November 14, 2006
On Sunday night, Emma and I braved the cold South Wales weather to venture into Cardiff to see probably our favourite rock band at the moment, Muse.
They were good. Ridiculously good actually.
November 06, 2006
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. In the past two years, I’ve been reasonable happy with Dreamhost, but now, as a business, I need a hosting package which is a little more robust and scalable. I also want good support. This is where Dreamhost is, to be honest, totally crap for a UK business. Therefore, yesterday, I opted to move all my domains over to the new Grid Server package at Media Temple.
November 01, 2006
Following my month of supporting breast cancer, this site is now green again. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, then you probably don’t give two hoots. However, if you’re reading this in a browser, then kindly dump your cache and refresh otherwise things may look a little odd.
It’s been nice being pink for the month I must admit. So much so that I’m considering a slight colour change more often. I may even put you, my readers, in charge via a little stylesheet switcher (user preferences? heaven forbid). Although I’ll probably end up tossing this thought on my steaming pile of unfinished, festering ‘things to do’. Like I haven’t got enough to do with a new business, a book to finish, a web-app to finish…
October 30, 2006
In the last part of this Simple Steps series I talked about designing without colour. But before applying colour, it’s always a good idea to have a basic understanding of colour theory. There is a great deal of complex terminology surrounding colour theory, so in this part I’m going to outline some of the basics.
October 27, 2006
This is a project of mine that has been kicking around for well over a year now, so I thought I’d stick my neck out and just go with it. I’m going to be releasing Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web as a PDF download book in a couple of months time (around Christmas). It will cost $19. It will be stacked full of useful, practical information for applying graphic design principles to designing on the web.
October 19, 2006
It’s been ages since I’ve had a stab at a Simple Steps series. So far we’ve had Better Typography, Designing Grid Systems and Typesetting. This one has been kicking around for a while so I thought I’d just publish the first couple and see where we go from there (of course there will be five, I just haven’t written the last couple yet).
Designing with colour is perhaps the element of graphic design which is the most difficult to get right. Why? Well, because it is the most subjective. For some, a palette of dark grey with splashes of bright pink will be just great; to others it would just be all wrong. Too many designers, whether schooled in colour-theory or not, end up making subjective decisions about colour and then when it comes to explaining those decisions to a client, things begin to unravel.
This first post in the series will be dealing with looking at tone and the value of limiting your palette.
October 08, 2006
I’m a little late for this one, but I’ve now managed to go Pink for October in support of National Breast Cancer Awareness month. At the moment, NBCM is a US based thing, although a pink month was done by Cancer Research UK a while ago. Anyway, the point is, breast cancer awareness shouldn’t be limited by country.
If you don’t know much about breast cancer, please take this opportunity to go and read a little about it, and consider a small donation.
The normal green service will be resumed in November. Although, I am quite liking the pink. Maybe a touch of brown as well…
September 25, 2006
I was listening to the @media ‘Hot Topics’ podcast the other day, which unfortunately I had to miss. The section of it which I found really interesting was the discussion on a professional body (which is about two thirds of the way through). Although the panel agreed that a professional body for our industry is overall a bad idea, I actually think they were talking about several different things.
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I'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for Agency.com in London as an Art Director before working as a Senior Designer for the BBC in sunny Cardiff. This was all before I took leave of my senses and formed my own design consultancy, Mark Boulton Design Ltd.
I've got a thing about grids and typography and occasionally ramble on about them to anyone who will listen.
If you're after simple, clean and effective web design; let me know.