March 16, 2007
Well, it’s all over for another year. This was my third year at SxSW and despite being ridiculously sick during the first couple of days, it was probably the most interesting. I’m choosing my words carefully there.
There is little doubt that SxSW is growing at an alarming rate. I heard some people say there were close to five thousand attendees to the Interactive Festival alone this year. That’s an awful lot of people. In fact, for the first time, I wasn’t allowed into some of the panels due to lack of space. That hasn’t happened to me before and this year it happened three times. Too many people or just small rooms?
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March 06, 2007
I’ve just been pointed to a post by Andy , called Five Principles to Design By by Joshua Porter. It’s a very good post, but point 2 has set some alarm bells off in my head once again.
Design is not art. That old chestnut.
This keeps coming up recently. Why? I’ve no idea but it’s beginning to bug me. Here’s my take on it all.
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March 06, 2007
Mark Boulton Design shuts up shop for a week next week as I’ll be taking my third trip over to Austin to enjoy South by Southwest Interactive.
Like Jeremy, it will be my third time at the conference and if the last two were anything to go by, this will be bigger and better. Talking of Jeremy, he’s put together his superb little guide to all the parties. If you’re going, that is well worth looking at.
So, what’s on the cards this year?
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January 19, 2007
Mrs B and I are on our annual jaunt to the Alps for a spot of snowboarding. This year we’re staying in the, rather large, Swiss town of Zermatt which is nestled in a valley underneath the beautiful Matterhorn. The snow is not great at the moment. And it’s raining here in the village which is making everywhere covered in a thin, almost invisible, coating of ice. Putting the snowboarding aside for a moment, this place is rather special for one reason: The Matterhorn.
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December 29, 2006
As I did last year, I thought it was about time I attempted to summarise my 2006 before embracing 2007 in a couple of days time. I find it slightly cathartic, sometimes embarrassing, but mostly fun to ponder on the past year. Where have I been, what did I do and who did I do it with? This was confirmed just now when reviewing this same post from last year.
So without futher ado, I’ll get on with it.
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December 01, 2006
In March I’ll be heading over to Austin for the third time for the SXSW Interactive conference. This time I’ll be on one panel: ‘Web Typography Sucks’ with the guy behind The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web and fellow Britpacker, Richard Rutter of Clearleft. The second panel isn’t really a panel at all, but a ‘’Power Session’: “Grids Are Good, and How to Design with Them’ with my good friend, Khoi Vinh.
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November 22, 2006
Warning. This is a grumpy old man post. Why oh why can’t places like airports, in fact most places, get the basics right. Let me explain.
I’m sat in Bristol departure lounge heading off to Spain for a client meeting and as it’s 5.31am, I need a good tea to kick start the day and get my brain working. I also need good wifi to check my email and things. Those two simple things are crap here. Crap tea. Crap, expensive wifi. It’s really not that difficult is it?
That is all.
November 21, 2006
When I left the BBC a few months ago, they were kind enough to give me an Amazon voucher with which I bought a new Apple iPod Shuffle.
Well, Amazon took two months to actually get the stock in from Apple (don’t know whose fault that was, but the delivery date kept on going back and back with no word from either party.) But all that aside, I received it yesterday and it’s a little thing of beauty.
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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