The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

June 11th, 2007

@media 2007: Third time’s a charm

atmedia 2007 in LondonThat’s @media done for another year. Patrick put on a great event. Again. Ser­i­ously, year on year the bar is raised and he deliv­ers. The speak­ers were great, the venue, the food, but most of all the loc­a­tion; Isling­ton is such a great place for an event like this. 

I feel like I’ve lived with @media 07 for a while. I pro­duced the con­fer­ence prin­ted mat­ter for San Fran­sisco and Lon­don, so for the best part of a month I’ve felt the loom­ing pres­sure of speak­ing. I was very nervous about it, but I think it went ok. 

There were so many high­lights of the two days. Firstly, it was so great to meet up with friends from home and over­sees. This year saw, amongst oth­ers, Jason, Dan and Molly take the trip across the pond, along with Joe Clark (whom I finally met for the first time). 

Secondly, it was equally great to see friends in the UK who I talk with all the time but very rarely get to share a beer with. Those jet-setting men of mys­tery from Clear­left were there in force (I have to thank Han­nah for that term—personally I think it’s going to stick). Jeremy was, as usual, on fine form. Of course the Brit­pack were prop­ping up the bar at any given oppor­tun­ity. It goes without say­ing it was nice to see Colly out of his cave along with his other Erskine Design cave-dwelling work-o-holic Jamie (those chaps ser­i­ously work too hard). Great to see Steve again and to meet the inspir­a­tional Han­nah Donovan from Last.fm (who gave a stonk­ing half hour talk along with Simon Wil­lison).

The present­a­tions were superb. Typ­ic­ally, I atten­ded most of the design-focused talks and occa­sion­ally dipped into the tech-focused. High­lights for me were Simon and Drew, Joe, Han­nah and Jason. Andy delivered an enter­tain­ing look at inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion which was also a cracker. 

On Thursday, I presen­ted ‘Five Simple Steps to Bet­ter Typo­graphy’ in the 3pm slot. The slides are here (along with a few resource links) It was my first solo present­a­tion of that length and to an audi­ence sim­ilar in size to the present­a­tion Rich and I gave at SXSW in March. It went without a hitch and, on reflec­tion, really wasn’t worth the nervous­ness before-hand. For those who didn’t catch it, I’m sure the pod­cast will be released shortly and I think Joe was live-blogging in the front row.

I talked about, you guessed it, Typo­graphy and how by apply­ing some simple guidelines, you can cre­ate much bet­ter typo­graphy for your web­site. There was a twist though. 

When I pre­pared the present­a­tion a while ago, there was no story. Sure, the facts were there but on present­ing them a couple of times, and vari­ous run-throughs, I felt there was no cohes­ive thread to tie it all together. Enter my dirty little secret: mar­tial arts (which I’ll talk about shortly in another post). You see, Typo­graphic design and mar­tial arts have an awful lot in com­mon. The present­a­tion saw me com­pare Box­ing to Ver­tical Rhythm and Ninjas to Hyphens. 

That’s it for a while then. No d.Construct for me again this year as I’m away on hol­i­day. Bit gut­ted about that as it looks like such a great event. I guess I’ll have to wait until March to get my next web con­fer­ence fix.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 4:44 am and is filed under Personal, Typography.

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14 Responses to “@media 2007: Third time’s a charm”

  1. Phil said on: June 11th, 2007 at 5:52 am

    It’s not a dirty little secret. It’s a clean and respect­able way to live your life. 

    Sad to have missed @media this year, had good reports from my team­mate, Liz even if she hasn’t shown me any of her notes from it. 

    Maybe, at some point I’ll actu­ally get to one of these. I’ll have to start con­vin­cing my bosses thatt SXSW is key to our company’s development.

  2. Joel Laumans said on: June 11th, 2007 at 6:15 am

    Thanks for the slides Mark, def­in­itely a great col­lec­tion of quick tips to improve typography!

