Blogging and all that malarkey

Dan Cederholm has been designing a stylish interrobang (‽) for his next new typeface and tweeted that he needs to learn how to type one. John Gruber replied with his suggestion using text replacement in MacOS. I use a similar solution using aText to make typing these unusual characters easier.

When I started travelling regularly to Switzerland for work, I put together my go bag of accessories. What’s in the bag has changed over past few years, so here’s an update on what I’m packing.

To help get web design out of its rut, I’ve been encouraging people to look outside the web to all areas of design for inspiration. There’s so much we can learn from books about editorial, graphic, and print design and I’ve been sharing books from my collection. Here are the top 10 books you should add to your web design inspiration collection.

There’s so much we can learn from books about editorial, graphic, and print design to help us get web design out of its rut. So, I’m sharing my collection and recommend this book about the influential design of The Intelligent Lifestyle Magazine (IL.)

After Paul Boag and Marcus Lillington retired their Boagworld podcast, the pair, Jon Hicks and I decided to record a new show. We’re not just experienced podcast wafflers, we’re all “of a certain age,” so we called the new show One Footer in the Grave.

I’ve been a paying member of YesCymru for the past year, because I believe that Wales would have a better future as an independent nation. At the very least, people who live in Wales deserve a vote on independence. I have thoughts about the YesCymru message and how they can make a better case for independence.

There’s so much we can learn from books about editorial, graphic, and print design to help us get web design out of its rut. So, I’m sharing my collection and recommend this book about the work of Alex Steinweiss, the inventor of the modern album cover.

To help get web design out of its rut, I think people should look outside the web to all areas of design for inspiration. There’s so much we can learn from books about editorial, graphic, and print design. So, I’m sharing my collection and recommend this book about the work of British designer Richard Hollis.

Here’s a quick design tip for improving the readability and style of long passages of running text.

I’m sharing my design books collection to help encourage designers to drag web design out from its rut. I recommend this book about the work of British designer and design historian David King.

Safari Technology Preview is my every day browser. When the latest version dropped, a feature in the release notes interested me. It was experimental support for three new relative colour CSS values. So, I tried what’s possible now.

Justin Stahl tweeted, “It’s been tough to recruit product designers with great visual design and an eye for detail. Did we atomic-design-system and product-manager-skills a generation out of having them?” It’s a fair question.

To help get web design out of its rut, I think people should look outside the web to all areas of design for inspiration. So, I’m sharing my collection and recommend this book about the work of American graphic designer Paula Scher.

There’s been a meta tag for specifying a theme-color for UI elements on websites for a while. If you’ve used it, now’s time to change that element along with the upcoming version of Safari.

I’m sharing my design books collection to help encourage designers to drag web design out from its rut. I recommend this book about the work of Italian designer Giovanni Pintori.

To help get web design out of its rut, I think people should broaden their knowledge of all areas of design. So, I’m sharing my collection and recommend this book about the work of Dutch designer Wim Crouwel.

My bookcase holds my growing collection of books about editorial and graphic design and studying them has completely changed how I approach design. To help get web design out of its rut, I think people should broaden their knowledge of these areas of design. So, I’m sharing my collection as it grows.

Sue gets up earlier than I do. Every morning she leaves me in bed, walks down the stairs and towards our kitchen, and opens curtains along the way without thinking. That morning, a beautiful bright blue and green peacock stared back at her through our dining room window.

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.

I bought a four-pack of Apple’s new AirTags, two for me and one each for the family. To make them more useful, I needed ways to attach them to my keys and backpack. I think AirTags themselves are reasonably priced, but Apple’s own-brand accessories definitely aren’t.

One of my biggest problems with grids included with frameworks is that they offer little or no help in deciding proportional relationships between elements. Ratios can be an enormous help in determining these relationships, but they’re rarely written about in relation to web design. I want to change that.

I’m not a framework user. I’ve never once used Bootstrap and I didn’t use 960gs or Blueprint before that. I can understand the benefits of using a framework or off-the-shelf templates, but they weren’t ever for me. Still, I wanted a simple set of layout modules I could call on for design projects, so I developed my own. I call them Layout Love.

Let’s face it, unless you develop a complex product—and even if you do—you probably don’t need half the humungous hunk of CSS you bung at a browser. In fact, it’s possible you only need one default and one alternative style for every element.

For 35 weeks every year—three weeks per month—I work with Nozomi Networks guiding the creative direction and experience design of their cyber security products. The team is growing, so we’re looking for a product designer to join us.