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Jake Howe - Graphic Designer, Photographer and Maker

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12th March 2017 by Jake Howe (0)

Fidget Box

Every creative person needs time to think, a common trait of this is to fidget with random things that have made it onto your desk. Rather than try and find a shelf or place for these to go, they tend to just live on my desk for when they are needed.

I do keep them in a little box when they get in the way though.

So far I have;

  • A little Inception inspired spinning top from Forever Spin.
  • A metal thimble, I think this may belong to my wife, I use it when sewing leather too.
  • A bit of sea glass, I love sea glass, I painted this little bit pink.
  • An original mouse ball, from back when mice use balls. A satisfyingly heavy bit of metal coated in rubber.

There are often other things that make it onto my desk, but these are the regular visitors. I will try and keep this updated with any new ones that come along.

FidgetBox

12th March 2017 by Jake Howe (0)

Cable Tennis Balls

This is a pretty popular ‘life hack’ that is always making the rounds on Pinterest. I decided to give it a go by bolting some tennis balls I had left over from another project onto my shelves.

I use one of them for headphones (which works a treat). Then the other one holds all my ‘to go’ cables that I might need to grab when heading out.

Cables

12th March 2017 by Jake Howe (0)

Keeping my desk free of cables

Well. Cable management is likely my biggest hate. If I could live in a world without any cables at all I would be a happy man. However in this line of work I really need various bits and pieces all that come with their own cables.

A while back I implemented a way of storing some of that stuff out of sight, but right at hand.

Over the years I have collected a couple of old iMac stands, one pulls duty as a laptop riser, the other I adapted to work with my monitor.

desk1DeskCables

 

 

 

 

 

The second thing I use is this great double sided tape, its a thick gel like tape thats pretty strong, but can be removed fairly easily without leaving any marks behind. I used this to attach my USB hub, the screens power pack (In a more sensible place) along with a SD card read and a DVD drive.

desk4

I use a mixture of RapStraps and velcro ties to tidy up the cables. It’s still not perfect, but its a lot better, with most of the hard drives I need kept off my desk. Overall it works a treat. I have a few other bits hidden away underneath my desk, like my subwoofer for my speaks and a back up drive.

desk3

 

 

17th February 2016 by Jake Howe (0)

Easily displaying your work and inspirations.

I wanted an easy way to display both stuff I have worked on, plus inspiration items like posters. This is a new take on the favourite of using bulldog clips to display work.

I picked up these pretty cheap trouser hangers, with nice metal clips on. Nice and easy to displaying items. You can even attach stuff back to back, then flip them around occasionally.

I plan to get some of my portraits printed out to display too.

The entire idea behind these is about just quickly changing and displaying stuff, almost on a whim, depending on current projects and moods.

You can see some of the flyers I did for WIRED Cafe Bar featured, along side a poster I picked up at Format Festival last year.

4th February 2016 by Jake Howe (0)

An array of writing sticks

A little visual rundown of all the pens I use. Some of these are used daily, others only come out on rare occasions. I have a draw full of other ones, but these are the favourites.

Also included are a few others bits like rulers, scissors, tweezers and my pointer metal thing, which is used for all sorts from opening letters to prying things open.

Pens2

Pens1

 

19th January 2016 by Jake Howe (0)

Say hello to my Pet Marimo

Of course the internet loves to refer to them as ‘Pets’ but really they are just a plant. However it is easy to see why so many people fall in love with these little fluffy things.

Marimo3

While commonly referred to as ‘moss balls’ they are actually a type of algae. They obtain their ball form by the movement of the waves. When I first started working for myself I bought myself some lucky bamboo to have on my desk (I very much recommend them as a ‘my first desk plant’). 5 years later I have a second bamboo and the original one is still doing fine.

Marimo7

I decided the bamboo needed a friend so set about making a terrarium, which didn’t do very well. It was then that I stumbled across the Marimo, which turn out to be as easy to look after as the Lucky Bamboo.

I had this perfect piece of old chemistry glass which is basically ideal for the Marimo to live in. I popped a few stones in for decoration, but the Marimo doesn’t need them.

Marimo5

The best bit is, the place I ordered mine from gave me a little baby Marimo as well.

Marimo4

 

12th January 2016 by Jake Howe (1)

My Little Pink Mechanical Keyboard

I thought I would start giving you all little tidbit tours of various parts of my working day. Primarily focused around how and where I work. First up is a fairly recent addition, a new mechanical keyboard.

I don’t want to get too technical, but let me tell you a little about mechanical keyboards. They come in a whole range of different sizes, but their primary difference from a normal keyboard is that each key has a little switch underneath. In my case Cherry MX Blues (No, they don’t make a MX Pink).

The next difference is that a lot of these boards are somewhat niche, while there are mainstream options from brands like Razer and Corsair, a lot of these keyboards are small runs and group buys. In my case the Vortex Poker I have is designed/made by a forum of keyboard enthusiasts. However there are no end of smaller group buys and one off builds. All of this is to get a layout that suits each individual. In my case its a super compact layout a ‘60%’ keyboard

Mech1

You may think its missing some important keys like for example the arrow keys (which are a staple for any designer when it comes to nudging and moving around objects. However all these keys are actually hidden on a function layer. It basically means I press and hold a key (In my case the caps lock) then I have a whole keyboard of extra keys to play with.

While this way of operating may seem a little odd, my left hand is always hovering over the keyboard to hit modifiers and short cuts. The overall advantage is that my hands are always in the same position over the keyboard, rather than shifting my right hand between 3 or 4 positions, I just have two, on my mouse or on my keyboard.

Another difference is a lot of these keyboards are programmable, which means you can reassign keys to do different things. Including swapping around modifiers between OSs. Different keyboards have different levels of programmability, some via software, some you can just program by mashing keys

The final difference is that you can customise different parts of the keyboard. You have a range of different switches, then you can change the key caps to something custom, with a whole world of different colours and fonts to choose from. The 60% size has a somewhat common spec, which means you have a choice of cases, wooden, plastic, or in my case aluminium

Mech3

2nd June 2015 by Jake Howe (0)

My new desk lamp.

My uncle gave me this old vintage photo beauty dish. It just so happens to make for a perfect stylish desk lamp.

I replaced the electronics and fitted it with a modern energy efficient bulb. It still works as an excellent beauty dish though and I have used it for a few portraits, including the one below.

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