November 18, 2005
Here I am, sat on a train, stuffed full of Sushi awaiting the train to finally pull away so I can start my long trip home (about four hours depending on which signal's decide to fail). After buying my 12inch iBook in July, this is the first time I've used it in a truly mobile capacity and so far it's going well. Anyway, I'm not going to go about sushi, trains or laptops in this post. Today, I had the great pleasure of attending the 'CSS for Designers' workshop hosted by Carson Workshops in London. What a day it was.
Continue reading...
November 14, 2005
Just spotted this via my feeds — Graphic design plays a minor role on the Web.
Red rag to a bull mate.
As much as I'd like to let this one go, I just can't.
Continue reading...
November 08, 2005
This morning I received some sad news in my Inbox. After 21 years of being published, Emigr? magazine is finally calling it a day.
I don't really know where to begin when describing the effect Emigr? has on my path to become a designer. I'm sure I speak for a lot of designers when I say Emigr? deeply influenced my work throughout university - Not just in terms of how the magazine was designed, and the beautiful typography, but by the articles themselves.
Continue reading...
October 15, 2005
Semiotics, loosly speaking, is the study of signs. Simple enough. What becomes difficult is defining what a 'sign' actually is.
When we think of signs we think of the things on the left there don't we? We think of something visual like a signpost. But, 'signs' are made up of many different components - words, sounds, body language and context - all of which combine to create a visual language which help us understand something, be that the way to the beach, or if somebody doesn't really like us the first time we meet them.
Continue reading...
September 28, 2005
I've been thinking about this for a while now. What will it mean to design in this industry in the coming years, and how will we, as designers, have to adapt in order to get the most out of it?
But before I talk about that, I'd like to talk about design. What is it? More importantly what has it become? And how will it be in the future?
Continue reading...
September 19, 2005
It's been a while, but this is the final part in my series 'Five Simple Steps to designing Grid Systems'.
Flexible vs Fixed. Which one to choose? Why choose one over the other? Well you won't find the answers to those questions here. What I'm aiming to do with this article is to investigate how the theory of grid design can be applied to a flexible web page.
Lets's start by briefly examining Fixed and Flexible, or Fluid designs.
Continue reading...
September 15, 2005
Have you ever worked on producing branding guidelines?
I've always felt branding guidelines are too formulaic. Dont do this with the logo, use these colours and this typography. This isn't really branding, it's implementation guidelines for elements of the brand, not the brand itself.
A brand is so much more than just a logo and colours. It's tone of voice, photographic treatment, the ethos behnd the brand. The message. The story.
Continue reading...
September 12, 2005
Today sees the launch of the new Guardian newspaper here in the UK. I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of column inches and airtime a redesign of a national is getting. Not only do we see a change to full colour, but an entirely new format for British Newspapers and a entirely new grid system design and typeface. Pretty much everything then.
There are several things which will upset people straight off with this new design. First of all is the Masthead.
Continue reading...
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