damien aistrope — digital design and development

students guide
Thursday 9th February 2012

Had a brilliant time last night at Infront Presents at the Apple Store Sydney as part of their 'Back To University' month with 'A Students Guide To Working In The Creative Industry'. This was my first big speaking event for the year so I was quite nervous (you can see how big the crowd was) but my lovely panel helped me ease into it all and we had a cracking event. Massive thanks as always to Bree, Nick and Sonia at Apple and also Chris, Pip and Jon who made the event what it was. For some more photos head on over to my Facebook page here.

build
Monday 6th February 2012

I've been doing quite a bit of architectural builds of late (websites that is, not real buildings) including LAVA (Toko), WMK and Futurespace (THERE). Interesting navigational systems in these three worth taking a look through. Image credit goes to the talented folk at LAVA.

this summer
Monday 30th January 2012

I normally dislike January. Work dries up, people are having fun while I'm stuck behind a desk and bills very rarely get paid. Not this year, no siree! New projects are underway for AIAIAI, Dinosaur Designs, Jacky Winter, Miss Gertrude, Gary Galego and a bunch more. Now if only the sun would come out...

talking
Saturday 14th January 2012

Happy new year! Hope you had a wonderful break and are getting back into the swing of things.

Every year I try and give myself a few personal goals, some I stick with and others, well... let's try and stay positive here.

After a year of getting other people to talk on my behalf for Australian Infront I figured it was time I stepped up to the plate. I get asked quite a bit to do public speaking engagements but nerves get the better of me and I decline - not 2012. Starting in February 8th I will be moderating a panel of talented individuals at the Apple store in Sydney on the topic 'A Students Guide To Working In The Creative Industry'. In May I will be heading to the Gold Coast to speak on behalf of DIA around the topic of self promotion at DIAlogues and then over to the Sunshine Coast for a brilliant creative conference by the name of Analogue/Digital.

I've still got plenty of time to practice in front of a mirror so wish me well and I will post more details closer to the dates.

vince frost
Sunday 25th September 2011

This week sees the legendary Vince Frost speak at the Apple store in Sydney on behalf of Australian Infront. It's a free event as always and a bit of a rarity for Vince to be speaking in person so it's well worth getting along this Wednesday the 28th from 6.30pm to see him in action. You can RSVP on the Facebook event page here. Come along to Grasshopper afterwards for drinks too. Great chance to have a beer or two with some of Australia's finest creatives.

mix
Wednesday 21st September 2011

In the interests of self interest I have started a small project uploading a new track getting heavy rotation in my studio each day at mix.aistrope.com. Music is a huge part of my day in the office so it makes sense to share the best bits with you. You can also get a bit stalkerish at my last.fm profile too.

Image courtesy of my good friends at AIAIAI. The TMA1's are some of the best headphones I have ever owned, they are also a sponsor of many Australian Infront events. Go support them.

new clients, new work
Monday 15th August 2011

Looking forward to starting work with Australia's premier illustration agency (my words, not theirs) Jacky Winter Group on a number of new projects. Work has also begun on a new website for DEMO magazine, a beatifully designed broadsheet music magazine by Moffitt.Moffitt set to be launched in September.

sebastian chan
Friday 5th August 2011

Next in the series of Insight talks at the Apple store is Sebastian Chan, Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies department at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, longstanding DJ, creator of Cyclic Defrost and much more. Seb will be speaking on ‘Interacting With The Past: Museums For The Next Generation’. I've been following Seb's career since the very early 90's, first as a teenage raver in love with electronic music right through to now as someone who admires the great advances he is making with technology in an educational realm. It's taking place this month on Wednesday the 31st of August at the Apple store in Sydney. Get full details here. Seb is a truly inspirational speaker, hope to see you there.

new monster children
Monday 1st August 2011

New version of Monster Children is now live. This is now the third incarnation I have produced for the guys since 2006 which is pretty cool to still look after them after all this time. Apart from just being a standard refresh the guys wanted it to be much easier to update to give the site more activity. In fact, the brief was to make it as easy as Facebook (as that is where Campbell seems to spend most of his time). We built a front end CMS that does just that for their news content, they can jump in and in a few simple fields have the ability to post content within seconds. This was a custom module developed for the Silverstripe platform that also includes the ability to edit or make feature of other contributors posts on the front end. The team still does have the ability to manage everything in the traditional CMS that Silverstripe provides including another custom shopping cart module to bring everything over to just the one admin system. Take a look at the new site here. Lots of other neat features to be found: http://www.monsterchildren.com