Blogging and all that Malarkey

In this episode of Unfinished Business, Andy and Rich talk with writer, producer, and alter-ego of Count Binface, Jon Harvey.

“Seasons in the Sun” was weirdly played at a wedding reception I was at last weekend. I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally listened to it, but I remember it being one of those songs my mum warbled along to on long car journeys. It was probably on one of her then husband’s eight-track cartridges along with Billy Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe.

In this episode of Unfinished Business, Andy and Rich talk about the pros and cons of specialising.

Late last year, I turned my wee studio into a space for shooting an hour-long web design inspiration tutorial for Envato. Well, the Lessons from Design Greats video is now live on their YouTube channel, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

Yours truly over at the Smashing Magazine: “What’s the best way to make your SVGs faster, simpler, and more manageable? Andy Clarke explains the process he relies on to prepare, optimise, and structure SVGs for animation and beyond.”

Yours truly over at CSS Tricks: “How can you take dialogue box design beyond the generic look of frameworks and templates? How can you style them to reflect a brand’s visual identity and help to tell its stories? Here’s how I do it in CSS using::backdrop, backdrop-filter, and animations.”

Richard Rutter and I have both co-founded and run design agencies, with over 50 years of combined experience in the creative industries. Our work has taken us on different paths, but we’ve come together to discuss business, clients, creativity, and more, because we both have Unfinished Business.

Yours truly over at the Envato blog: “How can a collection of dog-eared posters from the golden age of British wrestling influence the design of today’s websites? Web design pioneer Andy Clarke steps into the ring to give us the lowdown.”

What do Yogi Bear cartoons and CSS animations have in common? More than you think. In this video, I show how low-budget animation techniques from Hanna-Barbera cartoons—like background loops, talking heads, and minimal movement—can inspire expressive, lightweight web animations using only CSS and SVG.

Working on a design for composer Mike Worth gave me an idea. What if I created animated title cards inspired by classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons? Thirty-five SVG animations later, Toon Titles Series 1 is complete. These are based on artwork from the first appearance of Yogi Bear in The Huckleberry Hound Show.