    ++recommended

  3. Barry Bloye said on: June 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am

    Great present­a­tion, Mark. Thanks for post­ing the slides, too. I was look­ing for those this morning. :) 

    The mar­tial arts angle added an inter­est­ing thread to what, let’s face it, can be quite a dry sub­ject. Shame you won’t be at d.construct this year, though. 

    I will def­in­itely be apply­ing my typo­graphy with more pre­ci­sion from now on!

  4. James leslie said on: June 11th, 2007 at 8:14 am

    Your talk was great Mark, one of the high­lights for me. Typo­graphy is some­thing i have not really paid enough atten­tion to (prob­ably the same as many other web design­ers) but your talk has shown me some new aven­ues for mak­ing things easier… if i can get the developers to do the maths bits for me :-)

  5. Chris Gibbons said on: June 11th, 2007 at 8:55 am

    As I tend to sit more in the web developer camp and also being an @media vir­gin, I’ve come away with the designer goggles firmly fixed on!! 

    All the ses­sions and speak­ers where inspir­ing and also eye open­ing at how much pas­sion people have for the cur­rent phase of the web. 

    Your talk was great Mark, and def­in­itely one of the high­lights for me. 

    ps. Any news on the book..?

  6. Mark Boulton said on: June 11th, 2007 at 9:15 am

    Phil: You’re not wrong Phil. I’ve writ­ten a post which is going to be pub­lished tomor­row about my life with mar­tial arts on and off. I’d like to think I’m a much bet­ter per­son for doing.

    Your col­league intro­duced her­self actu­ally and seemed to be enjoy­ing the event. 

    Chris: You’re not the only one to ask. It’s on the way, abeit a bit slowly.

  7. Michaël Guitton said on: June 11th, 2007 at 9:18 am

    Before attend­ing @media07, I would have been unable to see any ana­logy between Typo­graphy and Jeet Kune Do ;) 

    On a 1 to 10 scale, I would rate your present­a­tion a 9. 

    Kudos!

  8. Colly said on: June 11th, 2007 at 10:20 am

    It was an abso­lute pleas­ure, Sir. But, lets not wait a year next time…

  9. Kev Stone said on: June 12th, 2007 at 5:39 am

    Hi Mark,

    I didn’t make it to @media but your slides, as always, look great. I was par­tic­u­larly impressed to see you talked about incre­mental lead­ing. The recent amount of online art­icles on com­pos­ing ver­tical rhythms are great, but I feel this topic is over looked on the web and only covered in texts like Muller-Brockmann’s, so it is great to see someone cover this topic. 

    I also must echo Chris’s sen­ti­ments, really look­ing for­ward to the book.

  10. Daniel Wilkes said on: June 12th, 2007 at 8:04 am

    Hi Mark

    Thanks for the present­a­tion, I’m just going over my notes now. 

    Can I just ask a quick ques­tion, I missed what you meant by incre­mental lead­ing? Was it the same thing as ver­tical rhythm? 

    Thanks 

    Daniel

  11. Sam Hardacre said on: June 16th, 2007 at 1:12 am

    Hi Mark,

    A bit late with this com­ment, but I saw your present­a­tion and thought it was bril­liant (you didn’t come across as nervous at all). I’m glad the slides are up because I didn’t man­age to get the maths for the ver­tical align­ment writ­ten down dur­ing the present­a­tion, but I can’t wait to test it out myself. 

    I too am away on hol­i­day in Septem­ber but I’m sure the pod­casts will be top dog (they were last year). 

    Look­ing for­ward to read­ing the book! Hope it sells many and inspires many more! 

    Sam

  12. Jah CS said on: June 24th, 2007 at 1:18 am

    Your talk was great Mark, one of the high­lights for me. Typo­graphy is some­thing i have not really paid enough atten­tion to (prob­ably the same as many other web design­ers) but your talk has shown me some new aven­ues for mak­ing things easier… if i can get the developers to do the maths bits for me :-)

  13. video training said on: June 25th, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    Really inter­est­ing. Bring on @media 2008!

  14. Mitch said on: June 30th, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    Sound like you’ve vis­ited the heaven! I want that toooooo :))

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