Blogging and all that Malarkey

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, at last, be published on on Tuesday 26th March by my friends at Smashing Magazine. Here’s the story behind how it happened.

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.

Last week I sat down with my dear friend Liz Elcoate to discuss the role of art direction, content, and storytelling in branding on her excellent new Elastic Brand podcast.

It’s 20 years to the day since my wife, and I started Stuff & Nonsense, our little studio and my outlet for creative ideas on the web. Over on 24ways, it’s also my fourteenth article, this time how to Design your site like it’s 1998. It’s a tongue-in-cheek look back at how we developed websites when I started my company, complete with not so old favourites like font elements, frames, layout tables, and spacer gifs.

Over on 24ways, my fourteenth contribution in as many years is a tongue-in-cheek look back at how we developed websites when I started my company in 1998. In ‘ Designing your website like it’s 1998 ’ I explain how I would’ve developed a design for ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ one of my favourite Christmas films.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s the week you’re bombarded with discounts on everything from electric toothbrushes to vacuum cleaner bags, but somehow never the things you want. Well, that’s about to change my friends because this weekend only, I’m offering you up to 50 % off my Art Direction for the Web video course on Vimeo.

If, on the off chance: You’re reading this entry using Safari Technology Preview 68, and You’ve already upgraded your MacOS to Mojave 10.14, and You’ve selected Dark appearance in System Preferences You’ll have noticed that I’ve implemented a brand new dark mode version of my website.

Working with CSS Grid is a lot of fun, as well as making distinctive and original layouts easier and with less code. However, using Grid does occasionally come at a cost and that is semantic markup. Fortunately, there’s a new CSS display property which—when used thoughtfully—can overcome the problem of ‘flattened HTML.’

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with Equfund, refreshing their visual identity, redesigning their website, and developing a consistent brand experience for customers across different channels and touch-points.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing about the books on my studio bookcase, why I bought them and how they inspire me. (Catch up on parts one, two, and three.) Here’s the fourth and final part.