October 08, 2007
Last week, Andy Clarke announced a new CSS group I’m thrilled to be part of: CSS Eleven.
I’m going to leave the detailed explanation to Andy, but in a nutshell, the group is going to help the ‘W3C’s CSS Working Group to better deliver the tools needed for tomorrow’s web’. I’m particularly interested in having the opportunity to be involved in the several layout modules which have thus far been proposed.
Andy’s rounded up a fantastic bunch of designers and developers here. Hopefully we’ll have the collective clout to influence things in a positive way in the months to come.
October 02, 2007
Stephen Fry has a new blog. To date, there has been two posts: one about Device and Desires, and the latest about fame. To call them blog posts is an understatement really, they’re essays, or blessays as he calls them. It’s an absolute pleasure to read a blog post by someone who can write this well. It’s so inspirational and entertaining, I just had to mention it.
The latest post includes a wonderful paragraph I’m calling ‘what’s it like?’
Is it fun? [re. being famous] Or, as student journalists always ask, what’s it like? ‘What’s it like working with Natalie Portman, what’s it like doing QI, what’s it like being famous?’ I don’t know what it is like. What is being English like? What is wearing a hat like? What’s eating Thai red curry like? I don’t believe that I can answer any question formulated that way. So, student journalists, tyro profilers and rooky reporters out there, seriously, quite seriously never ask a ‘what’s it like’ question, it instantly reveals your crapness. I used to try getting surreal when asked the question and say things like ‘being famous is like wearing blue pyjamas at the opera. It’s like kissing Neil Young, but only on Wednesdays. It’s like a silver disc gummed to the ear of a wolverine. It’s like licking crumbs from the belly of a waitress called Eileen. It’s like lemon polenta cake but slightly wider. It’s like moonrise on the planet Posker.’ I mean honestly. What’s it like?? Stop it at once.
See? Genius.
October 01, 2007
Once again, I’ve gone all Pink for October support of National Breast Cancer Awareness month. Okay, it’s national in the US, but in this global world we live in, I thought I’d once again support the campaign.
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September 05, 2007
Michael Bierut has written perhaps one of the most insightful pieces I’ve read all year over at Design Observer. He manages to encapsulate all of my insecurities as a designer, points a finger at designer industry at large and provides us with a big, fat ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card, all in one concise post.
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September 04, 2007
Yesterday saw the launch of Khoi’s and Liz’s fantastic joint venture in providing a platform for short, concise design writing: A Brief Message.
The opening piece is by none other than Stevan Heller. It’s a thought-provoking piece, concisely written in under 200 words, and asks the question ‘Is print dying’? Again. It’s a question that has been asked many, many more times than ‘Which is best—fixed or fluid?’
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August 25, 2007
When I worked at the BBC, I participated in a workshop where the entire department went through a Myers-Briggs Personality questionnaire. I think the aim of the workshop was for all of us to understand, to some degree, the personality traits of our colleagues.
The Myers-Briggs test was originally devised in the Second World War by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. The form of the test I participated in was a very long questionnaire which, when analysed, highlighted your personal preferences. That’s a very important aspect of the results—they describe what you prefer to do, not what you do all the time.
I was sceptical at first, but after completing the test, and the following workshops, i’ve had some fantastic insights into my own preferences—particularly when carrying out my job day to day.
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August 22, 2007
Over the past couple of weeks there have been a few things going around that deserve more of a mention than my lowly ‘Of Interest’ sidebar. So, here they are:
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August 08, 2007
Over the past year or so, the industry has been making some great inroads into streamlining some of our processes. We have Microformats for standardizing how we mark up certain data. John Allsopp’s Web Patterns is gathering pace and recently Tantek et all started work on solving the ‘why do I always have to re-enter my user data in every social networking app?’ problem, or the easier to say, Social Networking Portability. These are all great and everything, but they have data at their core, not the presentation of that data. Until recently, we didn’t have a usable system for creating layouts.
That was until a Norwegian chap called Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy released a CSS framework called Blueprint last Friday. The key difference between this and other frameworks is Blueprint has been created from a typographic design basis.
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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