We’re not just making pretty interfaces, we’re actually in the process of building an environment where we’ll spend most of our time for the rest of our lives. We’re the designers. We’re the builders.

Spine tingling stuff from Wilson Miner’s Build 2011 talk.

Stop the comparisons. Today.

It’s a great habit to observe your peer’s work but it’s important to always remember that design is not a competition. Be inspired and take influence from those talented people in your industry but remember nothing good can come from comparisons. Why not compare today’s work to your work a year ago?

Allow your skill to catch up with your taste

Ira Glass puts it better than I could:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit

Excerpt from this interview.

Educate yourself

Pick up a book, address that growing Instapaper queue. Learning a new skill or reinforcing an established skill can motivate you more than you realise. Don’t constrain yourself to your own industry, look further afield and prepare to be surprised by the results.

Stop finding excuses not to work

“It would be so much better if…” “If only it wasn’t…”. You will never land a perfect project. You will never have the perfect client. Your office will never be the perfect temperature.

Switch it up

Change your working habits – wake up at 5 am or stay up till 3am – work in a coffee shop or public library. I find nothing grinds me down more than a routine. Take advantage of all the flexibility your job can offer.

Get healthy

Eat better food; drink more water; take more exercise; sleep longer. Don’t underestimate the power of fresh air and daylight. A brisk walk, a jog or a bike ride can lift your mood and change your perspective.

Keep a to-do list

Keeping a to-do list can be a challenge in itself. I don’t put everything on mine, only the menial tasks I’m likely to forget. When I’m not in the mood for creative work I tackle the to-do list. Knowing I’ve got a few of those boring jobs out of the way can boost my mood enough to get me back in the game.

Maintain your working environment

Keep your workspace clean and tidy. Invest in some decent lighting and a few pictures for the walls. Ensure you have a door to shut or some quality headphones so you can enjoy a quiet moment. You’re more likely to spend time in a workspace that’s a pleasure to be in.

Separate work and play

Don’t work on the sofa, don’t play at your desk. If you work in an office don’t bring your work home with you. It seems like a simple thing but when home working is commonplace and remote working is so easy  you’d be surprised how much the line can blur.

Don’t stop working

The worst thing you can do is sit around and wait for inspiration to find you. When you are feeling at your worst it is tempting to fire up the xbox, lose yourself in social networking or watch those endless reruns.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. – Pablo Picasso

The longer you spend away from work the harder it will be to pick it up again. The more you work, the more you work.

Experts—journalists, analysts, consultants, bankers, and gurus can’t “do” so they “advise.” They can tell you what is wrong with your product, but they cannot make a great one.

I just woke up to the sad news that Steve Jobs has passed away. Rest in Peace 

Until now writing code that can resize videos from every service, at every size, without serving multiple versions or ending up with a ruined aspect ratio has been damned near impossible.

FitVids makes it simple, really simple. I’ve implemented it on this site tonight with no trouble at all and I will keep it in my back pocket for future work. Thanks guys.

Fast forward to today and we find ourselves with a problem. Take a look at any Local Government website or web application and you’ll see screen after screen designed by developers and software engineers.

Wild statement: There are no designers in Local Government.

I wasn’t hired as a designer, nor was anyone in my team. We were hired as a developers. Luckily for my employer we had some design skills. In fact I was a designer disguised as a developer (I left my checked shirt and glasses at home) so they hit the jackpot.

So why are Local Authorities happy to leave design to the luck of the draw? We’ve recently seen authorities hiring a vast range of web professionals – web copywriters, content strategists, service designers (I think thats code for business analysts) and I’ve started to hear whispers about a mysterious new thing called ‘UX’. But what will it take for us to start hiring designers?

Surely I don’t have to reiterate the benefits of good design? We all know that it saves money if we can move our services online; but here’s a thought. What if we made them easy? Pleasurable? Memorable? You can’t do that without a designer.

A fantastic collection of tips and insider advice about what it’s really like to be a designer,  this article kept me up far too late.

Writing down what I like about other people’s sites in the hope it will give me a wishlist for my own.

Once enabled Google Instant performs your search and begins fetching results as you type, something that has to be experienced. I like it, but it will take some getting used to.

There are some amazing replacement iTunes 10 icons on Dribbble following the backlash against the new icon unveiling.

What does this mean?

• The general look and feel has come to feel quite clunky and over simple, I’d like to make it a bit more delicate and thought out, but still retain the same general feel
• I’m not counting on using my site to find freelance work via cold enquiries, so less of a ‘salesy’ tone to the copy
• I’m not posting to my blog as often as I could be, due to some decisions made in the last design. I’d like to go much more down the Tumblr route and make the blog less about articles and more about bookmarking and sharing.
• I’m using Twitter more and more so I’ll put that as a higher priority on the site
• If I can, I’ll do it all on one page.

I’ll do my best to post my progress as I go, as I did with this version.

Sources & Essential Reading:

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/20/typographic-design-survey-best-practices-from-the-best-blogs/
• http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to-better-typography
• http://www.adobe.com/education/pdf/type_primer.pdf
• http://www.webtypography.net/toc/
• http://www.aisleone.net/2009/design/8-ways-to-improve-your-typography/
• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/
• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/settingtypeontheweb/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/11/top-ten-web-typography-sins/
• http://24ways.org/2006/compose-to-a-vertical-rhythm

Line-length (Measure)

A general good rule of thumb is 2–3 alphabets in length, or 52–78 characters (including spaces). A simple way to calculate the measure is to use Robert Bringhurst’s method which multiples the type size by 30. So if the type size is 10px, multiplying it by 30 gives you a measure of 300px or around 65 characters per line.

