Category: Events

Last week, I hosted what I plan to be the first in an ongoing series of online workshops. Overall, the event went well, and here’s what I learned and how I’ll improve things next time.

This workshop is for designers who want to break free from the gridlock and create layouts that feel bold, expressive, and uniquely theirs, without losing clarity or usability.

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.

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.

Speaking at conferences has been one of the best things that I’ve done over the past decade plus some. Not just the standing on stage doing the talking part, and the traveling to fabulous places (and Scarborough) part, but the coming up with stories to tell and lessons to teach part too.

I gave a new talk on designing inspired style guides last week at Design Exchange Nottingham. It was a really good night, a fabulous audience which was double their normal attendance and I also got the chance to sink a few drinks with my old friend Harry. It’s very likely that I won’t give this talk again in Europe this year, and I wanted to share it with more people, so I’ve written a transcript to accompany the slides. NB: This page contains 8Mb of images. I’ve optimised them as much as possible, but you probably don’t want to load this page using your mobile data plan.

Flights are booked and visas are in hand * and I’m getting very excited, because in only a few weeks, Sue and I are heading back to Australia to join Espen, Jina and Una, as well as our friends in Perth at the very first Mixin conference.

Do you know where you were or what you were doing exactly ten years ago (next week?) I do. I was speaking at my first, in fact the first Web Directions conference in Sydney, Australia. (I gave a talk called ‘Creating Inspired Design’ and there’s audio of it if you’re interested in listening.)

When we were in Australia earlier this year, we stopped in Sydney to speak at John Allsopp’s Respond Conference and to teach a workshop. A few weeks before those events, John emailed me: The folks at SydCSS are fantastic supporters of our events, and last year we did a couple of shared events with them. I’ve dobbed you and I to do a short presentation (it will be the night of Respond.)

I’ve always enjoyed attending the Shropgeek (R)Evolution events in the past and been slightly jealous of the people that Kirsty’s asked to speak. This year, I couldn’t be happier that she’s asked me to do the final talk of the final (R)Evolution conference on September 25th in beautiful Shrewsbury.

Last week, Creative Bloq published Noah Stokes’article on “ Why web design is losing its soul.” It’s a good read on exactly the same subject that I’ve been talking about since I spoke at Beyond Tellerrand in Berlin last year.

I have more than a soft spot for Australia. It’s where I’d live if that were possible and where I can see myself retiring to in, you know, twenty or so years. Luckily, I’m going back to Australia long before that, this March in fact, to speak at the fabulous Respond conference and to take my CSS For Responsive Web Design workshop on the road to Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth, as well as Sydney itself.

Marc Thiele’s started posting videos from his excellent Beyond Tellerrand event in Berlin last month.

For someone who hasn’t travelled or done much conference speaking for the last two years, this past three weeks have been pretty busy with both. I’ve spoken at three conferences and hosted two workshops and I enjoyed every one.

Last years’ Handheld Conference in Cardiff was an incredible event. A bearded me even got to push a dalek with my friend Jon, as well as deliver a talk and host a sell-out workshop. This November I’ll be back in Cardiff for Handheld’s successor, The Web Is… I’m a last minute addition to the speaker line-up (again) and back workshopping with a new ‘CSS3 For Responsive Web Design’ workshop.

In all my travels I’ve not yet been to Berlin. That’s changing in November when I’ll be appearing at the fabulous beyond tellerrand.

Smashing Magazine have published an (edited for print) transcript of the ‘A Modern Designer’s Canvas’ talk that I gave at both An Event Apart in Atlanta and Smashing Conference last week in Oxford.

The final Handheld conference in Cardiff last November was one of the best, and most memorable, that I’ve ever spoken at and attended. Standing on the largest stage in Europe in-front of 1200 people, pushing a dalek onto the stage with my friend Jon, the Welsh male voice choir, it was a wonderful day.

While we’re on the subject of unexpected conference talks, I’m stepping in to fill Sarah Parmenter’s high heeled shoes at Handheld Conference this month as Sarah’s had to unfortunately cancel.

I can’t quite believe I just wrote that, I’m pinching myself to make sure it’s still true. And it is. Next February, we’ll be heading out to Georgia again where I’m speaking once again at An Event Apart in Atlanta.

I thoroughly enjoyed hosting another Fashionably flexible responsive web design workshop at New Adventures on Wednesday. I got the feeling that everyone enjoyed the day. I know that I did.

A couple of months ago, Smashing Magazine’s Vitaly Friedman, Marc Thiele and I were talking over email when he asked if I’d fill an open speaking slot at Smashing Conference. I was already hosting two ‘Fashionably Flexible Responsive Design’ workshops there, so I hesitated because, as you might remember, I’m cutting down the number of conferences I speak at and I’d planned to speak at only An Event Apart in Austin this year.

From my talk today at An Event Apart in Austin.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch my Hardboiled Web Design talk at a conference this year, your luck just came in. Those fine chaps at CodeWorx have posted a high quality video of the entire talk. I’ll post a text transcript and slides from the talk later this week.

I’m really pleased that I can announce that, along with a formidable cast of old pros, I’ll be speaking at @media2009 in London on 25th and 26th of June. This will, incredibly, be the sixth time that I’ve spoken at @media (2005, 2006, 2007 (twice), 2008 and now 2009) and this year I’ll be talking about something a little different.