Time for a change?

As mentioned in my last post, for some time now I’ve had a new design in mind for this site. It’s current state has been around since around September ’08, so I’m itching for a change. The current design was devised in an attempt to create a stylish, professional looking frame for displaying my work. I was looking to better my career at the time and was determined to have a fully functional online portfolio in a finished state (for the first time since my university project, Design by BlueCow). The gradients were intended to draw the eye toward the content, whilst the grey colour scheme was to allow the coloured images of my work speak the loudest, helping the information hierarchy – and a bit of colour on a grey canvas always looks good and grabs attention.

I was, and am still, quite happy with the way it looks. However I’ve moved on a little since then and feel a change in my personal site is needed to reflect this. I’m determined that at some point in 2010, dougbarned.co.uk will undertake a transformation to this:

Coming to screen near you at some point in 2010

This design has been in the making since July ’09 and has been put on the back-burner for a while, but I’m set on making it happen. Though I’m also re-thinking design-is.co.uk as well at the moment to make it more user-centric, hopefully to allow my potential clients to get to the information they need, faster. So it might take a while… stay tuned for developments. In the meantime, leave some comments and let me know what you think of the new look! Feedback would be a real help

Oh, and Rome: Total War has now got an official release date of February 5th, so I’ll be able to post some of the bits I’ve worked on for that at some point – which will be nice.

I’m off to enjoy the rest of my weekend and finish eating my Domino’s pizza…

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Many many months, a few haircuts, and a new job later, I’m back! Yes, I’ve been a busy boy… And what better day to start getting back into my blogging habit than the strangest day of 2010 – 110110, which has a lovely binary ring to it. Strangest until October 10^th anyway. (Not that I had built up much of a habit, but I was working on it )

I spent a lot of 2009 wishing to work for people I liked, creating work that I was proud of. I was searching for an opportunity to design, be creative, and develop my skill. I was lucky enough to get this opportunity! Since late September ’09 I have been working as the principle print designer at Mac games publisher, Feral Interactive. In this role I am now responsible for the design and artworking of all printed items and the odd digital/web work. This includes corporate and consumer marketing pieces, e-newsletters, sales brochures, DVD labels, sleeves and boxes, disk icons, folder backgrounds and the occasional in-game graphic or screen. If you’re an owner of the recently released BioShock port, or are a fan of MacFormat, then you may have seen some of my work already. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the release of the first title I’ve been involved heavily with, Rome: Total War – it will be a real thrill to see a product I’ve worked on ‘in the wild’, so to speak.

Other than that aspect of my life, my freelance web and design work is going fine, having redesigned and upgraded the CMS on a Scottish Labour Party MP’s website and launched a new college website for a school on Oxford Street.

I’ve also been having a think about a new design for this site, which I’ll come back to in a later post. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seat for that one

Until then, I hope you all enjoyed the snow if you’re in the UK (great fun, even if it does cause transport havoc!) and hope you had an excellent Christmas break & great new years celebrations.

As I always say, “I intend to post more often now”. Maybe in 2010 this will turn out to be true! I promise there’ll be at least one more before I use the header 111111*.

Thanks for reading and feel free to say “hi!” in the comments…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

*November 11^th 2011 for anyone who doesn’t get it

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Whilst the sun has decided to shine on the UK at last, all it seems to have done for me is make me a little less comfortable in my chair at work, instilled a yearning to go outside, and made me a little more sleepy.

However, time has been ticking on, so let’s have a little catch up on what’s been happening since Calm before the Storm:

• Writing some posts about useful things I’ve found and learnt.

^ Started a couple, but not quite finished any.

• Re-building my freelance site using WordPress for the back-end.

^ Complete! design-is.co.uk is now a lot more professional looking with a lot more content – head over and have a look.

• Getting up-to-date with admin.

^ Pretty much there, although getting it all organised would be a good thing to do next.

• Getting approval on an improved website (previously mentioned).

^ Unfortunately the corporate cogs haven’t quite found the time yet.

• Contacting existing clients.

^ Hot on the heels of my renovated freelance site came the first instalment of ‘design-is: updated‘, my newsletter to clients and prospects. I foresee this becoming a vital touch point, allowing me to easily inform readers of new offers and services.

