February 15, 2005
Prompted by a letter by Nigel Gill, accound director of Sigmer technologies, in this week’s New Media Age (page 17) I just had to get pen to paper so to speak.
Nigel states in his letter that “general design opinion seems to be that accessibility is diametrically opposed to great design”. What? Is this true? He’s obviously not talked to any good designers. He goes on to talk about how you define design, information architecture and usability etc. Which is all really valid, but I can’t quite get past his opening sentence.
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February 09, 2005
Following several more emails from designers, I thought i’d compile some of the questions in a follow up to Expression Engine - Designers Questions.
Many of the questions have been related specifically to the reason why I bought EE in the first place - my portfolio. You may recall some of my reasons for changing to EE, one of those reasons was the ability to add custom fields, this makes EE invaluable for both clients sites and designers portfolios.
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February 04, 2005
I thought it would be good to conduct a bit of research for an upcoming article i’m writing. Guidebooks are a kind of book I just can’t do without when going to a different country or, especially, on a city break.
On a city break, if you’re doing the whole cultural thing, you generally need overviews on what’s available, but then more information if you want it. You also need maps, and good ones.
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January 25, 2005
After my trip to London, and the Design Museum, over the weekend I thought i’d share a purchase of mine.
I was led to believe the Design Museum had a great bookshop, which turned out to be almost the case. Yes there were some good books, but they were the usual coffee table type (you know - big, pretty pictures, the latest hip designers from the planets hip studios). All a bit dull really. That was until I noticed a stack of blue books in the corner, covered with a thin layer of dust…
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January 20, 2005
There’s currently a lot of talk about whether users are blind to this, blind to that, don’t look at this, ignore that. So I ask you, what do they look at?
A while ago I also commented that users generally don’t read and use visuals clues to access the content they are looking for. Usability designers go blue in the face preaching this very theory but typographer’s have been doing this for centuries. It really is nothing new. So, what’s my point?
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January 11, 2005
Finally after months of wondering if it was worth it (yes, yes, I know it’s only ten bucks) i’ve finally subscribed to four issues of DIF. I’ve got to say, so far i’m very impressed.
The content is good and very well positioned to appeal to seasoned industry veterans and novices alike. But, yes there is a but…
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January 06, 2005
Many designers, whether traditionally schooled or not, have trouble with composition. I’ve sat with plenty of designers who simply moves things around until they feel ‘right’.
Design is, in essence, communication (I know, I know, I rant about this enough, but this isn’t one of them) but the vehicle for communication is the design. One of the key components in the vehicle of communication is composition, and in design schooling it is something that is taught as something you should feel rather than create logically. This has always bothered me.
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December 31, 2004
So, here we have it. Version 5.5 of this site. More of a Reversion than a Redesign. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, MovableType was beginning to be difficult to use because of the Spam problems (which they seem to have now fixed) and the increasing problem of stretching the intended useage of MT - ie. to run a portfolio (I know this is possible, as I did it before, it’s just not as easy as i’d like). I moved to using Expression Engine as the software to power the site.
Read on for more about the design ethos behind this site. Why do a redesign and what I discovered about web standards, css, expression engine and mac IE 5.5 on the way.
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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