I’m not quite sure where the time has gone, a lot has happened since then. My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer early in the year and beat it like I knew she would. I’ve moved in with my lovely girlfriend who has been nothing but patient with me and my anti social work hours.

Starting out I had to set up a client base from scratch. Being frightened of not earning enough money for rent each month took its toll. I took on too much work at times and exhausted myself working late nights and early mornings. I gained two stone! Before being self-employed I played football weekly and jogged quite a bit but because of injuries and work commitments I had to stop playing. This resulted in me gaining weight and feeling pretty crappy in myself. After reading freelance articles from people with the same problem I decided to take action and fix myself (my body) I hired a private physio to fix my torn muscles and set about swimming 2/3 times weekly. Since then I am steadily losing any extra weight and have started to feel myself again.

I importantly learnt to prioritise my workflow. When I started out I would find myself checking emails most of the day and taking phone calls. This ate up my days work time very quickly, now I check emails once in the morning at lunch then in the evening. Allowing me to work without distractions breaking into the creativity. I created my own visual task system as I found online task systems just didn’t work for me. You can read more about that here » Why a visual task system has proven so productive

When leaving my last job I created the site Needstyle which I used as my freelance site. I found however the largest searched keywords for Needstyle were ‘Harry Ford’. Realising that my clients or prospect clients were searching for me individually helped me change my mind and move over to harryford.co.uk and away from the agency sounding Needstyle. After all it’s me as an individual that the client wants to work with for the re-design or branding of their website/app.

As a creative I find myself coming up with my own ideas for sites and applications all the time. Sparing time to work on these is hard but it is vital to work on them if you want them to become a reality. I am in the process of building Duuel.com which already has well over a thousand beta members listed, not bad for a still pretty unknown idea. I have just finished the first stage of my idea Rememberthewar.com along side Phil Ricketts which has been a great success and so far very well received. I am in the process of designing a Mac app called Invoicebox which I would like to get finished and in the app store early 2012.

When starting out I didn’t have the time or the funds to spare to go to events, well this is what I thought. I actually made the mistake of not socialising enough which was never a problem of mine previously! After attending a few local events including the Sushiworks launch party and the monthly meets generously hosted by Kyan I found my work load increasing and the type of client projects improving.

Prepare to Activate was one of the best events I’ve been to this year. If your a lone freelancer like me or a web company it was fantastic day out. Hosted by the guys at Decode and Elliot Jay Stocks it was by far the friendliest web event I have been to, meeting far more designers and developers than ever before. I highly recommend it for 2012. I even met Phil Ricketts there who I have worked with on Rememberthewar and even some client projects.

One thing I have only just realised is the importance of this blog, other than Twitter and Dribbble it is the only way I can connect online with like-minded professionals. Since blogging more in recent months Fordoing’s traffic has more than quadrupled, at one point hitting 7000 unique hits in a day, with the help of some social sites mind. The more work or time you put into something the more you will eventually get out it’s the same with a blog or a personal project.

Just like to say a big thanks to all that have followed me over the last year it has been awesome making so many new friends and I hope to make many more. May see some of you at New Adventures of Web Design in January?

Other than design, I have always been extremely interested in world history. When looking for anything historical on the web, I found every site I visited to be a bad experience, nothing inspired me to read more deeply into a whole history of a war, a battle or historical event. With this in mind I contacted a friend, Phil Ricketts, with my idea and he instantly said yes.

I would like to bring history on the web into the 21st Century by making historical events such as World War II into an experience and not only a list of historical dates and figures.

By using the latest web technologies we can do pretty much anything on the web so Phil and I are launching an educational World War II website on November the 11th (just before Remembrance Day) called Remember the War. I am also currently looking into having the site featured on some blogs and hopefully even a few newspapers around November the 11th. We hope by featuring the site in certain papers and blogs it will go viral and hopefully spread worldwide.

We have already been offered hosting from several very generous companies which we are now testing. What we do need now however is a little money to help us purchase the photographs used throughout our sites experience. This is where we need your help. Me and Phil are self employed and haven’t the funds to purchase the quality photography required for the standard of experience we are aiming for.

What we are looking for now is some financial sponsorship. If you wish to donate a smaller amount we accept donations from £10 which will get your name and link credited on the Remember The War Sponsor page. Alternatively if you wish to donate a larger amount of £100+ we will make you a featured Sponsor of Remember the War on the sites front page including a logo.

The amount we are looking to raise in the next few days is £1000, this will buy us the photography we need for two years.

I hope you can see the potential in our project as much as we can. If you would like to get involved and sponsor Remember the War please get in touch with me and Phil at: hello@rememberthewar.com. Or you can donate direct from Remember the War.

Any surplus money made beyond our target amount will be donated to the charity Help for Heroes.

Below I have a little sneak peak of the design, I don’t want to give away too much right now but if you are interested in sponsoring us I would be willing to show you more.

Select the main focus

Duplicate the photograph layer and by using your favored selection tool  or as I have done it below carefully erase  around the portion of the image which will not have motion blur.

Cloning the background

On the orignal background using the ‘Clone Stamp Tool’  clone away a portion of the subject all around its edges. Don’t worry about being too neat as the rest of the process will obscure it. This will ensure that portions of the subject don’t bleed into the background when the motion blur is applied.

Time to apply the motion blur

{FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR}

I used a setting of 0′ angle and 60 pixels in length for this photograph have a play to see what looks best for your photograph.

Add motion blur

Now make visible your hidden subject back on top of the blurred background.

 Touching up the transition area

Merge your background and focus layers and touch up the area between the subject and the blurred background with the blur tool . This will help reduce the sharpness of the transition.

Photo by Guerito

Big thanks everyone who entered our photo manipulation competition it was in the end a close run thing with Chantelle Barnard-Ranch coming in second with 30 votes and Damian Hughes winning with his Medieval castle entry with 31 votes.

Chantelle Barnard-Rance

Original Photograph

1. Jadah Williams

2. Naomi Kent

3. Leigh Hoyte

4. Michael Leeson

5. Joy Fortuna

6. Damian Hughes

7. Chantelle Barnard-Rance

8. Phil South

9. Emma Carr

10. James Gregory

Each website or application I used seemed to just build on my hatred towards all online task management systems.  Eventually I’d had enough, so came up with a solution for managing tasks that is best for the way I work. It’s not a fancy website or application that requires to signup and pay yet another subscription fee, instead it goes back to basics; a whiteboard and some post-it notes.

It is true what they say ‘out of sight is out of mind’. I needed something that was visually available 24/7,  so I purchased a cheap whiteboard just big enough to fit on the wall right next to my desk where it couldn’t be missed. The board is split into four sections; Backburner, To Do, Actions and Payments and use different coloured post-it notes for the various types of action, foe example Blue: Client task, Yellow: Personal task, Pink: Notes or Shopping Orders, Green: Meetings & Events.

Backburner: For  tasks awaiting quote confirmation or personal projects and tasks that are your least important.

To do: Tasks that are next in line for me to complete

Actions: My current actions, my tasks for the day ahead. Be it a design task or a meeting at 4pm in London they all go into my actions for the day.

Payments: Last of all payments, once I have completed a task I move it over to payments with a completion date written on the post-it. Ready for my invoice to be sent out.

This visual task system may not be for everyone but it has helped improve my day to day productivity since working for myself, as I am reminded to update it daily unlike all the online task systems I have not enjoyed using.

Dleoblack

Maebara Keichi

Jonas De Ro

Grzegorz Rutkowski

Kerem Beyit

NJay

Therese Larsson - *Fordoing favourite of the week*