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.

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.

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.

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.

Last week I wrote about designing standfirst paragraphs, because they’re something which website designers frequently overlook. I said “don’t confuse a standfirst with a’lead’ (or lede) paragraph” and several people asked me to clarify the difference.

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 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.

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.