Why? Long lines of text require longer periods of attention before the eye moves lines, short lines of text require moving lines too often, which can break rhythm, an optimum measure means creating a comfortable balance.

Line-height (Leading)

Optimum line-height is 1.5 x text size (1.5em), this should be lowered for large headings (1.2-1.4em).

Why? Too much leading causes the eye to jump from line to line and can be disruptive to reading, too little leading creates a dense ‘typographic color’ which looks less appealing, and can create the illusion of ‘more’ text.

Measure and leading are related, when increasing your measure, ensure you adjust your leading, longer measure requires greater leading and vice-versa. These rules can change depending on choice of font, for example, a font with a larger x-height (literally the height of the x character) such as Verdana, may require more leading.

Letter-spacing

In most cases letter spacing should remain default, as fonts are designed to work best at this setting, in special cases, such as all uppercase or small caps increase letter-spacing by a small amount (~1px).

Why? Uppercase characters are tighter and will require extra spacing to improve readability.

Vertical Rhythm

Ensure that the spacing between elements is equal to, or multiples of, your line-height (Measure) e.g.

body {
font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 15px;
}
p {
margin-bottom: 15px;
}

Why? The baseline grid is the skeleton of your typographic layout and provides consistency. Conforming to your baseline ensure flow and improves readability. A continuous rhythm in the vertical space keeps all the text on a consistent grid so that proportion and balance are retained throughout the page, no matter the type size, leading or measure.

Hanging Punctuation

Quotation marks and bullets should always be set ‘outside’ in the gutter outside of your body text, so that the text remains consistently aligned.

Why? Maintaining left alignment means that the text is scannable and rhythm is uninterrupted. The eye looks for straight lines everywhere, when type is indented in this way, it maintains the flow of text.

Got any of your own to add? Let me know in the comments.

Saving for a wedding means I’ve been checking my various internet banking accounts quite often, and although yours is one of the better ones, there’s something that’s been bothering me. You see, when I get to your homepage, I have to click through to log-in on a separate page. How about shortening my journey slightly?

Before

HSBC's homepage before

After

HSBC's homepage after

It may not seem like much, but one thing I’ve learnt is when it comes to customer experience is that it’s all in the details. Your customer’s time is valuable and you should make every effort to streamline your processes.

Just a thought

Its a 48 column, 950px wide template with 3, 4, 6 and 8 columns layouts built in. Feel free to download, modify and redistribute to your heart’s content.

950px_grid_layout

Designing in the browser

Ever since reading about designing in the browser in Andy Clarke‘s ‘Walls come tumbling down’ slides I’ve wanted to push Photoshop out of my workflow and jump straight into the browser.

The first thing that strikes me is how fast it allows me to work, going from one paper sketch to a working wireframe prototype within a few hours, and I’m able to see what works very early on in the process, something that doesn’t usually become clear until after Photoshop. Iterations and revisions are much easier, meaning that what would usually be major, structural changes take a fraction of the time and effort to complete.

I know skipping Photoshop isn’t for everyone, but my first experience has been so positive, adding an element of freedom I haven’t had in a long time and I can’t wait to work like this again.

CSS 3

Although we have been dabbling with CSS 3 at work for a while now, I often feel tied down by our commitment to legacy browsers and always have to tread carefully when implementing some more ambitious ideas. I’ve designed the majority of this site with CSS 3 in mind; the letterpress effect on the headings, differing levels of transparency and rounded corners are all pure CSS 3 and although not every browser will get the same visual experience, the progressive enhancement built into CSS 3 (pictured) ensures I don’t spend time making sure that the basics are in place universally.

Progressive enhancement in CSS 3. Left to right: Safari 4, Firefox 3.6, IE8 in Windows 7

IE6 and friends

I decided to forget IE6 during development completely, save for a glance on launch day, just to see what would happen. After all the CSS 3 and reckless behaviour on my part I was expecting to launch IE6 on a test machine and see a complete mess, although surprisingly, apart from two minor bugs (the background of the content areas isn’t showing, and the accommodation entries don’t line up) it’s completely intact. Maybe all those years of coding defensively have hardwired my brain to avoid IE6 bugs.

Still to come

I’ve still got plenty of things I’d like to build into the site later; I’ve got a pretty neat idea for a countdown timer which I will attempt in-between my client work and when we send out our invitations I’m going to implement an AJAX RSVP form.

Overall this has been a really fun personal project that has given me a chance to try out some new things and work in a way I’ve never worked before, I’m really happy with the final result and would love to hear what you think, so love it or hate it, drop me a comment.

Research is a diverse activity and can range from reading industry blogs and magazines and interviewing clients to looking at the competition and the wider industry. It can be used to predict customer needs, support or inform your decision making and as a catalyst for change.

Research is not wasted time, and past research should always be kept handy. You never know when you’re going to encounter the same problem again, or find another use for some prototype code or wireframe. Having a good repository of research means you have something to refer back to, although managing this research repository can be large task in itself, there are plenty of tools around around to help.

We should not be afraid of approaching new challenges or doing things we have never done before, if we use research it can help the unknown become known, it can turn guesses into more concrete, realistic estimates and most of all it can help us broaden our knowledge and experience.

I think too often in the design community we like to jump right into the design stage of a project, relying on inspiration or chance to help us, but taking a moment to research can lead to better decisions, better designs and most importantly better websites.

There are still some things that need my attention until I can relax, including the measure in blog posts (feel a bit short to anyone else?), IE6 testing and finally I need to build the portfolio section (and get rid of the ‘coming soon…’ placeholders). I’m holding off on the latter until I get a few jobs under my belt.

In the meantime please take a look around, feel free to critique and report bugs to your heart’s content