I can do techie stuff (programming, configuring, debugging, fixing) fairly consistently. I have good and bad days, but I never get to work and discover I’ve lost all ability to write Java applications.

As we don’t have any proper graphic designers in our team, I sometimes end up doing bit of design for people. It’s usually icons, logos or banners. I’m not that good at it, but I think I have a slightly better eye than average for what looks good and I can sometimes put an alright looking banner/website/piece of branding together. I’m pretty good at copying someone else’s design. I actually quite enjoy doing it as it’s a nice break from doing code. The problem I have is that I’m really inconsistent at it. Sometimes I’ll do something first time and I’ll be happy with it, other times I’ll keep trying and I just can’t make anything that I like. We needed a long title banner for a board on our office wall and I tried to do something, but it just didn’t look right. I ran out of time and it needed to be printed, so I had to send it off. I was really disappointed when it came back from the printers as it just didn’t look very good.

People keep suggesting that I should do something more creative at work. That I should do some more of the branding/production stuff, but I just can’t do it consistently, and when you see someone who can really do this stuff, there’s a massive difference.