Born 29th October 2011. Words can’t describe the feeling of becoming a parent.

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

Normally I wouldn’t shout my mouth off about a simple compliment, but working in government recently hasn’t been easy, and it made my (and my team’s) week.

Last week I attended New Adventures in Web Design 2011, and I wanted to write a few thoughts about the day. Instead of a blow-by-blow account I’m going to share what I thought made this conference so special, and why I will be attending again. The photos used in this post are all from the Flickr group pool.

The Location

Nottingham is a university city with a vibrant creative community but most importantly it’s located in Central England. This means that those of us who don’t live in the south-east are able to attend without take a week off work and learning what an Oyster card is. It’s also got the East Midlands airport nearby, meaning international attendees are accounted for too.

The Venue

The Albert Hall is a spectacular venue. I heard it criticised by a few for the size of the foyer area during breaks, but I liked that you were elbow to elbow with web geeks. I attended alone, but managed to speak to loads of great people because, in most part, we were forced together in the cosy foyer.

The Talks

Throughout all of the talks I didn’t see one line of code. I don’t go to a conference to learn specifics and take diligent notes, I go to be influenced and inspired by industry leaders. Talks were time-boxed to just 30 minutes, meaning they were lean, focused, efficient and left me wanting more.

The Community

Both before and after the event it felt like the whole web design community had been talking about this conference. Simon Collison is a prominent member of the web design community and we all wanted to see him succeed. While there, everyone from the attendees and volunteers to the speakers were approachable, friendly and always smiling.

It’s not all great though, as it turns out there is no way to transfer an app purchase to the new app store, meaning you miss out on auto updates and other benefits unless you repurchase the license. So the iLife 11 upgrade I bought in October will have to stay in application limbo until the next paid-for upgrade.

As has become the usual from Apple, bittersweet.

I got married, moved house and we are about to go to Australia for three weeks. I haven’t done anything since relaunching my site and probably won’t until the new year – but fear not.

In 2011 I will return and I will be taking on some more freelance jobs, I’m pumped about web design at the moment having just read through Andy Clarke‘s book, Hardboiled web design and am getting excited already.

Here’s to next year!

So what’s new?

• A brand new portfolio section – it’s not particularly populous at the moment, but it’s a place to show all my personal and freelance work
• Much simpler layout and design – when I made version 1 it didn’t have a clear purpose, I wasn’t sure how much freelance work I wanted and how much I would be writing so the site always struggled with split personality. Hopefully that will end now
• No more contact form mess – if you want to contact me email me martin[at]mynameismartin.com or send me a tweet @thenameismartin
• Typekit
• and more to come…

As always I’m open to your feedback, this site will always be a work in progress. I’ll be following shortly with a post about some of my design decisions and will upload a few early designs.

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.

• Cross browser testing – I have no idea what it looks like in IE6 or 7 or Firefox pre 3.6
• Font stacks – The ampersand in the logo is Palatino, I need to do some research into how widely available that font is
• Build an RSVP form

Anyways, enjoy and be sure to feedback

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