Posts about News

Today, I’m launching Quick Takes and Fresh Perspective design reviews. Quick Takes are 30-minute video reviews for website owners, while Fresh Perspective is a one-hour private video consultation for designers and developers.

When I wrote recently about the design work I’d like to do in the year ahead, I neglected to mention one important area that I’d like to concentrate on. That’s mentoring designers and helping them improve their skills and develop their careers in design.

Since I launched Contract Killer, I’ve lost track of the number of times people have asked me to make a proposal template for web designers and developers. I’m not sure why it took me so damn long, but today I’m launching “Killer Proposals.”

When I first shared my Contract Killer in 2008, I had no idea so many people would use it. It became the most visited page on my website. After being free for thirteen years, in 2021 Contract Killer became a paid-for template. Now, there’s an update, the biggest since 2008.

This time last year, I wrapped up my Director of Product Design contract at Nozomi Networks. That was a big change but also an opportunity to evaluate what I’d enjoyed about the role and what I missed from more varied design projects.

Another front cover from the Daily Star newspaper: “Our favourite sane politician just 4 POINTS behind Rishi Sunak who may lose his seat.”

A few weeks ago, BBC Question Time’s Fiona Bruce announced the programme was coming to nearby Chester, so I filled in the online form and applied to be in the audience. I completely forgot about applying until a researcher phoned me the day before the show and asked if I were still available. I was.

I missed the exact date, but a few days ago, my blog turned 20. I’m not up there with Jeffrey or Jeremy, who’ve blogged consistently for even longer—I neglected my blog for periods of time, and posting was often irregular—but still, here we are. It’s twenty years since my first post.

I’m tending and posting to my blog a little more since the recent redesign and as part of that effort, I’ve brought back two very old-fashioned things: A blog roll and an RSS feed.

It’s been almost a year since I left Nozomi Networks, and between now and then, I’ve had plenty of time to think about the types of projects I would like to work on. I learned a lot from working alongside developers building products, but my passion has always been for using design to communicate ideas and messages, not simply problem-solving.

Although there have been periods over the past few years where I’ve worked as part of a team, I’ve mainly worked by myself, at home. My wife has a keen eye for detail and often has off-the-wall ideas. My clients are also wonderful, and they seem to appreciate my process, which involves talking every day and sharing work as it develops. But there have often been times when I’ve felt working mostly alone was isolating.

For 35 weeks every year—three weeks per month—I work with Nozomi Networks guiding the creative direction and experience design of their cyber security products. The team is growing, so we’re looking for a product designer to join us.

Although I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like, I enjoy working with startups. So, I was thrilled to be asked to work on a website design for Worrysome, a new business which aims to take the worry out of worrying.

Late last year, I sat down for an hour with Steve Folland to talk about “blagging and learning” on the Being Freelance podcast. The episode’s now available and, to be honest, it’s the best podcast interview I’ve done for a long while.

Dave Letorey has an Isolation Station project where he’s interviewing industry people about their favourite music in a Desert Island Discs style. Last Friday he asked me to join him to talk about some music which is important to me. It was a fun forty minutes.

While articles about how to use CSS Grid and Flexbox are common, when and why to use them is hardly ever discussed. Very few people are taught design fundamentals or see inspiring examples to learn from. Through my series of “Inspired design decisions“ magazines, I plan to change that.

It always baffled me that with a name like Smashing Magazine, my friends at Smashing hadn’t published a, errr, magazine. Well, now they have.

I’ve just finished my third (in my series of 12) Inspired Design Decisions webinars for Smashing Magazine. This month, I spoke about how to combine consistency with variety to create a consistent experience of a design across an entire product, publication, or website.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow afternoon (May 21st,) and sitting down with Smashing Magazine’s Vitaly Friedman for the second of my Inspired Design Decisions webinars, exclusive for Smashing members. This webinar is my deepest dive so far into the concept of compound grids and how to use them.

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.

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.

Everyone loved stickers, right? And t-shirts? Right again. And gorillas? Of course you do, especially Errol. Now you can stick Errol stickers on the things you stick stickers on and proudly wear Errol on your chest. (Chest beating optional.)

One of the reasons for my redesigning this website was to make it more appropriate for the work I’ve been making most recently, but also as an opportunity for it to better reflect me as a person. A big part of that was the writing that I did in what I think of as my blogging ‘heyday.’