This month I have had one designer (Daniel) in Berlin and one on extended holiday in the US (Barney) both still available and rearing to go. I work from home on occasion so interacting with them on IM (instant messenger) is no big deal but when you go days without bumping into them in the office whilst projects chug along towards completion it starts to sink in that you are actually collaborating across the globe. When the people you are collaborating with usually sit a metre from you this is even more evident.
An interestting by-product of Chameleon Net 'Global' is working with international time differences with Barney in the US being able to come online around 4pm and work on our EDF energy Rugby World Cup website through our night. This means final artwork is available for me the next morning. It's almost like taking shifts to progress the design continuously.
What does get lost (and the reason that we still need to work together in a single space the majority of the time) is our ability to stand around a table with some magazines and blank paper, and brainstorm creative concepts - quickly sketching them out before whittling the mass of crayon covered paper down to a few strong ideas from which design work 'proper' can begin (you know - using all that technology). I find myself scanning in hand drawn sketches from sessions with the remaining office bound designers and emailing them to the external creative team in order to keep that 'process' alive...it may not be completely necessary but I'm trying to keep the 'spontaneity' of the creative process alive wherever possible.
When one of the team IM'd me describing his current working solution - "my Mac is running a virtual copy of windows, checking out files on subversion and tunnelling into Chameleon Net with an SVN client" I realised that technology truly does liberate us - not only in the ways we approach the design process; but from the confines of the office environment, or at least the 22 year old designers that understand exactly what all that means (and of course how to configure it).
Me? I think the Etch a Sketch was a key mechanism in pulling me toward creative pursuits (that and of course, Lego). It's simplicity is what makes it so flexible and ultimately inspired the user to devise creative ways to extract the image they wanted. This need to adapt to the parameters within which you are required to work and yet still derive the desired aesthetic is fundamental to our creative work. To that end I am currently biding on Ebay for an original model Etch a Sketch, from the US. Once won (I'm nothing if not confident) said item will be paid for using Paypal and shipped via FedEx ( who will SMS me when it hits English soil ). Yes...it truly is a return to simpler times.