• Following up leads.

^ Progress made, but an unending tasks when leads keep coming.

• Investigate post-grad certificate.

^ I wasn’t overly convinced that Birkbeck University knew what courses they were running when I attended their open day, but assuming I can find the cash, I’ll be looking into their offering more thoroughly as the months progress.

Other recent events include the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2009, in which they gave a nice little bump to their laptop range, took us through the latest features of their upcoming operating system Snow Leopard, and released the iPhone we all wish they had released the first time around. Yes, having upgraded from my first generation iPhone, I am now the proud owner of an iPhone 3GS. Now boasting both media messaging and video recording capabilities along side its (slightly) improved camera, this new hardware is the perfect accompaniment to their new OS 3.0 software.

Other noteworthy events include a couple of completed websites (see Case Studies on new design-is.co.uk) and attending the exhibition of finalists for the Young Designers Competition at Dulwich College. Whilst there I caught up with Luke Riggall, the young designer I recently completed a portfolio for who has made quite an impact on the ‘blogosphere’ with his advanced product designs.

Luke Riggall on Novanta, his 'designers desk'.

I hope you’re all enjoying the summery weather that has finally arrived on the wonderful island of Britain!

(If your not in Britain, I hope you’re having lovely weather too ).

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As the tast of browser testing is something that plagues all web designers, I thought I’d put together a short run-down of the currently available solutions. However, there is no definitive answer.

First off, Microsoft’s new SuperPreview sounded good, but this restricts you to IE 6 and the browser you currently have installed, such as IE 7 or IE 8, but not all three at the same time. May be a good solution if future updates included more browser options and live usage of the site in question rather than simple screenshots.

If you can suffice with screenshots and don’t need to test usability and interaction, then services such as browsershots.org, netrenderer and the recently released Alkaline application from Litmus are well worth looking at.

For actually running the browsers reliably at the same time, you will need to have separate machines (virtual or actual). VMware allows you to set up and run several virtual machines at the same time with different software configurations and is currently the solution I’m using.

If you have any other solutions which could help in the never-ending quest for browser compatibility, let us know in the comments

Useful further reading:
SuperPreview announced.
How to Build the Best Browser Test Suite

-UPDATE- (June 3rd)

Adobe has just opened their Browser Lab to public beta testing. Having tried it out today, I can confidently say that this is one to watch. Currently it produces static previews, similar to that offered by other services, almost instantly, once you’ve logged in with your free Adobe ID. Once the beta is closed, they plan to use a subscription based service, similar to Alkaline. It will show you how your site will render in the following browsers:

If developed correctly with the resources it needs, this could become a one-stop-shop solution to browser testing for all web designers and developers.

Why not give it a go and let me know your thoughts?

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Sorry to any readers for the lack of new content! I’ve had a lot on recently and have let my blogging, tweeting and general web presence slip a bit…

I’m a day away from a week long break, after which I hope to achieve a long list of things. These include:

• Writing some posts about useful things I’ve found and learnt.
• Re-building my freelance site using WordPress for the back-end.
• Getting up-to-date with admin.
• Getting approval on an improved website (previously mentioned).
• Contacting existing clients.
• Following up leads.
• Investigate post-grad certificate.

Until then, I’ll leave you with an encounter I had this morning:

A kid in a hoodie mumbled something to be on my way from the bus stop… I stopped, looked at him, and raised my eyebrows to signal he should repeat…

“Can you buy me a cigar please?” said he.

“Sorry?” Said I, looking puzzled – I must have misheard…

“Will you buy a cigar for me..?” he said, louder, using the pound coin in his hand to gesture toward the newsagent next to the bus stop.

Continuing my puzzled look, I simply replied “No…”, walked off, looked back still puzzled, and then headed to work.

A cigar… Whatever next?!

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Although WordPress has peeked my interest lately, I wanted to mention another Open Source CMS that has proved invaluable to my services. Where WordPress, Joomla or Drupal present an overly feature rich environment, this offering from Scratch Media fills the gap perfectly.

CMS from Scratch, as it’s known, is a lightweight, database independent system which can be applied to any static website. The process is fairly straight forward and the guide on the publishers website is simple and easy to follow. A video is also provided demonstrating how to convert your existing site for those that want to see it in action.

