Yesterday I braved the “adverse weather conditions” to attend Ampersand, the web typography conference in Brighton. My expectations were undecided. I knew I didn’t want to see a show & tell, nor basic print typography knowledge presented as a new web-revelation (neither is it new, nor new to the web). Thankfully I was rewarded with [...]
I’ve written a new article for Smashing Magazine entitled Understanding Copyright & Licenses. It’s a primer for web designers and developers. Give it a read, let me know what you think. I do like to tackle the difficult topics. They often require a lot of research and I tend to arrive at the other end knowing [...]
Location: The Sage, Gateshead. Event: Design It. Build It. The two-track web conference. This is my third conference of the year and I’m getting exceedingly good at it! A trip up to DIBI meant a late evening train from Kings Cross, a late night arrival to the pre-party (a bit of catching up to do) [...]
I’m a huge fan of web typography, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to catch up with print. Twitter surged last week with the news of Futura’s arrival at Typekit. Futura PT’s classic design — tall ascenders, near perfect geometric shapes — make it both instantly recognizable and irrepressibly modern. Indeed, and browser rendering [...]
“click here”, “read more”, “next” – a bad habit that just won’t go away, and I’m to blame as much as the next designer (at least the “more” end of the spectrum, if that will save integrity). Why is “click here” so bad? Good link text should not be overly general; don’t use “click here.” Not [...]
IA Writer for Mac looks like the sort of product I’d download immediately, and I did! It has all the designer’s preferred aesthetics. It’s minimalist, typography focused and beautifully simple. Designers often get a lot of heat for their style-orientated tastes but in reality most of us understand how important user interface design is; it’s [...]
I often say that aesthetics are the least important part of a website design. Content and functionality are miles ahead of anything else. It’s obvious really, why would people visit unless you have some substance? They’re so important that design should focus on layout and architecture and only then should aesthetics be considered. It’s refreshing! [...]