Posts about News

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.’

Starting today, Geek Mental Help Week is a week-long series of articles, blog posts, conversations, podcasts and events across the web about mental health issues, how to help people who suffer, and those who care for us.

It’s been a question that I’ve been asked a lot over the past couple of weeks in the run up to this year’s Geek Mental Help Week, so I thought that I’d explain in more than Twitter’s 140 characters.

Geek Mental Help Week starts next Monday and I’m very happy to say that there are several events happening during the week.

Here’s the skinny. Geek Mental Help Week is happening again during the week of October 3^rd 2016 and I think that it’s going to be the best one yet.

Okay, okay. I know. No episodes of my Unfinished Business podcast for a few months. I’m really sorry about that.

It looks like Geek Mental Help Week 2015 is getting off to a good start with two mental health related events, both happening on Thursday evening.

Last year’s Geek Mental Help Week was, by all accounts, well received and a terrific success. Despite the fact that we pulled it together with sticky tape and string, people told their stories about how mental health issues had affected them and the people who care for them. Those stories were honest and humbling to everyone who read them. I hope that next week, Geek Mental Help Week 2015 can do something similar.

I have some very special news to announce about my book. It’s a brand new Fifth Anniversary Edition of Hardboiled ’Web Design that’s published by Smashing Magazine.

Hot on the heels of announcing the new Hardboiled Web Design Fifth Anniversary Edition, I’m also incredibly excited and nervous to let you know about three new Hardboiled Web Design books that will be published throughout the course of next year. We’re calling them ‘Hardboiled Web Design Shots.’