Why are accessible websites so hard to build
Today’s Responsive Design Weekly newsletter contains a link to a CSS Tricks post about this. This is my view:
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Becoming illiterate
As humans we have come a long way since evolving from primates and deciding to have a go at walking upright. Along the way we learned to speak in many different tongues. We tamed fire. We moved out of the cave into purpose build homes. We became artists, scientist and everything between.
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El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky (1890-1941) was born in Russia as Lazar Markovich Lissitzky —you can call him El— and lived life to the full. He became accomplished and influential in painting, architecture, photography and graphic design. Most of his work uses geometric shapes and a strong grid. Often with a limited …
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Smashing Conference, Freiburg
Summary of the Smashing Conference in Freiburg.
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Patterns Day
A brief summary of the Patterns Day in Brighton
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Adaptive Web Design, book review
Adaptive Web DesignCrafting Rich Experiences with Progressive EnhancementA (very good) book by Aaron Gustafson.
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Teaching is thirsty business
Last week I finished teaching the HTML/CSS for Beginners course from Code First: Girls at Loughborough University. It was my first ever stint of teaching. Teaching is hard, teaching code is even harder.
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My 10k Apart entry is a Notable Project
Another 10k Apart competition, and another Notable Mention!
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Reasons To, London
A few weeks ago I attended Reasons To in London (February 19, 2016). It was a spur of the moment decision after the cancellation of the Future of Web Design.
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Some thoughts after user testing a website
As a web designer you aim to design and built websites that will be intuitive to use and convert website visitors into customers.
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The logo is the home button
During the discovery phase of a web design project a few years ago, the client showed me a whole range of websites he liked and disliked.
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.NET magazine design challenge
Every month NET magazine features a design challenge where three designers create a website based on a fictional brief. I was asked to take part in the challenge a few months ago and the result is featured in this months NET magazine. The brief was to design a website for a party planning business.
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Ampersand Conference
A summary of the conference in Brighton last Friday.
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A simple typography rule
Recently I have noticed a disturbing thing: websites with excessive line lengths (i.e. the amount of characters on a single line of text). Some websites sport line length between 90 and 190! That’s a lot of characters.
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Vasarely with code
When I was little I was once dragged to a castle in France that had been turned into a Victor Vasarely museum. I had no idea who Vasarely was, but it didn't take long for me to like his work. Victor Vasarely (1906 - 1997) was a Hungarian-French artist and is known for creating art and sculpture …
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Going from Sole Trader to Limited Company
Last Friday was my first birthday as a limited company. I didn’t have much of a party, but as first years go, it has been a pretty good one. I have a very simple business plan: to run a profitable business. And this past year I did just that.
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Write post about checklists. Done.
The Checklist Manifesto, How to get things right.Atul Gawande
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Like minded people
On running a business.It’s hard. It’s fun. It’s keeping a lot of plates spinning at the same time. It brings a lot of questions to which you don’t always know the answer.
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The Future is coming
Back in the day you could build a website with a fixed width, test it in a few browsers and view it on a desktop computer. I went to the Future of Web Design conference in London last week and the future is nothing like the past. But then we already knew that.
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What matters when you design or build a website?
Lots of things: the purpose, the outcomes, the audience, the content, the quality of the build, the functionality, the design.
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Expansion
Google is opening up a new campus near Kings Cross station in London in 2016. To mark the event, our final graphic design assignment was to design something Google related. It could be anything, as long as it included Google at the centre of the idea.
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The unusual
Design a perfume bottle inspired by something completely unrelated. For this assignment I decided to think up something that I would find useful. Single use perfume bottles. I like travelling, and when I do, I like to travel as light as possible. Most perfume bottles are too large, so they never …
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Signage
The next brief for the graphic design course was to design a piece of signage for a place you like or know. I chose to design a system of numerals that could be used as house numbers in the street I live. The houses were originally build for employees of the nearby railway industry some hundred …
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Pictograms
A pictogram is an illustrated symbol for a word or a phrase. A good pictogram should describe an action or an instruction without using any words. They are present almost everywhere you look. Road signs are pictograms. The weather symbols on your smartphone weather app are pictograms.
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Picturing words
Having enjoyed last year’s Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins so much, I did the intermediate course this year. It finished last week, and this week I will share my homework.
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Working remote
I just finished a web design project where I never met the client in person, ever. My first proper “remote” project.
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The value of white space
If there is one design feature that is questioned by clients the most often it’s white space.
