= Here!

That’s right, I’ve got my first product in the shops… Actually on shelves! In an Apple store of all stores! Exciting times

Well, to say it’s my product is a little strong, I didn’t start it, but I finished it off. The next bunch will be even more exciting, the one’s that I’ve worked on from start to finish, the Brothers in Arms: Double Time and Mini Ninjas of the mac gaming world. Watch this space

I’ll leave you with this:

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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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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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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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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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All across London, a white sheet fell and halted day-to-day life. For the first time in a long time we have heavy snowfall! In fact, the heaviest snowfall for 18 years.

So much that the local transport systems have failed – completely. No buses or trains throughout London. (A lot of areas more familiar with snow mock the big city for this – but we’re just not prepared for freak ‘weather events’)

So, this is the perfect opportunity to settle in and get some freelance work banged out, ticking some things off the list.

However, what sort of person would I be if I ignored this chance to enjoy snow?! Instead, I enjoyed a trip to the local park (Crystal Palace Park) and soaked up the surroundings. Never before have I seen people enjoying themselves in such great numbers.

This is the perfect remedy for the credit crunch blues in my opinion.

Bring on the snow!

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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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So, we are now well into the year 2009.

Unfortunately my aim to finish this and my freelance site over the Christmas holiday period was thwarted by the flu pandemic which seems to of hit the majority of the UK. However, all is not lost! I have now got my freelance site, design-is.co.uk, to a stage where I’m happy enough to push forward and get some stationery printed up and flyers/business cards handed out.

This site (dougbarned.co.uk) is nearing a similar stage – it’s construction is complete, but it’s not quite full of the intended content yet. I’ll be working on this over the coming weeks, hoping to populate the work and miscellaneous sections with wonderful things.

I am also about to get stuck into a new site which has been partially designed, and built, but is stuck in the dark ages of web design with an antiquated table based layout and JavaScript powered roll-overs. I think someone had too strong a liking of Dreamweaver. I hope to remedy the situation.

In the technology arena, the year is already turning out to be an exciting one. Having avidly followed the process of the Macworld 2009, I can honestly say I would love to know what Apple have in the pipeline. I keep up-to-date on the latest rumours on MacRumors.com, but somehow it’s never quite enough. To prove this point, my favourite appearance at Macworld has to be from Axiotron, an Apple Premier Developer. They are responsible for the much sought after ModBook launched last year. This year, they begin shipping their new ModBook Pro. This machine looks to be a thing of dreams – the closest thing to digital paper a designer can get. I can’t wait until Axiotron start trading in the UK.

The ultimate tablet computer

As a closing note to 2009′s opening post, I would like to say how much I am looking forward to the finalization of CSS 3 and in particularly hope for a good implementation of the new multiple columns and text flow features.

Thanks for reading, I intend to be a bit more active with posting from now on.

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