This time it was the Web Directions @media conference held in London on the 10th and 11th of June and I have written another summary:

• “SVG is like HTML for graphics” – Doug Schepers. Shapes are elements and can be styled with CSS.
• Rachel Andrew talked about CSS3 and went further than the obligatory border-radius (rounded corners), text/box-shadow, rgba, opacity, transform and gradient. She explained about nth-child (to target multiple elements according to a specification), attribute selectors, multiple backgrounds and media queries.
• Simon Willison, software architect for the Guardian, gave a presentation about crowd sourcing. It’s about collaborating with the silent audience of users to make something better than if you did it on your own.
• Andy Clarke gave a brilliant presentation about his hardboiled web design. He advocates that you should design for the best browsers first, then think about what the users will see in lesser browsers.
• He also mentioned that CSS3 has a text-stroke property! Just what I was looking for last week.
• Sandi Wassmer made sure we understood that you should design with purpose and intent.
• Hannah Donovan gave us a talk about Telling Stories Through Design. A presentation entirely made up on the back of an envelope (literally) (All very good though).
• She also explained about guerilla user testing. Go somewhere where there are lots of people, offer them some free coffee/tea/food and sit them down with a laptop and let them use the website that needs testing. Cheap and easy – brilliant.
• Microcopy: you don’t tend to think of it, but it’s the instructions you read when filling out a form; they are the bits of text that guide you through an interactive process like buying something online. The quality of these if often overlooked and under estimated. But no longer. Relly Annett-Baker encouraged us to give microcopy just as much attention as the rest of the content. Bad microcopy can stop users going all the way to the checkout.
• Steve Souders confirmed that building websites with web standards is the right way to go if you want increase the page load of your website. Separating your HTML, CSS and JavaScript in separate files is a start. Placing the links to scripts at the bottom of your page is another.
• Scott Berkun gave us a challenge to come up with a new idea that is not made up of other ideas? Answers on a postcard …
• iPad count: 10. Still way below what I had expected.

I have heard and seen so much that I am just going to summerize it:

• Websites don’t need to be experienced the same in every browser – Dan Cederholm
• Robin Christopherson showed us an accessible alternative to captcha. A free service called text captcha.
• Aaron Walter advocated the importance of emotional interface design. “Don’t just make it usable, make it pleasurable”.
• I learned from Niamh Phelan from IQContent that there is a lot more to Google Analytics than knowing how many people visited your website yesterday.
• Simon Collison had a look into the future of web design and predicted the launch of the iBoard. Forget about nonchalantly placing an iPad on your coffee table – the iBoard will BE the coffee table.
• Elliot Jay Stocks pointed out the importance of making time for pet projects. They allow you to express yourself and can be used in promoting your business too.
• HTML5 looks exciting! Thanks to Bruce Lawson’s demo.
• Brett Welch – Don’t build websites, sell an online business.
• Paul Boag stepped in for a last minute session on Track 2 on Wednesday and talked off the cuff about running a web design business. He said that you need a life outside of web design – it will make you a better web designer.
• Spotted the first iPad at 9.50 on Wednesday morning in Ryan Carson’s hands.
• Spotted five iPads in total – I had expected to see more of them.
• The Brewery (where the event took place) does the best conference food I have ever had.
• And finally I got some good feedback from Simon Collison and Mike Kus at the design clinic where I showed them a project I am currently working on.

And that’s it. Can’t wait for next year. Thank you very much Carsonified to put on such a great event.

March 2010

Limecraft is a Derbyshire business specialising in rendering, plastering and pointing private and public buildings solely with lime-based mortars. They believe strongly in the use of the correct materials to carry out sympathetic repairs and renovations. Limecraft is also committed to the training of traditional skills, in particular lime mortars and their use.

Thank you so much for all your hard work. The website looks great and I have had some really positive comments.

Andy Lawson,
Limecraft

Visit the website

www.limecraft.co.uk

• Design and development of website
• HTML / CSS
• WordPress CMS

February 2010

Hilary Robinson is a children’s author with more than 30 published children’s books. Her site will not be ready until later this year, but to mark the re-launch of The Big Book of Magical Mix Ups, a teaser site was developed in the meantime.

The Big Book of Magical Mix Ups, a collaboration between Hilary Robinson and illustrator Nick Sharratt, is a book with split pages so hundreds of hilarious spells can be mixed up to provide hours of fun. The teaser website includes a small game to simulate this.

Visit the website

www.hilaryrobinson.co.uk

• Design and development of teaser website
• Development of Mix-up game in PHP
• HTML / CSS
• WordPress CMS

January 2010

David James Ross is a trainer, lecturer and writer. He works with creative, graduate and knowledge-based business startups.
A lot of the material he delivers involves the online world and so a redesign of his old website was in order. Inspiration for the design came from his presentation slides, which are clean, minimalist and to-the-point.

Visit the website

www.davidjamesross.co.uk

• Design and development of website
• HTML / CSS
• WordPress CMS

December 2009

HaLD (Hearing and Learning Disabilities) is a Special interest Group for professionals and carers concerned with people with learning disabilities and hearing problems. They required an interactive site to enable users to post queries and responses, download resources from the site, and upload resources for others to share.

Visit the website

www.hald.org.uk

• Design and development of website
• Membership functionality
• HTML / CSS
• WordPress CMS

It makes a huge difference to hear an author talk about his work rather than when you read the book or his blog. The impact is bigger when you hear it. A book or a blog are helpful back-ups, a sort of memorandum, in case you can’t quite remember whether to use float or positioning (for example).

Dan and Ethan did a brilliant job of explaining all their nifty little tricks in an elegant (and handcrafted) way. All in all a great day with lots of things to try out in my next web design projects.

But if you want something more specific and bespoke then get in touch and we can discuss what you need in more detail.

Mobify.me is a free service which helps you design your mobile site by allowing you to pick and choose which bits you want to appear on your mobile site. It is fairly straight forward, but never the less it took me some time to get it all to look the way I wanted.

Still, I got there in the end and it’s all done and ready to view.

I could include the link to the site right here (there is one in the footer of this page), but unless you are reading this on a mobile device, in which case you are already looking at the mobile version, there is not much point to it – in a normal browser it doesn’t look quite as nice.

September 2009

Ramon Mohamed is a dual heritage Educational Consultant. He is interested in raising the profile of education in Afghanistan. His aim is building schools, building a nation in Afghanistan.

February 2010

Ramon’s original website was developed very quickly, because he needed an online presence fast. Since then he has gathered more content, appeared on TV, was interviewed on the Radio twice and featured in two local newspapers. Needless to say, he was outgrew his website within months of it being online, and so a redesign was called for.
The current design (he will probably need another one in six months time) is build around his content, and will allow the website to grow with him. Fingers crossed.

Visit the website
www.ramonmohamed.com

• Design: branding, website
• HTML / CSS
• WordPress CMS