatever it is destined to be.

But also, I want to add links to some of the many wonderful pages out there of tutorials, forums and blogs which I feel offer very useful information. Humour (always good). Or, as I’m human, something I may want to rant about.

(I usually refrane from rants – as to be honest you could spend a hundred lifetimes ranting about what’s wrong with the world today – I usually prefer to work on being a bit more productive and positive as that for me is the best way forwards often, and is often better for my mental and physical health and wellbeing!)

(I also post waaaaaaay too many things in brackets – and this is something I’m gonna try and cut down on from now on. It’s a tough habit to break(and usually things get even morebrackety) but that’s one of my mini missions for 2009.)

Ahh yeh – Missions…….and statements and such like. To be honest – I’ve yet to ever write a mission statement for any of my projects – for many reasons I’m not going to elaborate on. BUT, for this project – for 9thdimension, it’s something I’m so very excited about and every day believe in much more that a Mission Statement not only feels right, but I think is going to be truly evocative of who I am and what I am wanting to achieve. I really do feel a mini-manesto coming on!But, as I still feel that 9th Dimension is still swimming about in the ether, and the more I am able to pour my mind into it the more it is developing, growing, taking shape, and the more I am excited by the possibilities.

So, at this stage, I don’t want to write a Mission Statement. I actually feel that developing the 9th Dimension website, business plan, marketing and services I am going to offer, and plan to offer more in the future, (and more importantly, noting these down in this Blog) will all come together to help crystalise and capture all I am wanting to achieve. And again – this to me is very exciting.

One aspect of 9th Dimesion I want to focus on is, for every business/client that I am forging links and partnerships with, they are all VERY different in terms of needs/aspirations/budgets/plans, and each of them are going to need unique solutions. Not just for now, but for how they will grow and develop in the future. A future as we can all see is so very hard to predict, and looks set to be an awful lot more difficult to survive and thrive in for all of us.

So I want to be able to offer not only one solution, but a whole range of options for them to consider, so that they can take those on board and together we can find ways to work so that their needs are met (and hopefully surpased), but that they have clear ideas of where the next steps can go to, and also contingency plans and new ideas for if things go wrong, or if cirmcumstances change – of (again hopefully) if things go better than expected!So much so, that for my website, I wanted it to have many different alternative views.And as it’s called 9th Dimension, I thought how about having 9 different versions of it’s presentation, which will nicely demonstrate 9 different sides of my designing approaches, but still keep the content of it the same to show how say a client’s website can be developed so as to be easily modified in the future. Or, that they have a current website and want it to be modernised. And just as importantly, how great technologies such as Flash and iPhones can be accomodated.

The idea for the ‘content stays the same, but the design can be very different’ comes from the excellent website and companion book www.csszengarden.comThis site was a revelation to me as it really brought home the power of ’standards based’ XHMTL websites when combined with a seperate CSS Style sheet. In a bit of an oversimplified way, all you need to do to change your website is simply change the stylesheet and ‘voila’ your whole website is instantly revamped!It’s a little more complex than that, as the csszengarden’s elements are HUGELY over ID tagged, which means that it is so very possible to change all it’s features for all the many designers to help illustrate the power of CSS when combined with XHTML. But the reality is websites aren’t tagged to such an extent as this causes the page to bloat, and makes a site that are considerably bigger (csszendgarden is really just on single XHTML page with lots of style sheets) cumbersome to develop/maintain.

But, a middle ground I think is really interesting, as say, when I am putting together a new site, if the client likes where I’m going, but would also like to try some other ideas, we can make CSS mock ups and see if those are preferable.

Another could be, the site has been up for a while, and a fresh new layout to reflect a new product launch or maybe to do with seasonal themes such as Xmas is needed.This would also be combined, with content editing too, but, yeh, I really love the idea that a site has the power to be re-invented if it’s designed right in the first place.All basic stuff for web devlopers, but this blog is aimed at everyone, including my clients, and explaining these things is good for them and for me.

So, yeh. 9th Dimension is an ongoing new project, all be it in based on decades of creativity and work and play!I have one client at the moment, EBS Digital Media. I’ve done a *lot* of work for them in the past 14 months, mainly ebooks using InDesign but also a couple of websites (including their maine one) and a hell of a lot of adverts, and look set to be doing more.

But I am very much keen to now set sail on my own course and onto other kinds of projects, which will be a hopefully welcome mixture of new challenges, new intersting people, be able to use many more of my talents and interests, learn new skills, polish up some old ones I hadn’t used in a while before – and very importantly bring in new income!On my check list once I’ve finished my website is to explore WordPress much more, find what makes it tick, explore some of the zillions of blogs on here, meet some new people, forge some new partnerships and, most importantly, bring 9th Dimension to life.

One thing I also want to talk document somewhat in my blog is the reality of launching a new venture in a world ecconomic climate that is in meltdown. The news is grim, and predictions are even grimmer! But I truly feel that the web is going to be of great help to everyone in the next few years – much more than ever before. There are new technologies coming out all the time. The old technologies are ever improving, and the way people are thinking and behaving I think is changing for the better. People are much less wasteful and concerned and aware about the environment, and I think offering new services and information via the web is set to help not only bring people even closer together, but give a lifeline to those businesses who are willing/see they have to change to compete and even survive.

I am very much aware that my business is ‘one of those businesses’, so this blog will be interesting as I am pretty much launching it in the worst possible of all times.But that very nature of it’s ‘Newness’ I hope will give me a good fighting chance to shine and be of help to people, and them to me One other aspect of 9th Dimension I just want to mention in closing is, I want it to be always moving a going forwards. I truly believe that every day we are different in some ways. I’m constantly learning new skills, having new thoughts and ideas, re-thinking and re-evaluating old ideas.I am not really intending this blog to represnt much of my personal life (tbh I’ll see how it goes), but all of my life, especially the last 5 years have been ones of dramatic change. So for me, this project is one of growth, research, relfection, and ultimately perfection in the aesthetic of Creation.

Such as – this blog wasn’t here until an hour ago, and it too will be a nice metaphor for myself and my little company.

A company admitedly of one person – but one with a lot of wonderful links to other creative individuals and companies, and one that I want to expand quality links to also.I’m going to end this here as I want to get on with the site.

But I’ll finish with this fantasticly inspirational manfiesto for being creative (and how to reconcile/combine that with earning a living in the ‘real world’) that I saw recommended on a message board. It’s a long but worthwhile read, and one in which really helped me clarify and crystalis a few things about my creative endeavours over the years, and how to make a much more productive impact with those in the future – and again, one in which ecconomic times are all off the scale in terms of uncertainty.

Thanks for readingJane Dalton

Tags: Web Design
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