beyond the fifth dime mention.......

The 'dime mention' pun begins to wear you down losing any initial impact, so to finish the above sentence:

beyond the fifth dime mention......you're floggin’ a dead horse. ...........Wasting your time........ milking it ......... burning bridges ....... it's run it's course.

Yes supporting the notion that all things have a shelf life, everything has it's time and you can eventually experience in real life some of the phrases your (grand)mother tried to teach you. The often slated 'stitch in time' or rolling stone' sayings and proverbs which were overlooked vehicles of wisdom to those of us previously too busy getting somewhere to actually bother with directions or a map.

A bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, making hay while the sun shines coupled with the myth that Solomon’s wisdom was based on his knowledge and application of apt proverbs for every situation totally reinforces Rumi's suggestion that understanding the word astronomy does not make you an astronomer.

Several developments are currently underway concerning dime that will take it into a different dimension of commercial reality – choices and decisions are now presenting, frankly……. I’m planning on being a bit wise about them.

The fourth dime mention

I’m sure you, like me, understand the importance and indeed necessity of friendship. My old friend Mal Duffin from Belfast has developed a really cool 3d learning tool for shockwave & director which you can check out here:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/director/articles/3d_in_30.html

I’ve known Mal for over ten years, very talented, driven yet someone who enjoys life to the full when the opportunity arises. He has worked smart for some of the best known companies in the world but for the past number of years he’s worked smartest in a company of which he is a significant shareholder – I suppose I’ve stolen back a leaf from Mal’s book in relation to dime maybe. One of my points is that, you need all of the three dimensions required to create something concrete but time is the essential ingredient in creating or developing anything of merit that will last, whether that’s test time, development time, certainly planning time, perhaps production time or even ‘face’ time as commercially focused people call it and you know IMHO friendship is really no different, if you want friendships to continue, grow or prosper, you need to put some time into them. Even the odd phonecall to a ginger git helps.

Thus there’s a whole ‘mix-em and gather em’ set of requirements to establish a successful business enterprise, a veritable potpourri of metrics, methods and management, the classic project management methodologies recognise, Time, Quality and Cost as thee controllable and interdependent outcomes, morale, drive, attachment, ownership, often get a mention but end up getting relegated to risk registers or change control systems – I can hear the artists and creatives screaming (in unison for once) with the programmers and techies – what about talent, foresight, flair, discipline, insight ?

Time will tell........

the turd dime mention ?

yes, quite an afternoon (& late evening) of discussion (& coffee & biscuits), with the principles of artistic endeavor colliding with common commercial sense, techno-geekery*, a white board that wouldn’t wipe, passion for design, disregard for GMT, and a self imposed deadline that was somehow met, all resulting in the creation of our new, multipurpose commercial logo for the company.

We’ve had the ‘25st century star trek’* jibes, and after googling late last night, it’s neither that on it’s side, nor ‘the distant cousin of the Daihatsu car logo’*, we’re sure that there must be something out there in some remote way similar to it but for now the dime brand is to be represented with the logo/icon pictured above.

Obviously the logo has gotta work for print, screen,(various devices) broadcast (when it’s sexed up in VFX), support the whole ‘duel’ ethos of the company and also just be damn clever in someway, without blatant overstatement. It began with several archetypal atom style designs / icons, they got worked up in flash8 as an outlines, got fiddled about with in fireworks and Photoshop CS, got a quick run in AE and premiere pro and back into flash for some animation and interactivity tests. Out of all of the designs sketched and produced on paper, when fired through the above process, ‘the icon of the half-atom’* won out.

Obviously I’m pretty happy with the progress made there, I feel that it expresses the idea that there’s more to dime (& indeed Life) than can be seen, it seems to work well in interactive mode, and it’s the letter ‘D’ ! So what’s not to like ? I'm positive the quality will be further enhanced when the time is found to render it out in 3DMax or Blender, that’s when the third dime mention challenge hits home, just hope the investors like it and none of them mention the bronze position.

Until tomorrow.......


*(touchy, over-sensitive designer descriptions)

the second dime - mention

Yes, absolutely no doubt that the third, fourth and fifth dime mentions will also be called upon to pun-ish readers of my dailydime blurt in the future. In the last week or two I've had a couple of phone calls from various people asking me when will I actually be doing something with this dime thing and what is it all about etc etc. One of my friends actually asked me to come and fix his homelan if I wasn't too busy - now there's a major misunderstanding for you.

The logo above comes from a discussion about the creation of the ATOM rss feed logo and in some ways, I imagined that using something in the same vein would be fairly cool for dime. ( you already knew/guessed that d.i.m.e. was an acronym for Dancing In Molecular Energy, right ?) Anyway while the design is really cool and the whole 'quantum mechanics buzz be with you' thing is going on, there's just too many of them - not atoms - logos that use the hydrogen atom or the lunar earth relationship scheme - used everywhere from travel agents to creche's. So unlike an encounter with the Borg, this specific idea will not add to our distinctiveness if used in it's current form. And I'm not taking about using the actual image above - as that has copyright - if you want to you can check out it's evolution here:
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/AtomArtwork

We need to come up with something original and functional that will support both - Dancing In Molecular energy and Digital Interactive Media Enterprises - so that's going to form part of discussions later today I would assume, how can we support the first aspect while also clearly representing the brand that creates, licenses, buys, co produces, digital media content and products in the commercial world

The whole second dime is the truly commercial aspect to the company, the element that will allow it to survive and prosper in the real material world , while also respecting the true ephemeral nature of material existence. It's getting harder and harder to get away from the atom style logo but one major drawback is that it's a lonely logo, just a couple of small spheres, pretty much out there on their own, so for that very reason we need to consider something else.

should make for an energetic discussion.

In the dark.......but the future is bright

Our new company has yet to publically launch our site or indeed the actual company into the commerical world - but since blogging is an essential opportunity to allow real people, both web vistors and those deemed 'potential' people, like poential employees/ customers/ partners/ investors, etc, to learn a little bit more about an individual (i.e. outside the standard sales spiels and marketing patter they must often adhere to under the guise of corporate communications) Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to set this blog up now before the official media/public launch of the company later this year. Obviously I'm as excited as a small child before christmas, but will maintain the exterior cool until we at least get out of the blocks.

This will also offer me the opportunity to document/blog and maybe even podcast some of the actual run up to that launch, it will be a while yet before I actually have a launch date so I won't begin with a t-minus countdown just yet..... I'll just literally keep you posted on any major developments and stuff.

You know, the theraputic aspect of blooging just doesn't receive enough publicity...... possibly because of the wee bit of html you need to know to get your templates and stuff sorted.

later ...well tomorrow PG.