Blogging and all that Malarkey

I wrote Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web design, way back in 2006. As I explained, writing my first book was a challenge, personally and professionally.

I love rock music and I also love writing HTML and CSS code, so what better way to bring my two loves together than a set of shirt designs which celebrate both? Code ♠ Shirts ♠ Rock designs are inspired by classic rock band logos. Wear them at home or at work, to a gig, or your next tech conference. They’re ideal gifts for the code loving rocker, or rock loving coder you know. The shop is now open.

To celebrate the launch of my Code ♠ Shirts ♠ Rock tees tomorrow, here are my top five rock albums of all time.

I love rock music and during the 1980s I saw AC/DC on their Back In Black tour, Girlschool, Iron Maiden (before Bruce Dickinson,) Judas Priest, Saxon, Thin Lizzy, and of course Motorhead with their classic line up of Lemmy, Fast Eddie and Philthy Phil. Motorhead were always my favourite, and when my son was old enough to have his own ear drums damaged, we went to see them together.

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.

While developing prototype designs for a French football magazine, I came across a strange bug when Chrome’s translate feature comes into contact with CSS generated content.

These days, most of my travel is to my biggest clients in France and Switzerland, but there’s also travel to speak at the occasional conference, and the odd business trip. Every time I travel, I take with me the same set of cables and chargers.

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.

With modern CSS properties including Grid, Flexbox, Multi-column, and Shapes, designers have countless opportunities to make diverse, and engaging designs. Sadly, many of us haven’t had the memo which gives us permission to make more interesting work, so I decided to write that memo. Feel free to modify the message for your company or organisation and of course, circulate it to the designers on your team.