Blogging and all that malarkey

Last week I wrote about designing standfirst paragraphs, because they’re something which website designers frequently overlook. I said “don’t confuse a standfirst with a ’lead’ (or lede) paragraph” and several people asked me to clarify the difference.

Designers frequently overlook a few design elements if they remember them at all. Recently, I’ve noticed that the styles of typographic details like bylines, citations, dates and times are more often than not pulled from frameworks and pattern libraries and receive very little original thought.

Here’s a quick entry about something I learned just this week about :not() pseudo-class selectors and how to combine them.

Maybe, calling my open source web designer and developer contract a “Killer” wasn’t such a smart idea?

One of my earliest blog entries, all the way back in May 2004, was about a favourite technique for creating colour palettes. It was a technique which I’d used for years, even then. Now I have a new take on creating colour palettes, it’s time to revisit that topic.

Originally developed by Mark Boulton Design—before their acquisition by Monotype—Gridset has been my go-to tool for designing grids since it started. In fact, it taught me more about grid design than just about anything else. Sadly, Gridset is being decommissioned this week, so I downloaded the default sets of grids, plus a few of my own, and have shared them on Github.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said as Sue and I sat on beach outside Perth in Western Australia. “Why don’t we move to Australia for a couple of years? We love it here and it would be an adventure.”

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction Rob Weychert.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction Stephen Hay.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on May 25th 2018 and web designers and our clients need to be prepared. This open source GDPR privacy policy template is designed for web professionals.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with ProPublica Design Director, David Sleight.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction and CSS Grid with Rachel Andrew.

It’s been a while since I’ve written seriously, but since I started working on my new ‘Art directing for the web’ book, I’ve got the bug. So when Smashing Magazine asked me to write for them again, I couldn’t resist. My latest article, on ‘Art Directing For The Web With CSS Grid Template Areas’ was published today and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. You can read it here.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with Super Friendly, Dan Mall.

I’m currently writing a hardboiled web design book about Art Directing for the Web, so in this new season of the Unfinished Business podcast I’m be discussing art directing with my guests who are some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today. This week I talk about art direction with former creative director at The Guardian, Mark Porter.

Welcome to this new season of the Unfinished Business podcast. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be discussing art directing for web with my guests, some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today.

Everyone loved stickers, right? And t-shirts? Right again. And gorillas? Of course you do, especially Errol. Now you can stick Errol stickers on the things you stick stickers on and proudly wear Errol on your chest. (Chest beating optional.)

One of the reasons for my redesigning this website was to make it more appropriate for the work I’ve been making most recently, but also as an opportunity for it to better reflect me as a person. A big part of that was the writing that I did in what I think of as my blogging ‘heyday.’

Speaking at conferences has been one of the best things that I’ve done over the past decade plus some. Not just the standing on stage doing the talking part, and the traveling to fabulous places (and Scarborough) part, but the coming up with stories to tell and lessons to teach part too.

A few weeks ago I was writing content for my speaking information for conference organisers page and I wondered about other speakers’ ‘terms of business’ and how much—if anything—they charged. To get a feeling for how people approach the business of speaking, I set up a quick survey.

Looking back, I’ve redesigned this website roughly every three years. Today I’m proud to show you the new Stuff & Nonsense.