Blogging And All That Malarkey

Method in my modness (designing Stuff and Nonsense 2009)

It’s here — months in the planning and weeks in the making — the new Stuff and Nonsense. The new design is a continuation of my efforts to blend professional and personal styles into a brand that is as much about my personality and interests as it is about our work.

From the home page down, the new Stuff and Nonsense builds on the previous design, including Kevin Cornell‘s wonderful illustrations and hand-drawn, 1950’s motoring badge logo. The site’s main navigation and footer share DNA with my recent redesigns of For A Beautiful Web and Transcending CSS.

The new Stuff and Nonsense home page 2009

Stuff and Nonsense home page 2007–2009

Malarkey Rides Again

Remember my old blog? The big news? And All That Malarkey is back. I couldn’t have known when I (hastily) took the site offline, how much I would miss it. Other people missed it too and the archives still receive enough traffic to make me glad that I have a fantastic relationship with my hosting company. Now it’s time to rev up the engine on the old girl again.

And All That Malarkey 2004–2007

The new And All That Malarkey borrows heavily from the old, including the quirky three column layout (now fully liquid), found images and entry issue numbers (now repurposed as short URL links).

The new And All That Malarkey 2009

Slowly but surely, five years of blog entries and their comments are being brought into our ExpressionEngine publishing system (more on that in just a moment). Owen Gregory has excelled himself (again) in implementing a dual-purpose entry template. One design is for new entries.

New blog entries

The other design is for older entries prior to 2007 and this harks back to the full modness of All That Malarkey but stills lives well alongside the new design.

Older blog entries

ExpressionEngine

The new Stuff and Nonsense site shares DNA with both For A Beautiful Web and Transcending CSS. All are built on a single ExpressionEngine Multiple Site Manager installation that has allowed me to share templates and content across all three sites. As an author and as a business person, this not only makes life easier but also helps to serve my content to different audiences.

ExpressionEngine made it simple to serve only relevant categories of content to a particular site, while some are shared across all three sites. Plus, when you leave a comment on one site it will appear on them all, with a link back to the site specific entry you commented on.

Feeds

With my three sites in place, it was time to consolidate RSS and Atom feeds. Relevant blog entry and master class dates feeds will continue on For A Beautiful Web. But if you want the full, all you can eat buffet of my content, there are new feeds here at Stuff and Nonsense. I hope you’ll update to the new feeds.

A little of our recent work

I’ve never been entirely happy with the work portfolio on any of my sites. Often the temptation when making a web design portfolio is to include screen captures that never truly reflect the fact that we design web pages. This time I have largely abandoned screen captures and instead designed art directed portfolio panels that better illustrate the real character of the projects that we work on. It’s a different approach and I’ll be very interested in hearing what readers (and clients) make of it.

Our work, portfolio panels

Revved up

There is still plenty of work to be done on the site, but for now I’m revved up about having a new ride. Kick the tires, just don’t scratch my paintwork.

Leave your comment

Luc

August 27 2009 @ 12:48am #

Very nice. Very. I’m trying to move to a more spaced-out design style myself (and convince clients that scrolling is OK), and yours is a very nice example to add to as ammunition.

Ryan Merrill

August 27 2009 @ 12:51am #

Congrats on the new design. It looks great! The CSS3 elements are quite nice.

I’m really digging your portfolio panels. A great idea to highlight your work.

Wez Maynard

August 27 2009 @ 01:01am #

Fantastic stuff Andy - carefully thought out portfolio sections, especially those as eloquently designed as yours, are going to be huge gallery fodder in the next year or two, really takes your design up another notch.

Great re-design. :)

Wladimir

August 27 2009 @ 01:11am #

Very well done Andy, love the new portfolio and blog pages.

Rich

August 27 2009 @ 01:15am #

Andy, the portfolio area is a highlight of the site for sure, nice little touch with the box shadow hover too.

Was the portfolio area inspired by Greg Wood and Jason Santa Maria?

Jonathan Schofield

August 27 2009 @ 01:24am #

Much to love and good to see the And All That Malarkey imagery back (Judas Priest et al).

Interested to know why the short url is published as http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1142 rather than http://stno.me/s/1142 ?

Also interested to know why no use of shorturl auto-discovery. Do you think that’s a no go, Andy?

Andy Clarke

August 27 2009 @ 01:37am #

@Rich:Was the portfolio area inspired by Greg Wood and Jason Santa Maria?

— Absolutely. Greg Wood has been doing some amazing art directed work recently.

@Jonathan Schofield:Interested to know why the short url is published as http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/s/1142 rather than http://stno.me/s/1142 Also interested to know why no use of shorturl auto-discovery. Do you think that’s a no go, Andy?

I’m using a version of Simon Collison’s shortener plugin for Expression Engine which currently won’t allow me to use an external domain. stno.me is built on Lessn by Shaun Inman and at the moment I don’t have an automatic way to use that URL on the site.

Honestly, I’ve not read enough about shorturl auto-discovery to know what to do and how. One day I hope.

Jonathan Schofield

August 27 2009 @ 02:04am #

Thanks, Andy. In case you missed it, Kevin Yank wrote about auto discovery on Sitepoint. Seems pretty straightforward but don’t know if Twitter will respect it.

Josh

August 27 2009 @ 02:53am #

Lovely stuff, you talented gink. I’m going to be poring over the innards.

Some bits of the ‘copy’ don’t make perfect sense to the bleary-eyed me. For example: ‘Our clients have and do include…’

Chris Cressman

August 27 2009 @ 03:15am #

Honestly, I’ve not read enough about shorturl auto-discovery to know what to do and how. One day I hope.

Thanks for making me feel human. It’s so hard to stay on top of everything. The site is amazing - sure to get a mention at our monthly Refresh group, just like most of the stuff you do. Thanks for the inspiration!

Wladimir

August 27 2009 @ 03:45am #

@Andy - been looking at your old site home page again and noticed a small sketch of you which used to be in the bottom right hand corner of your footer. Personally I would stick that back in as the illustrations are really excellent and unique.

Zoe Gillenwater

August 27 2009 @ 04:47am #

Excellent work, Andy! You just know I’m going to love a perfectly executed liquid layout of course. :-)

Scott Johnson

August 27 2009 @ 05:12am #

I’m really liking the new, brighter red that you’re using. Nice work all around. Congrats on releasing the new designs.

Michael Fink

August 27 2009 @ 03:01pm #

Much to like in the changes.

But the reflection of Kevin Cornell’s lovely scooter illustration on And All That Malarkey?

There’s nothing nice about a ‘reflection’ of a supposed three dimensional object which has been affected simply by flipping the image at the best of times, but to do it to one of Cornell’s lovely understated pieces seems particularly grievous. Our poor hero now looks like he’s developed a penchant for doing nose-stands at traffic lights.

Or have I simply missed some inside joke about 2.0 shininess?

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