Plans for Twenty Twelve

January 2nd, 2012

Last year was the first time I had written a list of new year’s resolutions for myself, mainly aimed at my goals for work, but also taking in family and personal goals. Last week a wrote a review of that list, I did OK, but not brilliantly. I definitely over reached, wanting to do too much – taking on both more client work and doing more personal projects. So this year will be a little different.

Over the last 12 months I’ve had a variety of challenging projects — challenging clients too — I managed to attract more projects than the previous 12 months, which was good, but that stopped me from working on my own projects, Worm Sign T-Shirts stagnated and Nifte.es didn’t even get off the ground – which was really disappointing.

So this year, I’ve decided to take a year off from inviting any new client work. I’ll still be working with a couple of existing clients on their new projects throughout the year, but I’m hoping only working on a few jobs will clear the way for me to really concentrate on my personal projects. I’m fortunate to have a part-time job in a print studio that means my freelance work isn’t a financial necessity, but that work in 2011 occupied more time than it was sometimes worth.

So far this post is lacking in a list, every good blog posts needs a list, so here goes. This is what I’ll be wanting to achieve in 2012.

The Work List

• A rebrand a relaunch of Worm Sign T-Shirts. I’ve already started the ball rolling on this and I’m aiming to get the new website online in early April – which will be Worm Sign’s third birthday!
• Design and develop a number of WordPress themes. I’ve nearly finished my first one and I’ve leant so much, building a theme for anyone to download and use is so different to how I usually work – building a theme for a specific website, for a single client to use. This will definitely help me learn more about WordPress throughout the year and make me a better WP developer for future work.
• Produce 6 – 8 more DJ mixes for my Musical Rant blog. I’m really happy with the quality of the mixes I started releasing towards the end of 2011 and I want to keep that up.
• Continue with my alternative movie posters. When we moved into our new house, I gained a study and wanted some prints to hang, I couldn’t find any I wanted – so I made my own. It’s not an original idea, I’ve always loved other people’s alternative / minimal movie posters and I’m really happy with the first two I did (Inception and (500) Days of Summer), so I’ll be doing more throughout the year and putting them up on Society6.com to sell.
• Learn and write more. I think every designer / developer adds this to their list – so why should I be any different? I will definitely aim to blog more on the things I’m currently working on. And I really want to get into HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery – I’ve only touched on these briefly and I’m starting to feel like I’m getting left behind.
• Network & Socialise. This could of gone on to either list, but seeing as my initial efforts at networking with other local designers and developers have been through social means. I attended the monthly Colchester Digital meetup during the last half of 2011 – which has been great, and I also met up with a handful of other Essex freelancers for a Christmas dinner a few weeks ago (which was also great). But I’d like to do a little bit more, maybe some working collaborations, or maybe even a conference. We’ll see!

Personal Stuff

• Go to the cinema more. We used to go once or twice a week before Finley was born, it’s been much harder since for obvious reasons, but this year the grandparents offers of baby sitting will be taken advantage of for — hopefully — more regular trips.
• Do more activities with Finley on my days with him during the week. He’ll be two this year, so I’m looking forward to doing more ‘stuff’ together – especially during the summer.
• Take more / better photographs and videos. This was on last year’s list and it’s going on again this year. I’ve now produced 18 monthly highlight videos and to be honest, the last couple have dipped in quality, I’m hoping the purchase of an iPhone 4s within the next couple of months will increase my footage taking and make producing the highlight videos a little easier.
• Continue the digital switch over. All our DVDs and all my CD based music is now in digital form and I now only purchase film and music digitally – which has been great. But there is still the issue of my vinyl collection. Maybe this is the year I’ll (start to) digitise it?

So there you have it, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. I’m really looking forward to 2012 and the plans I’ve got. If you’d like to stay in touch with my progress, the easiest way is to follow me on Twitter, @martinlucas.

Tags: 2012, alternative film posters, alternative movie posters, hopes and dreams, house music, new years resolutions, tshirts, twenty twelve, wordpress