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Addicted to being connected
Every day you are plugged into the web. Emails arrive - you read them. Someone somewhere updates a status - you get a notification. You need to find something out - you Google it. You can’t find your way - you use GPS. Being online is a life line.
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Lazy loading of video while keeping it responsive
The time it takes for a web page to load can be crucial. If it takes too long your visitor might give up and go elsewhere. One of the things that can affect the loading time of a web page is video. One of the things that can drastically affect the loading time of a web page is lots of videos on the …
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A paragraph first approach
Some good advice from Mark Boulton at last weeks Ampersand conference in Brighton. When choosing a font for your next project start with designing a sample of paragraph text first. If your paragraph doesn’t look right in your chosen font, choose another one. The paragraph is the DNA of your type.
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Focus on the outcome, rather than the process
For a while now there is a lot of talk about designing in the browser. Should we all be doing it? Are you doing it? Can you do it? Is it the right thing to do? Will it bring world peace?
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"I just hope they put it to good use"
The other day I was talking to an 86 year old about the web. He never had any need to use computers in his working life, and as a result the web is something that passed him by. And he said this:
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No idea what to tweet about? I can help.
Whether you are new to Twitter or a seasoned pro, there might be days you just don’t know what to tweet. Easy option is not to tweet, maybe tomorrow will bring some inspiration. But if you really want to tweet something, then here are some suggestions (as used by seasoned pro’s everywhere):
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Learn what you need to know
Another web event last night (that’s it for a few weeks now though): MK Geeknight at Milton Keynes. Talk of the night for me was Westley Knight. He only had a five minute slot, but it was easily the best five minutes I have ever heard. Concise and to the point.
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Content is king
At last night’s Second Wednesday event at Antenna in Nottingham, the guest speaker was Ann Stanley from Anicca, giving an overview of what is new in Google. She came up with a thorough overview of all the tricks and things you can squeeze out of Google to optimise your site for search and …
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Where ideas go to wait
A few months back I wrote here that if you have an idea you should write it down. Later someone said to me he had notebooks full of ideas, but had never developed any of them further. His notebooks were like places where good ideas go to die.
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What I learned from professional networking
I used to think that going to networking events was crucial for the survival of my business. No networking equalled no work. The idea of meeting people several times to build up a relationship. People buy from people they trust.
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WordPress, 10 years old
WordPress, my weapon of choice in content management systems, celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday. For an open source project that’s pretty good.
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Execute: a book about acting on your ideas
ExecuteDrew Wilson and Josh Long
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Premium value versus budget value
A little anecdote from Nick Couch from Open Studio Club (as heard last week at Point Conference).
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Point Conference, London
The theme at last weeks Point Conference in London, was authenticity. Oliver Reichenstein kicked it off in style by declaring the term to be marketing bullshit, like free sex.
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What you do, doesn't always need a deeper reason
The thing I disliked most in secondary school was reading a book in class and then dissecting the story. Every character, every plot twist, every comma was questioned until nothing was left to question. I disliked it because it was subjective. It was a one-side perspective from the teacher, that …
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Journeyman
A few years ago at Build Conference in Belfast, The Standardistas, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson, did a talk about journeymen.
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The changing landscape of train journeys
For a while now, once a week, I have been part of the morning commute to work. A twenty minute train journey. I quite enjoy it, but only because it's once a week.
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Concentrate on value, not pixels
Occasionally a client asks to make a change to the design of their website because they believe this change will make all the difference to the success of the site. The changes are often minor, like adding a background image, a different font or colour shade for the buttons.
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Coding is a skill worth learning
There seems to be a lot of fuss at the moment about teaching children how to code. I am not against that as long as essential skills like reading and writing (by hand) don’t get neglected in the process.
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In no great hurry
Last night I saw the documentary “In No Great Hurry” on Saul Leiter, an America photographer who can be considered as a pioneer in colour photography. He began shooting pictures in the 1940s in black and white, but moved to colour photography in the 1950s.
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The challenge of limitations
Last night I started an eight week Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins in London. I chose this course because it’s a computer free. If you are going to learn about the nitty gritty of graphic design you should start with pen and paper.
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The old man schedule
A year or so ago I came across something called The Old Man Schedule. It’s a time management system based on Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine. He divided his day into blocks of time allocated to getting up, eating, working, reading, diversion and sleep.
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How to write to get you noticed
Went to Second Wednesday at Antenna in Nottingham last night, and as usual the talk was excellent. This time it was Christine Cawthorne talking about how to write for social media.
