Newquay 2004

World’s Stupid-est Laws

Edward Scissorhands

Release a new version of this site. Yes, you read that right. Even though I redesigned just a few months ago and put a considerable amount of time (i.e: too much time) into the project, I’m still not happy with the outcome, and as the months have gone on, I’ve once again found myself yearning for something new.

That got me thinking.

As designers were tasked with creating an idea and a public face to other people’s businesses and identities, but how would another designer  approach branding us?

Because we’re always the ones doing we’re never created for. That is to say, we never really analyse & research ourselves to the same extent as we would a client and their audience.

And how can we? Sure we can be self-critics (show me a designer who isn’t) and we can try and be impartial and objective about representing who we are, but how do our peers, friends and family define us? Ultimatley, how would they design us?

An idea

So here’s my thinking. What if, in 2010, we design one thing for one of our peers – and by that I mean for them, not their clients, friends, family, pets – and in return they do the same for us. I for one find the idea interesting enough to persue, maybe you do too.

Just once I’d like to be the one being designed for, and see the process from the other side of the fence.

Who knows, it may even open my eyes to a few things along the way.

10/4 over and out – Pete

If you follow me on twitter, you’ll be fed up with hearing this. For those who haven’t, over the last few months I’ve been working almost non-stop with the IGCP to re-design, build and launch their new website. We’ll we went live last month and I think we’re all pretty pleased with it. The guys were a dream to work with and put a lot of faith in me which I can only say thank you for.

I’d also like to say how grateful I am, and how lucky I feel, that I got to go to Rwanda and see the Gorillas myself. I spend 6 wonderful days training the team and touring through Kigali, Gisenyi and Musanse and I’d recommend a trip to anyone interested in seeing a beautiful country, even if it is one that has such a strong sigma still attached to it. Although we must never forget what happened there,  we must let those images go as our portrait of Rwanda, as it is, truly, a fantastic country.

A swan song

Due to the fact I’m not writing, but also to the fact I’m taking on more and more ‘out of hours’ work I’ve decided to re-jig things a little bit in terms of blogging and work. In a few months time I’ll be switching out all of my portfolio stuff to blackrabb.it. This will leave this site free for blogging an musings which I’ve felt for sometime now should run apart from my portfolio stuff.

I’ll still be available to do sites and graphics, you’ll still deal with me and things behind the scenes won’t change much, I just feel this is the right time to split the two sides of my personal design brand.

Nice big link Bristol Design Festival »

So what is it all about then?

The Bristol Design Festival is a celebration of creativity in Bristol and the South West.

Through a unique and exciting programme of exhibitions, seminars, workshops and competitions we aim to give Bristol and the South West the recognition it deserves as a hub of creative excellence in the UK. The Bristol Design Festival encourages the participation of members of the public and designers from all levels, not just design professionals and businesses.

Industrial & Product Design, Graphic Design, The Crafts, Digital Design, Animation, Architecture, Sculpture, Fashion, Furniture, Illustration, Graffiti and more…

How you can get involved

1. Sponsor the event
2. Exhibit at the event for as little as £25
3. Volunteer to help out at the event or even just spread the word
4. Become a supporter

In addition you can follow @Bristol_Design on twitter and check out their blog. I’ll be blogging about the event next Sunday so expect pictures and ramblings there after.

If you’re around between the 5-11 next month, do come down. If you bump into me, mines a Peroni

Over and out

Othello is a completely free, out-of-the-box solution for wordpress and is perfect for entry level users. That’s not to say it’s basic however, in-fact it’s far from it.

Othello boasts advanced css3 webkit/mozilla features, wordpress widget support, banner advertising space, basic SEO optimisation & a simple set up process.

Technical features

• For Wordpress 2.7.1 and above
• Wordpress widget enabled
• Default widgets pre-styled (excluding the calendar widget) for fast set-up
• Based on the 960 grid system but written in em’s for better accessibility
• Written in valid xhtml strict and styled using css2/3
• Advanced webkit and mozilla features including animated transitions, rounded corners, opacity and rgba colours
• Semantically structured with basic SEO requirements met
• Latest versions of Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, & Internet Explorer are supported
• Internet Explorer 6 is supported in a visually limited, but still usable fashion.
• Basic accessibility requirements met and in most places exceeded
• Plays well with plugins
• Released for free under creative commons license, share and share alike.

Setting it up

Othello is built to work almost straight out of the box, however there are still a few steps to undertake to get it up and running.

1. Open up the header.php file and add your own 468×60 banner. Save
2. Replace the default logo (logo-simple.gif) in the /img/ folder with your logo.  Save.
3. Upload the Othello theme folder to wp-content/themes.
4. Upload the included plugins to wp-content/plugins.
5. Login to wordpress and activate the theme.
6. Activate the required plugins.
7. Open settings and select Similar Posts.
8. Set your preferences, 3 posts works well. All other defaults can stay as they are.
9. If you haven’t already, activate your widgets.
10. Get adding content, you’re ready to go.

