Blogging and all that Malarkey

Working to simplify this website’s CSS last week, I updated the pages which promote my CSS Grid templates. I’d called them Layout Love, but I wanted to restyle them as Layout ❤︎. However, I encountered an issue when I checked the pages on iOS and iPadOS, which turned my Unicode characters into emojis.

In this episode of Unfinished Business, Andy and Rich talk with designer and agency co-founder Aleks Melnikova.

This year, I’ve been writing a monthly column on web design inspiration for my friends at Envato. It’s a series about finding inspiration in unusual places and applying what we find to product and website designs. Here’s a recap of the articles so far.

Yours truly over at the Envato blog: “What do giant spiders, invaders from Mars, and a 50-foot woman have in common? Incredible color. B-movie buff and web design pioneer Andy Clarke shows you how the over-the-top palettes of horror and sci-fi posters can inspire memorable color choices for modern websites.”

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.”