The Brilliant creative team blog

I have been forwarded an interesting interview with Gerry McGovern hosted on the American Express Open Forum entitled ?Why websites suck?

Gerry is regarded as the worldwide authority on increasing web satisfaction by managing customer tasks since 1994. He talks about a websites ?top task? and customer satisfaction with web design being created around the consumer.

He brings to light some good tips to remember when confronted with a website GUI job, some reflections that I thought were obvious and a view on the graphical appearance of a website that I completely disagree with.

View the article here

Having worked with macs for well over 10 years you cannot imagine the joy I felt when Apple released the "Mighty Mouse" and I got my hands on one back in 2006, a nicely designed, usable mouse that had enough functionality to control major tasks just with the buttons on the side of the mouse + it had a scroll ball!

My enjoyment for the product quickly faded as I realised the side buttons became a hindrance more than helpful and the scroll ball was about as reliable as a tabloid horoscope, so far I have broken three or rather, I have had three of these that have broken just through light use.

Now Apple have brought out their "Magic Mouse", a fantastic little piece of kit that is intuitive and dynamic with its Multi-Touch technology. The major factor for me is that its design is more streamlined than the previous giving a more natural feel and less strain on your wrist as well as the removal of the scroll ball. Every action is done by a click or a gesture, to scroll or swipe you simply gesture over the mouse as you would with the Macbook or iPhone.

Mine is currently in the post but I cant wait to see how long it takes me to break this one!

I have used a few tablets in my time and to be honest felt quite put off by them, to me they always felt unnatural, especially being so used to gaining the effects I needed with a mouse. There are many styles and techniques that just cannot be achieved with just the use of a mouse and so went out and bought myself the Wacom Intuos 4 A5 tablet.

Within moments of playing with it I felt a great sense of relief that I had not wasted my money on a cool looking but ultimately useless piece of kit. I have always been told that anyone who works with image editing, painting, or illustration software needs a Wacom tablet. Graphic designers, illustrators, visual effects artists; if you ever brush on a paint stroke, it?s seems ridiculous to use a mouse.

The pen/tablet interface makes painting and drawing much easier and faster. It?s more comfortable on your hand and, thanks to pressure sensitivity, more expressive especially within the fine details of a piece. Because the tablet can send pressure, tilt, and bearing information to the computer, you can create calligraphic brush strokes, and other effects that work just like real tools. All this without clenching your hand into the tight little claw a mouse requires.

The Intuos 4 has a scroll wheel with a big button in the middle that?s called the TouchRing. Anyone who has ever picked up an iPod will identify with this feature straight away, it can control zoom, brush size, tilt and cycle through the layers palette, in the long run it will save you so much more time.

I am really impressed with how far drawing tablets have come since I first used one and although it will never eliminate the need for a mouse, its great to be able to pick it up and just draw!