August 22, 2004
Update: Slight changes to the design, some problems with the old design. Mac Ie stylesheet deleted until I can get it to work properly.
Here it is, my new site.
As you can see a lot of changes have happened. In fact a (near) complete redesign has taken place. Only the journal remains pretty much intact (data wise). Everything else you see is brand spanking new. In fact I can’t quite believe it myself.
A year in the planning and designing and two months in the making. It’s been a great learning experience, even if it’s one I wont be repeating the near future.
I still have tons to do, such as populating the portfolio with old and new work. In the meantime you can still look at the old portfolio here .
A more detailed post will follow this shortly regarding the redesign. Until then, feel free to have a look around.
June 21, 2004
Whilst I was away on honeymoon there have been a number of launches at BBC Wales on the “Slash Wales” service (as it’s being marketed - no comment). Anyhow a number of these sites have been in development for nearly 12 months.
They’ve seen a considerable amount of work on the backend and represent re-engineered content management system and a shift in production methodologies - with an emphasis on User Centered Design, Web Standards and an Object Oriented Approach to the content management, with extensive look at cross promotion and meta data.
In Pictures
In Pictures pulls together a lot of content from across the BBC Wales service relating to images and puts it into one place. This was a first go at creating a generic style for all functional portals using CSS to render as much of the presentational information as possible.
Development / IA / Design / CSS
Surfing
This site represents the most work. A complete reworking of the Information Architecture, User Interface and a lot of time spent on the graphic design integration with the new content management structure. I’ll be giving a more detailed breakdown of these sites once I get my portfolio redesigned.
Development / IA / Design / CSS Implementation
Weather
This is phase one of the weather portal. It’s not quite right yet. The weather app needs some work from a usability point of view and the overall green/blue feel has been lost with the introduction of the garish purple. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next phase.
Development / IA / Design
June 12, 2004
Well here I am, sitting at an iMac, it’s 6.45pm and still 80 degrees. Malaysia is very nice indeed or should I say this hotel is very nice indeed.
The wedding was great, the reception was great, and no doubt the presents will be great when we get back from a great honeymoon. The new Snooch site has been bubbling away in the background and this time away has helped me cement a few ideas.
Stopdesign has been redesigned and it’s funny how similar Dougs redesign, I mean the core message and IA, mirrors my ideas for Snooch - Ie, less importance on Blog and more importance on Portfolio. Also Articles and Speaking dates feature highly too. Not sure what the graphic design will be just yet, but I want this to be the last redesign I do for a while as i’ve got loads of content to plugh into MovableType so it’s in a form I can use in the future. Hopefully the winning plugin in the MT plugin competition will take the form of a easy way to add fields to an entry. We’ll see.
Anyhow, i’m alive and well in Malaysia. Enjoying the sun and being a Husband.
May 27, 2004
Doug Bowman is in the process of redesign. I say process because he hasn’t quite finished yet. Interesting debate about design and redesign has started as a result.
Pixel Perfect Digital is a site with loyalty free imagery available for download at pretty high resolutions. Nicely categorised, although the images are your typical stock variety.
May 25, 2004
A simple, but extremely useful, breakdown of the latest blogging software. It includes free and expensive software, from MT to Expression Engine.
May 25, 2004
Allofmp3.com are offering a gigs worth or music downloads for $10. You can specify codec & bit-rate from a HUGE collection of music. I’m going to update all my vinyl and tape collection so I can get it all on my ipod. Very, very nice indeed.
May 24, 2004
Who’s the daddy? Helvetica/Arial quiz.
May 24, 2004
A few new CSS things to look at this fine morning (all courtesy of email being down - I like monday mornings like this one)
http://www.webstandardsawards.com/
Some nice new sites, some of which are minging though. I really don’t get the whole rich, wallpaper background image, looks like the smoking room in ‘The Butchers’, design thing. It’s not big or clever. I’m talking about http://www.alazanto.org/
It turns out CSS Vault is either a. Not going to be here soon or b. Going to be run by people outside of the 9rules network. Shame. Although I can see his point.
Version 2 is a great idea. I think after the wedding i’m going to enter this competition, I think i’d have a good chance of getting somewhere.
http://www.cssbeauty.com/
Similar to CSS Vault. highlights for me - http://www.instablog.org/. This is great. Purely typographic. Design like a newspaper. I bit down and dirty with the CSS, with a few bugs, but otherwise really nice.
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