Last week in the studio (CW38-26)

Last week was a little chaotic, with new windows installed throughout our cottage. But I still managed to get plenty done, including real progress on my upcoming book, Standout Designs for the Web.

We ordered new double-glazed windows three months ago because the cottage was only single-glazed, and winter temperatures could be brutal. Last year, we can home in February, and my studio was only 4 degrees Celsius (39.2 Fahrenheit).

We were surprised when we got a call on Monday from the installation company telling us the team would be with us at 9am the following day. So I started moving everything out of the studio last week to protect it from dust. I needn’t have worried, as the fellas were incredibly careful, and I even managed to keep working in the midst of the chaos.

My new book: Standout designs for the Web

With a couple of days freed up at the end of last week, I decided to work on my new book: Standout Designs for the Web.

At around 100 pages, this is a shorter book than Art Direction for the Web. Plus, I had a solid outline and knew exactly what I wanted to write.

Writing went incredibly smoothly, and I even finished the final chapter of the manuscript. I don’t use AI for writing, but I did experiment with it by giving it access to the manuscript and asking it to check for grammar or tense issues. I like to write in a conversational “me” to “you” style and not say “we” when describing things. I also like to refer to a company as “it” and people as “them,” but it’s easy to trip up. AI made that process much easier.

Over the weekend, I asked Alex to help me set up the InDesign template I’ll use for the PDF version of Standout designs for the Web. We created page layout templates and character and paragraph styles, and by Sunday evening I had ported the book’s text into InDesign.

I know it’s going to take me several weeks to illustrate the book and get it ready for sale in a couple of months’ time.

Developing for Jas Dosanjh

My first job after our holiday is for Sikh-Punjabi author Jas Dosanjh. I’d finalised her design the previous week and had already started developing her new website using Eleventy in a Box as my starting point.

I needed to write custom code for the interactive banner and modal overlays which tell people about her books. I also added several new pages, plus a timeline for her story. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked for a timeline, so instead of writing it just for Jas, I first went back to Eleventy in a Box and created a new, reusable feature pack. I’ll add this to the package I sell, and everyone who’s bought it will get it, along with several other new features.

All that remains is for me to set up Jas’ new website on the GitHub and Netlify accounts I’ve asked her to make, so I can test the site and add anything new she asks me for before we go live.