Blogging and all that malarkey

Back in January I wrote about why I believe that style guides and component/pattern libraries should be beautiful as well as functional. That to be effective, they must cater for the different needs of creative and technical people by inspiring as well as informing.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of the things that I’ve learned while designing and developing Inspired Guides, starting today with using HTML entities as separators in breadcrumb navigation.

I gave a new talk on designing inspired style guides last week at Design Exchange Nottingham. It was a really good night, a fabulous audience which was double their normal attendance and I also got the chance to sink a few drinks with my old friend Harry. It’s very likely that I won’t give this talk again in Europe this year, and I wanted to share it with more people, so I’ve written a transcript to accompany the slides.

NB: This page contains 8Mb of images. I’ve optimised them as much as possible, but you probably don’t want to load this page using your mobile data plan.

On a change from the usual date–for the past eight years I’ve been published on 23rd December—I’m back on 24 ways again this year with a new article about Designing Imaginative Style Guides.

Starting today, Geek Mental Help Week is a week-long series of articles, blog posts, conversations, podcasts and events across the web about mental health issues, how to help people who suffer, and those who care for us.

It’s been a question that I’ve been asked a lot over the past couple of weeks in the run up to this year’s Geek Mental Help Week, so I thought that I’d explain in more than Twitter’s 140 characters.

Geek Mental Help Week starts next Monday and I’m very happy to say that there are several events happening during the week.

Flights are booked and visas are in hand^* and I’m getting very excited, because in only a few weeks, Sue and I are heading back to Australia to join Espen, Jina and Una, as well as our friends in Perth at the very first Mixin conference.

Do you know where you were or what you were doing exactly ten years ago (next week?) I do. I was speaking at my first, in fact the first Web Directions conference in Sydney, Australia. (I gave a talk called ‘Creating Inspired Design’ and there’s audio of it if you’re interested in listening.)

As I mentioned last week, I’ve written a new talk to help me cope with my obsession with making layouts that are different from what we mostly see on the web these days. It’s called ‘Art Directing the Web’ because in the talk I make the point that we should make different layouts not just for difference sake, but to better communicate the meaning of our content and to tell better stories.

I’ve joked before that unless a conference line-up includes Harry Roberts and Sara Soueidan it’s a Code Of Conduct violation. Or something like that. So oh how I laughed when earlier this year I was asked to join them on stage at Frontend Conf in Zurich, Switzerland.

Here’s the skinny. Geek Mental Help Week is happening again during the week of October 3^rd 2016 and I think that it’s going to be the best one yet.

I’m warning you now, it’s a very different kind of episode of Unfinished Business this week as Rachel Andrew and I talk about our feelings on the referendum result for the UK to leave the EU. We talk about the issues that will affect us, you and our businesses in the coming months and years and what we’re already doing to help mitigate them.

In this, the first part of the Unfinished Business Bank Holiday double, I’m joined by Espen Brunborg, designer and co-founder of Primate, plus Strategic Commander of User Experience and author of ‘Psychology for Designers’ Joe Leech. It’s more of a work related episode and we talk about; developing content for clients, why you should do your own research and not believe that everything you read on the internet, and whether you should get involved in competitive pitching and tendering?

In the second part of this Unfinished Business Bank Holiday double, I’m joined by owner of UX studio Simple As Milk and lead UX engineer at UnrollMe, James Seymore-Lock to ask and answer the important question. “Am I the country’s biggest Homes Under The Hammer super-fan?” (Spoiler: He has no clue, not one.)

I know. I know! It’s been far too long since episode 117. But fret no more, Unfinished Business fans, we’re back and back for good, every two weeks with some brilliant guests and some good old fashioned conversations. This week, I’m joined by Sean Johnson and Drew McLellan to talk fat and fitness, cruises and coach trips.

When illustrator Josh Cleland and I were designing our “It’s the taste” home page header, we were of course paying homage to the classic PG Tips TV commercials from the 1970s. In particular, the ad that’s been my favourite, Mr. Shifter. Yesterday, Choppers, the last surviving chimpanzee from that 1971 commercial died.

Okay, okay. I know. No episodes of my Unfinished Business podcast for a few months. I’m really sorry about that.

Sue and I were driving home last Sunday when I realised that on Tuesday this week we would’ve seen Motörhead live at the Manchester Apollo.

While I’m finalising the table of contents for my ‘shot,’ I’ve been thinking about the things that I regularly do when I’m ‘Designing with a Browser’, one of which is using the contenteditable attribute in the templates that I share with clients.

Let me start this list of my top five country music albums of 2015 with a confession. Although country’s been by far my most listened to genre again this year, I haven’t listened to it as much as I have the past few years. In the latter part of the year, I’ve taken several musical diversions. The last one’s been Electric Light Orchestra, a band that I’ve loved since my teens. But, with the possible exception of their Wild West Hero, they couldn’t be further from county.

I doubt that anyone except me and 24 ways creator Drew MacLellan have noticed, but since my original Contract Killer in 2008, I’ve had an article published by 24 ways every year on the same day, December 23rd. Even after seven years, I don’t take that spot for granted and I was really chuffed when Drew asked me to write again this year.

The new Hardboiled Web Design Fifth Anniversary Edition is now available to buy from Smashing Magazine, in a beautifully printed softcover book and all ebook formats. I also have a bit of a confession to make.

When Mark Boulton and I were planning the first edition of Hardboiled Web Design, we both knew who we wanted to illustrate the cover, Kevin Cornell. Kevin’s interpretation of the hardboiled detective theme was so perfect that I couldn’t have imagined anyone else illustrating for Hardboiled.