June 14, 2006
A while ago now, Communis, Bath based accessibility company, approached me for the branding and graphic design of a website which would sell customised football team kits and leisureware. Now, four months or so down the line, the Beta for FootballKitDesigner has gone live.
June 13, 2006
I’m getting pretty excited abut @media which kicks off in a couple of days.
Over the past few months I’ve been working with the guys at Vivabit to produce the printed material for the conference. It’s been great to get my teeth stuck into some print again, but I’ve forgotten how stressful print deadlines can be. I think printers are like builders, and to be perfectly honest I’ve no idea how some of them remain in business. But if you find a good one, it’s a totally different story.
June 08, 2006
Recently, I’ve been producing some conference materials for a certain conference in the UK. It’s been a while since I’ve done any print design in anger—in fact, it was two years ago when I produced a bunch of things for our wedding—but I’ve really enjoyed the process again and it’s pretty liberating to be designing for a media with so many conventions in place, both production and design.
I’m sure a lot of web designers are asked if they ‘do’ print. I’m positive a lot are put off because of the production. Printers can be scary, as can the whole production process, particularly for large scale projects. So, I thought it might be useful to explain a few things.
June 01, 2006
This is a bit of self publicity, but what the hell.
Firstly, I’ve written an article for those lovely Carsons over at Vitamin.
It’s a piece I originally started thinking around here in my Journal, but have expanded upon for Vitamin (and there’s probably more to come on the subject). It’s about the way designers think and semantics.
Secondly, Podcasts are available for the panel I sat on at SXSW in March called Traditional Design and New Technology. And also for a presentation I gave at Ideas3, an event held by Port80 in Perth, Australia last month, where I talked about typography and craft on the web.
May 24, 2006
Less is more. We’ve all heard that saying a thousand times. What does it mean though? For me it’s the result of a particular way of working.
In October last year, Jason Fried of 37Signals gave a 10 minute talk at the Web 2.0 show about, well, ‘lessness’. In an interesting talk, Jason described five things which you need less of (which you think you actually need more of). A lot of what he said made absolute sense from a business perspective. I’d like to add to that some thoughts on what you need less of in graphic design.
May 17, 2006
When Emma and I were in Perth, more specifically Fremantle, on a ‘find a pair of decent flip-flops’ mission, we happened upon a small second-hand book store. Normally, I tend to walk past second hand book shops (as they’re usually crammed full of Mills and Boon’s), but something caught my eye with this one. Shelves and shelves of second hand Penguin books dating back to the 1940’s. I couldn’t resist.
May 16, 2006
Wikipedia are having a design competition.
Whilst it doesn’t come as a complete shock that a site which offers free content is after free work, I’m still reeling from the opportunity that this presents to some designers, and recoiling from the effect this type of project has on the industry.
May 10, 2006
Maybe it’s something about spring or maybe it’s the 48 hours I spent on a plane recently, but I thought it was about time I spruced this site up. Actually, the main reason goes back to @media last year when Jeremy included in his presentation a javascript image gallery. It kind of spiralled, totally out of control, from there really.
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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.