Blogging and all that Malarkey

For most of my career, I’ve encouraged designers and developers to learn from past masters of design and make inspiring web work. Now, I’m launching Stuff & Nonsense Premium Squarespace templates that help them do just that.

In this new video, I want to discuss Willy Fleckhaus’ work. His name isn’t often mentioned in the context of product and website design. I love Willy Fleckhaus’ mastery of layouts, his use of scale, and the ways he integrated images and text into compelling compositions.

Since, I suppose, the late nineties, every time a General Election comes around, the political parties roll out new websites. Having spent time studying Labour’s 2024 campaign website, I wondered what their previous election websites looked like. There’s barely anything left of Labour’s website from its victory in 1997 so I imagined what it might’ve looked like.

In this new video, I discuss editorial designer Otto Storch whose work I discovered while flicking through a new addition to my design library. I love how Storch playfully combines images and typography to create designs which are full of energy and movement.

In this new video, I look at Labour’s election manifesto and its campaign slogan that shouted “Change.” If Sir Keir Starmer or Angela Rayner had asked me to design their post-manifesto website, I’d have done things differently. So I explain what I’d do.

In this new video, I look at what was up with Labour’s 2024 election website design, the absence of typographic or visual hierarchy, inconsistent use of colour, lack of focus, and a clear identity. How would I fix this?

I’ve made videos before, including a few series for New Riders—back in the day—and an Art Direction for the Web companion series for Skillshare. For ages, I wanted to make more videos and publish them on YouTube. Now, I’ve made a start.

I don’t check my analytics terribly often, but I did this week, and there was something strange in there: referrals from a domain I didn’t recognise that was using my website’s favicon. Curious, I went to the URL and saw something familiar—my design.

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.