Last year, Rachel Andrew wrote an article that took a new look at CSS Shapes in which she reintroduced readers to the basics of using CSS Shapes. In a new tutorial for Smashing Magazine, I expand on the topic of Art Direction for the Web with CSS Shapes to create exciting and inspired new design ideas.

I’ve written plenty of times before about how important it can be to look offline for inspiration to improve the things we make online. Last year, a few friends and I met in London for an inspiring visit to the Photographers Gallery.

To help celebrate the launch of Art Direction For The Web, Smashing TV’s Bruce, Scott and I spent an hour talking about my new book. The video from that conversation is now on the YouTube.

This Art Direction for the Web video course is for web designers and developers who want to understand art direction and how to make digital products and websites better.

As I mentioned on Friday, it’s taken much, much longer to produce, and is itself much, much longer than I’d planned, but my fourth book, Art Direction for the Web, will be published tomorrow. Here’s a little more about what you’ll find in the book’s almost 350 pages.

Did you buy my Art Direction for the Web video course on Vimeo? If you did, you’re entitled to free copies of the ePub, Amazon Kindle, and PDF versions of my new Art Direction for the Web book.

It’s taken much, much longer to produce, and is itself much, much longer than I’d planned, but my fourth book, Art Direction for the Web, will, at last, be published on on Tuesday 26th March by my friends at Smashing Magazine. Here’s the story behind how it happened.

I didn’t study graphic arts when I was at art school in the ’80s, but I’ve been doing a lot of catching up recently. A few years ago, I became incredibly bored with what was passing for creative design on the web at the time, and so I started to look elsewhere for inspiration for my work.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s the week you’re bombarded with discounts on everything from electric toothbrushes to vacuum cleaner bags, but somehow never the things you want. Well, that’s about to change my friends because this weekend only, I’m offering you up to 50^% off my Art Direction for the Web video course on Vimeo.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working hard on a new ‘Art Direction for the Web’ video course to accompany my new book and I’m pleased to announce it’s now available to buy on Vimeo and watch on Skillshare.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working hard on a new Art Direction for the Web video course to accompany my new book. Today, I wanted to share a preview and the first episode of nine in the course.

Designers frequently overlook a few design elements if they remember them at all. Recently, I’ve noticed that the styles of typographic details like bylines, citations, dates and times are more often than not pulled from frameworks and pattern libraries and receive very little original thought.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction Rob Weychert.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction Stephen Hay.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with ProPublica Design Director, David Sleight.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction and CSS Grid with Rachel Andrew.

It’s been a while since I’ve written seriously, but since I started working on my new ‘Art directing for the web’ book, I’ve got the bug. So when Smashing Magazine asked me to write for them again, I couldn’t resist. My latest article, on ‘Art Directing For The Web With CSS Grid Template Areas’ was published today and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. You can read it here.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with Super Friendly, Dan Mall.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this new season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m be discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with former creative director at The Guardian, Mark Porter.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve written a new talk to help me cope with my obsession with making layouts that are different from what we mostly see on the web these days. It’s called ‘Art Directing the Web’ because in the talk I make the point that we should make different layouts not just for difference sake, but to better communicate the meaning of our content and to tell better stories.

I’ve joked before that unless a conference line-up includes Harry Roberts and Sara Soueidan it’s a Code Of Conduct violation. Or something like that. So oh how I laughed when earlier this year I was asked to join them on stage at Frontend Conf in Zurich, Switzerland.