The Fate Of The Business Card

So far, I've gotten by without the use of a single business card. Just getting by isn't exactly good enough but that may be due to other factors such as marketing rather than not having used a business card. In this day and age, are business cards even needed any …

Not Quite So Refreshing

I've always been interesting in the idea of meeting up with like minded local people. Living where I do, there doesn't seem to be many people in the industry but they must be out there. I had the idea of creating my very version of Refresh and as usual, jumped right in …

Collaborations Wanted

I've been toying around with a couple of ideas recently and I have a couple of projects in the works but taking these on alone may not be the best option given the work involved and being freelance, I don't have any colleagues to share with. I'm also looking for new …

Humble Browser Pie

A while ago, I made a decision to block users of Internet Explorer 6 and below. For some time after that I was enjoying being part of a group of others that had also made the same decision but that only lasted so long and then reality kicked in. People were still …

Let's Try This Again Shall We?

If you have visited this place in the last couple of weeks, you'll probably notice things are quite different around here now. I've not just uploaded a new design but have done more of a complete overhaul. There was a lot of clutter and irrelevant information lying …

The Social Etiquette Of IM

After many weeks of nonstop problems with Windows Live Messenger, I decided to look elsewhere for a decent IM application. I didn't want to lose contact with friends that used the MSN service so I decided upon the Trillian client so that multiple services could be used …

To Critique Or Not

Critiques are an important part of a design process and can be invaluable, especially in those early stages. However, we shouldn't forget the purpose of critiques. Asking for some opinions is one thing but asking for praise is quite different and I think some people …

Jumping The Validation Hoop

A while ago, it appeared to be a measure of design quality to have that validation button at the bottom of our designs, proving to viewers we had taken the time to ensure our code was valid. The thing is, how important is this and why have a lot of people started to …

Home Is Where The Work Is

As the title may explain and as you may have noticed, it has been a while since I last updated around here and it was never my intention to let the place get stale and old. I have been thinking recently about improving productivity and how working from home factors into …

Are Your Birds This Clever?

I'm talking about Aviary, a collection of online tools created by Worth1000. Describing what exactly it is that these tools or applications do could be a bit of a lengthy process as nothing like this has been done before and the idea may be hard to grasp.

So rather …

Static Noise Has Arrived!

It's about time isn't it?

I've finally finished off my first free theme and it's now available for download as well as an online preview. Interested? Read on for more info!

The theme that has taken up so much of my spare time is finally available and was it all worth …

Designing Blind

You get a request through your website about doing some design work. The job seems right up your street and the money is good so you decide to take it on. Great, you then have whatever form of communication is possible with the client to establish the brief and …

Video Killed The Writing Star

Seems kind of ironic that I'm writing about how the written blog appears to be on its way out but there we go. Online video is only getting bigger by the day. More people are abandoning podcasts in favour of video/screencasts, there's a lot more video popping up in …

Getting Fresh

After listening to the recent episode of the Boagworld Podcast and twittering my thoughts, I got a message from Paul saying he had not included Mint in the discussion about web stats as he had not looked at for a while and therefore couldn't give an up-to-date opinion. …

Productivity of Distraction

The internet is back. Well, my connection is at least. I have moved to a new provider with a lot more benefits and features. I was offline for a week or so and planned to work on a couple of Wordpress themes locally to use up my time but found that it simply wasn't …

Simplicity Isn't Simple

Now, whilst the title is quite contradictory, it actually makes sense. I'm talking about simplicity in your designs. Specifically website designs.

One of the many trends to that have branched out from our 2.0 era have been designs that are visually simple, clean and …

Safety in Numbers

As you are probably aware, I have recently been working on a Premium News Theme with the Wordpress Rockstar known to us all as Adii. The design stage is now complete and theme development is pending.

It has been somewhat of a learning curve for me, not so much in the …

Objects Of The Smart Kind

A lot of you may be aware of Photoshop Smart Objects already. Whether you use them when importing artwork from Illustrator or you're converting Photoshop art to save the original size, there is a lot more you can do with Smart Objects.

I started using them more a while …

Fundamentals of Typography (Review)

Before I go into detail with the review, let's get the basic definition sorted out shall we? With this being a book review, I feel its only fitting to use the book in explaining what typography is. There are a lot of lengthy discussions online about the meaning of …

The New WWW?

Over the past several months, I have noticed a change in a lot of websites and I'm not talking about trends or phases. The widespread use of platforms such as Wordpress seems to have sky rocketed beyond belief.

I know it became unrealistically popular to start blogging …