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Type Matters!
Type MattersJim Williams
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The first thing I used the internet for
The other day, in a nostalgic moment, I thought back to the first time I surfed the web. It was in the computer room of the Arkwright building at Nottingham Trent University. A suitably grand setting for an encounter with the modern world.
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Save a tree with a print stylesheet
Sometimes you just need to print a web page. Perhaps a recipe for something you want to cook, or a list of items you want to order.
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Above the fold
Screens are rigid things, and by default they don’t fold. At least not yet. You never know what future technologies will bring. Yet, I frequently get requests from clients to cram as much information as possible above “the fold” on their websites. Why?
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MK Geek Night
A night out with other web folk. Always nice to listen to shop talk after a day on the shop floor. Yes, seriously. MK Geek Nigh t is a free event in Milton Keynes where a handful of speakers talk about web related things. Even comes with free pizza. What’s not to love?
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Keeping CSS files in order
The bliss of starting a new website with a blank CSS file. All that white space - natural order. Even with a few styles it’s still easy to find your way. But it never stays like that.
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An hour of your time to learn something new
The practice of long blog posts might have been replaced by shorter tweets, but judging by the amount of books and magazines being published in the web design world there is still a hunger for writing long form.
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Have an idea? Write it down.
A few weeks ago I was asked if a specific interactive design feature could be coded in a website. At the time an idea came to mind of how this could be done, so I said: “Yeah, sure. No problem.” As you do.
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It doesn’t always have to be client work
If you are not careful all of your working time is spend on doing client work. There are obvious financial benefits to that and hopefully they are mentally rewarding as well.
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Game consoles: the outsider in the room
Last bit of takeaway from Responsive Day Out. Anna Debenham spoke about designing for game consoles. A game console is not my preferred weapon of choice when browsing the web (I don’t own one - that’s why), but plenty of children and teenagers do.
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Not everyone is a web designer
Another snippet from Responsive Day Out.
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If I could do it all again
Something Laura Kalbag said at Responsive Day Out last week:
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Responsive day out
A day out in Brighton (didn't get to see the sea though) listening to 12 speakers talk about their experiences with responsive design. The general consensus is that it is hard.
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Build 2012
A little summary from Build Conference in Belfast last month.
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Responsive data tables
TLDR;
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Just My Type
Just My TypeA book about fonts by Simon Garfield
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Responsive web design
Adaptive web design, mobile web design
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A brief stint in photography
Five and a half years after leaving the world of press photography I was tempted back in by an offer I could not refuse. In a case of "it's not what you know, but who you know" I was given the opportunity to be on the photographers team for the Queen's visit at De Montfort University in Leicester.
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New Adventures in Web Design
A little summary of my adventure at New Adventures in Web Design, which took place in Nottingham this week. This was my first conference of the year and it was kicked off in style, thanks to the excellent organisation of Simon Collison and Greg Wood. Thanks for that, and see you next year.
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Blue Beanie Day
Today is the Fifth International Blue Beanie Day in support of Web Standards. If you are a web designer and you strive in your work to follow a set of best practices for standardised, accessible and universal web design and development, then today you wear a blue hat to show support for Web …
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Notable Mention
A few months ago An Event Apart announced this years edition of the 10k competition, and so I set out to build another little 10k web application. And guess what? My entry is one of the Notable Mentions in the competition. That's not a win, but I did receive some books as a price, so that's sort of …
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Arty Bollocks Generator
A little thing I made last year has been discovered by the world over the weekend. I think the term is viral - it's flattering, but also a bit strange actually.
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On the importance of attending a web conference
Last week I attended the first ever New Adventures in Web Design conference, organised by Simon Collison and held in Nottingham. It was excellent, both in organisation (well done Simon and thank you) and inspiring talks.
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Web directions @media
Another month, another web conference ... (but that is it for the rest of the year - I learned so much, I will now put all of it into practice).
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The Future of Web Design 2010
Another year, another Future of Web Design conference in London. This year the event was spread over two days, with two tracks as well, so lots of speakers, lots to learn, lots to take away.
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Handcrafted Bulletproof CSS
Last month I attended another excellent Carsonified workshop: Handcrafted Bulletproof CSS with Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte. It’s difficult to use any other words to describe the workshop than excellent, brilliant, fantastic and enriching, because only those will do.
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The Future of Web Design 2009 – London
I attended my first conference in web design two weeks ago and I couldn't have picked a better one to start with.
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