Well it’s 2007 and Facing Sideways is nearly one year old, who’d a thunk it would have lasted this long? Being the first day of the new year, it’s a traditional activity to reflect upon the year gone by and make resolutions for the brand new one. My usual New Year resolutions consist of the old standbys, lose weight, spend time with the people that really matter, remember to always wear pants in public, the stuff everyone promises but breaks before January 30th. 2006 was definitely a year of contemplation and examination over my career as a designer, so as part of that ongoing examination (and fodder for this blog naturally!) I’m going to make some very design orientated resolutions for the new year that hopefully I will stick to.

Speak to more designers I’m going to try to speak to more people involved in design, from all experience levels. I really enjoyed talking to the designers that I did on my overseas trip (the interviews of those remaining will be up soon as they have checked over them). If you’re a designer at any level reading this, please feel free to contact me with any of your thoughts or comments, I’m interested to hear from you, except the spammer who keeps leaving comments trying to sell viagra, penile enlargement and hot lesbian love – I’m sorted in all those areas, thanks all the same, so you can go and fuck off now please.

Be more flexible When it comes to designing outside of my 9-5 job, I’ve always been a little headstrong about how I design in my so called ‘off hours’. I’m going to try to listen a bit more and take the clients point of view into more consideration than I may have previously. On the same score, I’m also going to be a lot more picky about he jobs I take on in those ‘off hours’. I’ve been too much of a sucker for the ‘sob story’ and invested too much time in jobs that are neither financially or creatively satisfying for people I have no personal obligations to.

Write more I’m going to try and write more on the blog. I’ve been managing about 1-2 posts a week, I’d love to try and up that a bit, like everything you start, your interest wanes and increases in cycles, depending on various things. I’m surprised I’ve made it this far. I might try to broaden the range a bit as well to more design topics Australia and worldwide. I’d definitely like to do more designer interviews and studio reviews and definitely more personal opinion pieces.

Buy a laptop This year I’m going to bite the bullet and finally get myself a laptop. I’ve always thought of it as a wanky unnecessary item, but I think it will be a lot more convenient for my writing and presenting work.

Rejoin AGDA I have my problems with the set up of the Australian Graphic Design Association, which I hope to write about in the near future, but if I’m talking about the Australian design community, I should be a part of the national association dedicated to promoting it.

Learn Flash My multimedia skills are lacking at the moment, while my first love is print design, more and more of it is being translated onto the screen as people become comfortable with the online environment. One of the things I need to get my head around (at the very least) is a program like Flash.

Get my work out there It’s one thing to talk about design and the design of others, it’s another thing to put your money where your month is and demonstrate some of your own, whether I’m going to put more of my work up on the blog is debatable. I never really wanted it to be a site to promote me as the designer, I’m definitely looking at putting up my own portfolio site though.

Don’t sweat the small stuff This is a pretty universal promise, some things just aren’t worth losing sleep over.

So there you have it, my design resolutions for 2007, well see how I went same time next year.