Blogging and all that malarkey

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain how I made experimental banner images for Emma’s home page using SVG masks.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain how I made an experimental word search concept for Emma’s home page.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned a few things while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain the pseudo-3D design I created for Emma’s home page banner.

Emma Bodger is a film/television producer, and recently, I’ve spent time working on her visual identity and a new website. It’s been a lot of fun, and I also learned more about SVG while working on it. I’m digging into the details this week, and today I’ll explain the SVG filters I created to transform images on Emma’s website.

I don’t know whether it’s been a reaction to post-Musk Twitter from the people I read and talk with on Mastodon, but there seems to be a renewed interest in personal websites and hosting one’s own content.

In a video of one his talks, Andy Bell mentioned CUBE CSS and his approach to using data attributes for variations (exceptions) to design styles. I’m currently working on a grid system for a product project and revamping my Layout Love templates, so was keen to implement this approach.

After writing yesterday’s blog entry on Re-coding Apple’s Black Friday dates I realised I had missed the bleedin’ obvious solution. That instead of wrangling CSS and HTML, SVG could’ve been the better option.

Most parts of Apple’s website are fabulously flexible. But today, I was browsing for Black Friday deals and found a fixed-width design element which I was determined to make flexible.

The spectacle of yet another Tory leadership campaign—this time to replace Boris Johnson—is in full swing. So, I thought it would be fun to rank the hopefuls’ campaign catchphrases. The results may shock you.

We stopped at a motorway services to buy baguettes for lunch yesterday, on our way down through France. I left my wallet behind and I didn’t notice until we were an hour further down the road.

This week I’ve been diving deeply into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about catering for small screens. Today’s all about performance and accessibility considerations when coding my designs.

This week I’m diving deep into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about designing a layout grid. Today is all about catering for small screens.

This week I’m taking a deep dive into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about designing dark and light themes.. Today is all about the choices I make when designing a layout grid.

This week I’m diving deep into how I approach projects, using a recent design for Zombie Hunt as an example. Yesterday, I wrote about making decisions about colour. Today is all about using colour across dark and light themes.

Two weeks ago, I took a week—away from work on Nozomi Networks—and spent some time working on a redesign for Zombie Hunt. The team are franchising their successful business and needed a new design to attract customers and potential franchisees.

I’m starting my fourth full year working mainly with Nozomi Networks. I love the people there, the work we’re doing is fascinating, and I enjoy the ability to develop designs over a longer period of time. But, I will have some time available for other projects and I want to use that time to make a difference.

I received my Apple MacBook Pro 14" laptop (maxed out with M1 Max silicon, all the cores, and 32Gb RAM) just before Christmas. During the break, I asked on Twitter which apps people had bought most recently and—following those suggestions—here are five menu bar apps I installed on my new Mac.

When I first shared my Contract Killer in 2008, I had no idea it would become so popular and be used by so many people. Even after thirteen years, it’s still the most visited page on my website. Now, I’ve added a GDPR policy and NDA template to the bundle.

Over the past month, I’ve been upgrading my Apple TV movie artwork from portrait to 16:9. Like the artwork for many older film series, Apple’s artwork for George A. Romero’s series of zombie films is more walking on sunshine than walking dead. So—like I did for other series in my collection—I decided to make my own artwork.

I’ve been upgrading my Apple TV movie artwork from portrait to the latest 16:9 format recently. Like the artwork for many older film series, Apple’s artwork for the Star Trek films is less photon torpedo and more phaser set to stun. So, I decided to make my own artwork.

This year has been a hard one for a lot of people—just like last year, and maybe next year too. To help you make a designer or developer you know smile, I’ve put together my Christmas gift guide 2021.

After rearranging my studio and reorganising my bookcases, I have a few design and development books for sale at bargain prices. They’re all in very good condition and would be a great gift for a new or junior web designer or developer.

On several of the podcasts I listen to regularly, there’s been some discussion about the best speakers for a home office setup. So here’s my take.

Here’s a quick design tip for making headlines more interesting using text-decoration.