Publications
I’ve had the pleasure of writing the odd thing here and there for a few different people and organisations:
Books
Designing for the Web
A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout. Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one.
Web Standards Creativity
“Be inspired by 10 web design lessons from 10 of the worlds best web designers. Get creative with cutting-edge XHTML, CSS, and DOM scripting techniques. Learn breathtaking design skills while remaining standards-compliant.”
Designing Grid Systems for the Web from Five Simple Steps
Grid systems have been used in print design, architecture and interior design for generations. Now, with the advent of the World Wide Web, the same rules of grid system composition and usage no longer apply. Content is viewed in many ways; from RSS feeds, to email. Content is viewed on many devices; from mobile phones to laptops. Users can manipulate the browser, they can remove content, resize the canvas, resize the typefaces. A designer is no longer in control of this presentation. Designing Grid Systems for the Web is a practical guide to designing visual information structures for the web. Due out in October, 2009
Magazines
A List Apart
- Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas
- For most of us, ideas have to be squeezed out of us every day. To stand up to this challenge, you need to arm yourself with some good tools.
- Whitespace
- Sometimes, as in web design, it’s difficult to add whitespace because of content requirements. Newspapers often deal with this by setting their body content in a light typeface with plenty of whitespace within and around the characters.
Vitamin
- Looking at type
- Have you ever been somewhere where you couldn’t speak the local language? Surrounded by signage, newspapers, shop fronts — everywhere you look there are letters, but you don’t understand what they mean. It’s even worse if they’re not Roman characters.A couple of years ago, on my honeymoon in Thailand, I was astounded by the myriad of typographic design styles. Not only was it a language I didn’t understand, the letterforms, to my eye, were little more than squiggles. Yet somehow I was often able to understand the meaning of some signs. How? Good typography, that’s how.