Martin's blog

As a Creative Consultant, it can be nearly impossible to explain to people exactly what I do. I am a bit of a jack of all trades, as you can hopefully see from my portfolio, but one of my biggest problems is that my main area of training and work is Motion Design. The problem with this is that nobody ever knows what Motion Design is and, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I have a definition either. So thank the internet gods for providing this video aimed at informing people about Motion Design.

I'm busy as usual, but I just wanted to log on and post a quick blog to let everyone know I'm still alive. I've noticed I've been getting quite a few hits on my site recently, especially in Manchester (London's in second place at the moment so, if you live down there, you need to get your game on), and I wouldn't want people thinking I was getting lazy.

Wow, it's been over a month since my last post. That's bad blogging. In my defense, it has been a busy month though. I moved house from Liverpool to the Wirral. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been thinking about moving back down to London to find work. Whilst I still think there are plenty of opportunities in London, I also want to keep myself open to opportunities elsewhere. To avoid tying myself down to a new tenancy agreement, I've swallowed my pride and moved back into my parents' house for a while.

I've been pretty slack with blog posts recently but I just wanted to let people know I'm still here. Basically, the day after my last blog post, I found out that I would have to move out of my current house. This has triggered a series of events that have led me to the decision to move back down south to London. Obviously I can't just simply up and leave and so I've been looking at various options available to me, including taking a full-time position in the city. I've applied to a couple of places and even had an interview earlier this week.

… Research. Research is the key to good writing, knowing your subject, and with that in mind I’ve been spending a lot of time on the internet over the past few days researching various subjects for my latest personal project.

Not long ago, I was talking to a friend about keeping people motivated at work. You may have read one of my previous posts referencing Dan Pink, his ideas about the ineffectiveness of incentives and the alterative of offering employees autonomy and purpose. My friend said something that stuck in my head; he suggested that, in the end, the only way he could be happy and have autonomy and purpose in his working life was to simply run his own company.

“Why” is possibly the greatest word in the English language; a word that should be used at least once every day. So many problems can be solved by simply asking “Why are you doing that?”, “Why is that the way to do it?”, or any number of whys. I always loved the story that director Robert Rodriguez tells when talking about how long it takes people to question tradition.

The story goes that a young woman was preparing a dinner when her husband asks her “Why do you cut the ends off the ham before you bake it? It seems wasteful.”

How much money is an idea worth? I’m not going to beat around the bush here; the answer is “no pounds and zero pence”. An idea alone won’t make you any money and I’d be surprised if anyone ever actually bought an idea. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t make $12.5 Billon by having an idea for a social networking site; he got that money by being the person to actually create Facebook. How often have you heard someone say “That’s dumb; I could have though of that” or even “I came up with that idea years ago” swiftly followed by “I just didn’t bother to do it”. An idea on its own is worthless.

I just finished watching this talk on how games coud very well end up affecting every aspect of our lives. It's a bit silly, a bit scary, and possibly a little bit inspiring. It's quite long, so I won't consider this one essential viewing; I just thought some people might find it interesting.

I recently started playing a game called Dragon Age: Origins. Those of you who know what that is can offer their condolences to my family and friends in the comments section. For those of you who don’t know about the game: Dragon Age is a type of game known as a role-playing game or RPG. Playing an RPG is a bit like having a second life, where your character learns and develops various skills as you play. Each action you do earns you a certain number of experience points (XP) that will be added to your character’s overall experience, eventually allowing you to ‘level up’.