19th August, 2011
This article was commissioned for the first edition of The Manual.
As the web matures, great designers are distinguished not by conviction but by the ability to look beyond the tools at hand, to inquire deeply, and to define a lexicon for the field.
19th August, 2011
This article was commissioned for the first edition of The Manual.
Marked by intense focus and mutual understanding, a conversation with artist Ian Breakwell yields a necessary breakthrough and sets the foundation for a creative path.
18th August, 2011
I have been fortunate enough to contribute to numerous publications in my time, but without doubt the contribution I’m most proud of kicks off the beautiful and important first edition of The Manual.
26th January, 2011
After six months of planning and an ever-increasing buzz, the day finally came when 650 web designers descended on Nottingham for the very first New Adventures event. I’m still exhausted and frantically evaluating it all, but now seems like a good time to sum up the highs and the lows of this bold new adventure.
25th January, 2011
Following on from New Adventures, which finally happened last week, I want to write a series of short posts about the nuts and bolts. Firstly, I’d like to explain a little about the name, the newspaper, and the inspiration for the cover artwork.
25th January, 2011
A number of folks have asked why the New Adventures logo has so many variants, and how it all works together. So, here’s a post exploring the final logo and logotype variants we ended up with after a lengthy process.
21st January, 2011
This editorial was written for the New Adventures newspaper, January 2011.
In June last year, I was sat at the back of Greg Wood’s editorial design talk in San Francisco. The workshop content itself was really valuable, but the group discussion that followed was a revelation.
2nd January, 2011
I’d been hesitant about writing a review of my 2010, partly because it is something I’ve avoided each year, and also because I had such a brilliant and eventful twelve months that I hate the idea of appearing arrogant or self-indulgent. Ultimately, I decided that this would be something I’d like to reflect upon at a later date, or might be of use to someone else. So for those reasons, I think it’s justified.
2nd January, 2011
I used to write often about music for this journal. Those days of turning sounds into words have slipped by, but I still consume new music as eagerly as I did at any other time in my life. Like many, I cannot help but compile lists, and I shall not apologise for it either. Here, for your pleasure, are my top albums, songs, and performances of 2010.
16th December, 2010
This article was commissioned for 24 Ways.
You could say that we design to communicate, and that we seek emotive responses. It sounds straightforward, and it can be, but leaving it to chance isn’t wise. Many wander into web design without formal training, and whilst that certainly isn’t essential, we owe it to ourselves to draw on wider influences, learn from the past, and think smarter.
28th October, 2010
The folks at Campaign Monitor approached me and a number of other designers earlier this year with a special project in mind. The results finally launched last week, delivering a number of free templates for anyone to use.
28th October, 2010
Back in May (during a drunken Beer Friday in New York’s DUMBO) my friends Chris and Cameron outlined their plan to put on a unique event for the web community. If they pulled it off, it would be fantastic. Well, they did it, and the result was the incredible Brooklyn Beta.
8th September, 2010
Last week I ran a workshop for twenty-seven people at dConstruct, entitled Defining A Flexible Process. It was a real honour to be invited to put this together by my friends at Clearleft, and to once again visit that odd place they call Brighton.
31st August, 2010
I was commissioned to write this preface for the book Hardboiled Web Design, published by Five Simple Steps.
Every web designer harbours tales of frustration, limitation and despair. Ours is a visually creative discipline, yet it requires skills or knowledge beyond mere manipulation of form, shape, language, colour, message and meaning.
21st March, 2010
What follows is a frankly massive essay in note form. These are the notes I made to justify the aims of Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design—a presentation I did for the FOWD Tour in Leeds, September 2009. Thus, there is a vast array of ideas, conclusions and speculations with regard to the future of our industry. Take it with a pinch of salt, and think of this as a conversation, and not a manifesto.