Finnberry does Ed-Tech

Finding inspiration When I started playing with Illustrator, a few weeks ago, I saw the kind of amazing art work that could be created, but wasn't inspired enough to produce something beautiful and colourful. Instead, like many designers, I found inspiration in something that already existed... existed in a form that I think lacked function. I really don't like the icon/symbol that represents disability - the wheelchair icon. It's technically a black line icon but what I see is a grey NHS wheelchair with big rubber wheels and casters, that is terribly heavy. So that inspired me to create new disability icons, that represent a different view of disability. I wanted my icons to represent capability and activity in a wheelchair... for the wheelchair to be a positive symbol, rather than a symbol of pity. And so, you may remember, I created this... Connections Of course, even though the current wheelchair icon doesn't actually look like a real wheelchair, we se...

If you've been following my blog, you'll already know that I recently acquired Adobe Creative Cloud. I'll be honest, even the name 'Illustrator' turned me right off. I am notoriously bad at art. Many years ago, when I was a childminder, I would draw basic shapes - stick men, house, tree - and small children would screw their faces up, look utterly baffled and exclaim, "What is it?" Illustrating is never going to be my forte! I'm not being negative. I just can't draw, or paint, or do many things that are arty farty. What I can do, is use a computer and learn to use new software. So I decided to find out whether Illustrator could maybe bridge the gap for me... give me some artistic skills that are otherwise lacking. And I was pleasantly surprised! The first surprise was that, for the first time in my life, I found myself enjoying art. My last art lesson (at age 13) was marked by the teacher, who may have been a trifle drunk (this was the 1980s)...