An event re-capped

James Box’s Presentations from both SkillSwap and WDC were excellent. The former of the the two is available here. I’d also like to thank James for my new-found Nabaztag obsession. Quite what my actual pet rabbit will make of him is yet to be seen.

Joe Leech’s short but insightful presentation on user-testing was brilliant and I learnt a lot in a short space of time. He’s also a top bloke.

Patrick Lauke’s rants were great too. Especially enjoyed his presentation at SkillSwap and I spent the next day adding :focus and :active elements to my page in places I had never even considered.

Chris Garrett’s talk on beyond the browser was an interesting one. It constantly amazes me what is possible with the technology we have and Chris really knows his onions.

Elliot Jay Stocks, Elliott Kember, Dan Williams, Dan Donald and John Gibbins’s panel was great and I think the students really appreciated having great insights from top professionals. I particularly enjoyed hearing about topics as broad-ranging as Google Chrome to Freelancing.

Jon Tan, Mel Kirk, Rick Hurst, Joe Leech and Myself spent the last 45mins of the day on a panel discussing the merits of working in the South West and career direction. It was a cool experience for me and I really enjoyed sitting along side people I have respected for such a long time. I hope I made a valid contribution, some of the advice dispensed by my fellow panelists was absolute gold dust. (by-the-by I forgot to name drop Jon Hicks as an inspiration, I had a total mind blank when we were asked who to watch out for)

A personal thank you to…

Alex and Dan for putting it all together and being so enthusiastic about everything, it’s great to see such passion and devotion.

Jon Tan for being a total star and keeping me all up-to-date with what was going on leading up to the event and for also organising a great post-event meal and drinks.

Elliot Jay Stocks for being truly great company and for shouting Myself, Chris and Alex a lovely breakfast at the Lounge, North Street on a damp, cider-induced-hangover-riddled Thursday morning.

Chris Garrett for not only being a really nice guy, but for suggesting the ‘Bristol-geek-out’ pub quiz team. An idea I think would be cool to run with if we can recruit a few more members.

John Gibbins, Joe Leech, Dan Williams, Mel Kirk, Rick Hurst, Dan Donald, Elliott Kember,  James Box, Patrick Lauke and anyone else who shared a chin-wag over a beer. It was great to meet you all, the only shame for me was I didn’t get to speak with some of you for as long as I would have liked too.

Links from elsewhere

• James Box’s presentation from SkillSwap and from WDC
• Dan Donald’s WDC round-up
• Jon Tan’s Photos on Flickr - (I’ve used one for this article)
  
• Elliot Jay Stocks’ round-up

With the progression of web 2.0 we’ve seen awesome functionality, great usability and lots of shiny-shiny sites, but we’ve still been stuck with a limited amount of fonts. Now that is slowly changing with the @font-face attribute (safari 3.1 support only I think), and flash replacement but it strikes me that we are still not using the few fonts we can play with to their full potential. So today Ladies and Gents, I present the case for these, somewhat under-used gems:

Georgia, you have the floor

I’ve seen quite a rise in sites using Georgia. alistapart & Matt are two notable examples. Georgia is a really nice serif font which looks especially good large and bold.

Rockwell, rocks, well

It’s installed on around 60% of computers so it has a case to be used at the top of a font-stack as it provides a nice alternative to Georgia, Times, Verdana or Courier. I’ve used it on this site for the larger headings. The only other site I’ve seen this used on is Sticky Eyes, though there are probably a lot more sites using it.

Palatino Linotype / Palatino

I really like this font. Jon Tan uses it so thats already a huge amount of kudos thrown its way. It’s installed on around 97% of P.C’s and about 80% of macs so thats another good case for using it. Again, put it at the top of your font-stack as some users still won’t have it installed.

Century Gothic – One for the Goths

With installation on 85% of P.C’s but unfortunately only around 50% of macs be sure to use this one carefully. It is a really nice, classic font that is used quite a lot off line. Once again include it at the top of your font-stack just in case some users don’t have it installed.

Getting the most from font stacks

Nathan wrote a nice article here on font-stacks which is a really good read. Taking his ideas on board here are my suggestions for using the above fonts in a stack. Remember, if the font has white space it needs to be in speech-marks.

For Georgia as the main font

• Georgia, Times, “Times New Roman”, serif
• Georgia, Palatino, “Palatino Linotype”, Times, “Times New Roman”, serif

For Rockwell as the main font

• Rockwell, “Courier New”, Courier, Georgia, Times, “Times New Roman”, serif

For Palatino as the main font

• Palatino, “Palatino Linotype”, Georgia, Times, “Times New Roman”, serif

For Century Gothic as the main font

• “Century Gothic”, “Apple Gothic”, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif

Fun with fonts, but please don’t encourage Comic Sans

*Font stats taken from here. Correct as of July 2008

Then two weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to come up with a design for a site he was working on. The client had provided detailed wire-frames of each page and had gone into some detail as to what was wanted where. “Great, this is clearly someone who has a clear idea about what they are after” I thought. So why then did I turn down the job?

1. I asked questions about what the client needed and didn’t like the response I got back. As a designer I crave creative license and I try to incorporate the client’s needs in a creative and imaginative way. When asking initially how set in stone the wire-frames were I was told ‘100%’. This meant I couldn’t move things around and find a visual balance or explore different, or interesting solutions.

2. Designers are not photoshop monkeys and can’t produce groundbreaking designs without being allowed some freedom. I’m not suggesting that we should get free run of every decision and never be open to debate, but its a two way street. If you are told “this goes here, looks like this, is this big and should be white” where does that leave you. Colouring in is the answer.

3. No room for maneuver. If your client won’t budge an inch or be open to your input then this renders your job pretty much pointless. Experienced designers know what they are talking about and stay on top of current trends. Their input is invaluable to the success of your site. Visitors to your site will judge with their eyes and vote with their feet if the look isn’t up to scratch.

I’m not saying this client is wrong to be so rigid in their approach, hey its their money, it’s just not a project I want to take on. I’m not interested in making work that I’m not proud of and I’m certainly not a monkey.