You can Download Othello now from this page >>

{Below are some previews from Othello Version 1}

Logo and newest post listing

Sidebar widgets

Footer with meta content

Comment levels

Easy to alternate backgrounds

The winners are

1. Al Garnsworthy
2. Matt Jukes
3. Stuart Connellan

Congratulations guys, I’ll be in touch with your winnings shortly, thanks once again.

If you’re reading this please add a comment with a valid email address to this post (below) so I can send you a copy of the theme. Also, as promised, if you’d like me to add your logo into your copy of the theme for you please let me know (and also tell me where I can find a copy of it).

Thank you once again

New technology, new problems

Eye-tracking software, UX testing and A/B splits all have their merits, but paradoxically, they all have their problems too. Sometimes having too much information can be counter productive if used in the wrong way.

Just because it hasn’t been seen doesn’t mean it hasn’t been noticed… The work I’ve been doing with eye-tracking has shown that the users may look at something but they don’t focus on it or indeed talk about it but they keep it in their head until they do need it – Joe Leech

We as designers, businesses and high-end users can get so obsessed with making everything stand-out and glimmer that we forget that the whisper is often louder than the shout. Ask yourself, is a bigger search bar better than a well designed one & do we need that many ajax effects?

As the baddy in the Incredibles said ‘When eveyone’s super, no-one will be’, and that seems a very apt quote when applied to noisy web elements. In short then, decide what is important on a sliding scale. If your site is search driven then provide the emphasis on search, if it’s RSS Subscribers, then make dam sure they can find how to subscribe. Targeting the core action rather than every possible action will result in a better experience all round.

Put down the mouse

There are some users who will keyboard navigate your site; some partially & some fully. It’s easy to write off these users in a sweeping statement such as ‘They only make up 3% of my user base’ etc… but in essence, these users get a bad wrap for not having a mouse, how’s that fair?

It’s fairy easy to rectify too. Basic Tab-Key navigation uses :focus, or in IE’s case :active to display a changed state of an object. As we usually give links a :hover state, lets also apply a :focus and an :active state. That way users can see where they are by tabbing through the site too if the wish.

a:hover, a:focus, a:active { your styles;}

Just for good measure, apply that to form fields too:

input:focus, input:active { your styles; }

Suddenly your site is on it’s way to being much more accessible with just a few extra bits of code.

Hey where’d ya go?

When it comes to our users the goal seems clear, we must keep them on our website at all costs. There is a belief that opening an external link in a new window will keep a user on your site and if that means altering that user’s expectation of their web experience, then so be it.

… the links open in a new window. I’m not okay with that. I trust my readers to come back to my website, and I strongly believe I shouldn’t hinder their ability to navigate away from my website, and I see it as an insult to their intelligence, and breaks a bond of trust to modify their browser’s behaviour – Cameron Hunt (via Sam Brown)

It seems to me it comes down to trust & transparency. By trusting your users to return to your site by themselves you’re telling them that you believe your content is strong enough in itself for them to warrant a return visit without being reminded of where they were. If they don’t return (and some won’t) then maybe it’s down to the ’stickyness-less’ of your content and not dependent of which window the site opened in.

At the end of the day (sorry for the footballers analogy) it’s about control, and ultimately the user has it.

On a personal note, I’ll often skim read the first few paragraphs of an article such as this lengthy beauty early in the day, follow a few referenced links and come back to read the rest in full detail some hours later; or at several points during the day. Just because I followed a link out and didn’t immediatly return doesn’t mean I won’t, because I will, if the contents good.

*article image credit icanhascheezburger

1. Tweet often but not too often. Yes, if you’re on my tweet list I’m interested in you and in what you’re doing. I’m less interested however, in getting a live feed of your lunchtime activity every few minutes, about how much of your sandwich you’ve eaten.
2. Found something interesting posted by one of the people you’re following? If you want to re-tweet that link then it’s common courtesy to tell people who you heard it from. If your followers find it interesting they may very well find the original poster interesting too.
3. Keep text slang to a minimum if your tweets are aimed at people who are not well versed. ‘R u’, ‘u r’ etc are generally o.k as they are commonly accepted short-hand and read phonetically. Not everyone understands ROTFLMAO and LQTM however.
4. Follow people you know, respect or find interesting. Don’t follow anyone with the intent to sell them something, spam or hassle them. You’ll look stupid, you’ll be blocked and people will go out of their way to make sure their friends know to block you too. It’s a social network for gods sake.
5. Keep a lid on promotional tweets and mix them up with different stuff too. If all you use twitter for is to bring traffic to your site or promote a product people will get bored of you. Be personable, friendly and interesting. People respond to people in this environment, not corporations and sales-reps.

Remember this is all opinion, feel free to discuss, debate and contribute if you feel the need.

Here’s hoping for some interesting results.

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