The system offers easy text editing via the integrated FCK Editor and the ability to upload files and images to the server, which can then be linked to via the FCK interface. Navigation and galleries are easy enough to construct with the Sets feature and a separate log-in can be provided for clients which will only allow them to access the bits you want them to be able to edit.

Support for the CMS is provided via their forum and the creator of the system, Ben Hunt, is frequently on hand to offer solutions or point you in the right direction. This is also the place to follow the slow, but sure, evolution of the package, as Ben often posts fixes and additions directly to the forum.

I find this the perfect solution for small to medium brochure and marketing websites, providing the client an easy editing function without the complications associated with the more powerful packages.

Being Open Source, there is no charge and it can easily be skinned with your own brand. Their website even offers a white label user guide as a word document which you can amend as you wish and pass on to clients.

You can download CMSfS from it’s google code page.

If you give it a go, let me know what you think with a comment.

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I was recently privileged enough to attend the edgeofmyseat.com HTML and CSS training courses, offering me a chance to pick the brains of some of the webs ‘go-to guys’, Drew McLellan and Rachel Andrew.

The courses, comprising of two, 1 day sessions were squarely aimed at building a foundation of understanding which is then put to the test through a series of topical tasks. When I first heard of these through the Boagworld podcast, they immediately sounded perfect. I had often sought after a compact, feature full, session with a trustworthy source that would fill the gaps in my knowledge and either confirm I was heading in the right direction, or set me straight if not.

These couple of days were just what the doctor ordered.

I now feel I can confidently say I know what I’m talking about, having not only a firm grasp of what, but also now why.

Moreover, I am now more than ever convinced that my future lies within the field of web design & development.

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I’ve recently completed a new website for a skilled carpenter and general handyman based in Norwich, Trevor Waters.

The brief was to create a showcase for the craftsman’s work and allow clients to get in touch to request quotes and / or more information.

TSWcarpentry.co.uk is my first site to run solely on the WordPress Blogging / CMS platform. The client already had a template in mind that he wanted to use, but a certain amount of customisation was needed to fulfil his requirements. In addition to this, several existing plugins were introduced to bring the full effect together.

More and more I am finding WordPress to be the platform of choice for developing sites which require a little more ‘omph’ than a simple page structure.

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So, I have finally given in and signed up to another social networking tool. Twitter.

After leaving my Myspace account to rot, and barely touching Facebook since registering, I feel I’m not really the social network entrepreneur’s target customer…

I had put it off for a long time, under the misconception that it would take time to figure out what to do and how to set it up. This is not the case! Within minutes I could update my status and had invested in the Tweetie application for my iPhone (upon Paul Boag’s recommendation).

Not only is it easy to use, I can use it to save myself the bother of logging onto Facebook to update, as it has the ability to suck my status’ straight out of twitter’s API.

Since signing up, I have found it to be a veritable font of knowledge – proving countless useful links to excellent articles throughout the web and allowing priceless insight into the minds of those I admire.

Feel free to follow me on twitter, or simply see the sidebar for my latest tweets (My Twitterverse), thanks to WordPress’ wonderful Twitter for WordPress plugin.

Happy tweetings!

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As mentioned in my previous post, Push Forward, I have the opportunity to make some vast improvements to the structure and coding of a new website that my employers are launching. Unfortunately, I’ve been instructed to complete the site as it is first, and worry about this stuff later – mainly due (I think) to the people in charge’s lack of understanding surrounding the advantages of designing and building to web standards.

I have therefore been scouring the Internet for ammunition to backup my argument when the time comes to put my case forward. There are a lot of useful articles out there, but for my purpose, this short presentation from boagworld.com sums it up excellently:

Many thanks to Paul Boag, who encourages everyone to download and use this presentation to spread the word about standards based design & development. Feel free to use this information in whatever way you wish:

• Download this presentation as a powerpoint (3.55mb)
• Download this presentation as a PDF file (1.07mb)
• Download this presentation as a MP3 audio file (22mb)

If you’ve seen a useful article which could be used against the forces of evil, please post a link and share

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