Oh dear. I’ve been carefully nurturing this old career of mine for a while now, and the first time I manage to get published in the illustrious Design Week, it’s some nonsense about seat patterns…

Bit strange really. I only idly commented on their blog a while ago, I had no idea they were going to put me into print. It hasn’t done my charisma any good amongst prospective employers or university contemporaries, but at least I got a juicy big link to this site…

My Virgin Trains face has been blogged on Faces in Places, the found faces blog.

There are lots of great examples on the site, check it out, as well as the accompanying group on Flickr.

I’ve been collecting these found faces for a while now, and am planning to do something with the pictures soon, so keep an eye out.

You can find my other faces here…

Good question…

There are 3 reasons actually:

1. To show a little more of my personality online.
The site was originally intended as a simple portfolio with the obligatory ‘about me’ and ‘contact’ pages, but the addition of a blog element to the site gives me the opportunity to reveal a little more of my personality, so prospective employers or freelance clients to ‘know what they’re getting’. I hope it will show me as a creatively motivated person and that it will act as a kind of filtration mechanism when it comes to enquiries. I often find and read great stuff online and I’d like to share things with other people.

2. To get noticed.
OK, so a little part of me wants to be higher up the Google rankings, and so a blog is a great way to get a lot of links and keywords on the site. Hopefully after a while the sum of the site content will build a representative picture of me and I’ll see a rise in visits and link up with interesting and like minded people. RSS feeds and interesting content can help me draw people in too.

3. To learn about how they work and are put together.
I’ve chosen WordPress to run my blog, but I’ve also decided to use it as a CMS for the entire site. I’m treating it as a learning experience and I hope to progress in my understanding of web development, as well as being able to offer similar solutions to my clients. WordPress is a powerful tool and I’m looking forward to getting to grips with it.

4. To let friends and family see what I’m up to.
I live away from most of my family and friends, so a participatory blog and website is a good way to stay in touch. They can see what I’m writing about and use the feeds etc to monitor changes. I’ll be plugging in to sites like Flickr, Facebook and last.fm, so there will hopefully be a strong social aspect to the site.

Of course, I haven’t yet worked out if I’ve actually got anything to say worth reading, which is the main thing if I’m writing a blog. Let’s just see how it works out…

Cartoon from www.gapingvoid.com