Crit: Superhero Studios.

Earlier Mark wrote a post on critique and his idea for bringing it to the industry. I am really on board with that. I have a thirst for learning and becoming better. And this is a great tool. To listen to what my peers have to say.

I’m going to attempt at being the first guinea pig for this idea. I want to see how well it works, and hopefully promote similar thinking among my peers.

As some of you know I’m will be building up a company again. Superhero Studios. I’ve been working on the website. This is what I have. I aimed at making it clean, only information you need to know, with clear and strong call to actions.

I am into comic books. Not your hardcore, know the individual illustrators comic nerd. But I read a few. I have a lot of affinity for the ideology behind a lot of heroes. I thought it was apt to use it, and it felt personal, with some great branding opportunities.

The critique I’ve received so far is:

The background of the red header and the superheroes make it look cheaper, less professional. I thought about this a lot and I feel that I should commit to the brand, or not. But not do it half-assed. So I’m sticking with them.

Things to note:

The copy will be reworded.
Client images will be proper high-res.
There will be a custom logo mark, and custom hand drawn logo type.
I need to find a royalty free version of the background, and a web font similar to that of the condensed light one.

So tell me… what could be done to improve it?

Should CSS remain without power?

After a debate in the office about the new vh and vw measurements another broke out about the power of CSS.

An argument was made that CSS should be as simple as possible, and to leave CSS as it is. That we need nothing more, perhaps just refinement of what we do have. That we shouldn’t have a burden of choice.

HTML and CSS are simple (although headachey; thanks IE and Android.) We’ve not even come close to overcomplicating the language yet.

I want to see more power. I want to see more power in the users hands. Giving us the ability to solve more complex layout problems, more solutions to frustrating cross-browser issues and more power giving us less time to focus on building them, and more time coming up with ingenious techniques like responsive web design.

Quite a lot of this boils down to the age old developer vs designer. Generalising the whole thing, the designer just wants a minimalist syntax that looks cool and who cares if it functions well as long as it’s cool, and a developer just wants an overcomplicated kitchen sink that can make coffee while solving the meaning of life. My proposition is more in the middle ground.

The vh/vw units are nigh useless. We can solve most of the problems with REMs or percentages in this day. But there is room for more. While I would like SASS to be the standard thing – I’m not proposing that. I just don’t think it’s a bad thing CSS is adding more or innovating.

A point was that it’s not a language and should stay that way. Why? If it evolves past a key/value system, why is that such a problem? Will the web combust and explode? Will we all be out of jobs? Not at all. We can keep simplicity, and give more power though.

It was suggested that features get garbled after the draft process. That developers discuss what features a designer want, and then umpteen different browsers implement them completely different. It’s true this process needs to be tidied up, but with more weapons in our arsenal we have more creative solutions. Comparing when CSS started to get popular to now I know that the browsers have matured, but my life is simpler because the browsers matured.

Most of all, I’m not asking that everyone programs. I’m just asking for the power – you can take it, or leave it using only a 10th of the power. But giving up on CSS and feeling like it’s complete is a fool’s errand. It’s not, and the web is evolving. We need as much power as we can get to help evolve it.

Moving On, My Health & The Future

It comes with incredibly deep sadness I’ll be leaving Mark Boulton Design. It has not been long and there are many reasons behind my decision but in large part I want to focus on my health. I have adored my time at the company. The team and the quality of the work are incredible – every good thing I’ve thought about the company has been tripled by being here.

It was far from an easy decision. My coworkers are amazing people, and the work they produce makes me very proud to have been part of the team. I truly feel that they’re on the forefront of the design world and can see many new waves as time goes on. There’ll be an announcement later on from them regarding the job vacancy. (I’ll update this post when that happens.)

As for my health, I’m still unsure what’s wrong. I’m about to be referred to my 9th Dr. I’ve now gone private and am seeing specialists. We will see what happens.

I’ll be leaving in around a month and restarting London Made, though under a new moniker. I have no intention of leaving Cardiff. And no, it won’t be Cardiff Made. If you wish to contact me regarding some work – the usual email address works.

Brief Hiatus

Just writing to say that you may have noticed I’ve not posted lately, nor used my Twitter. Quite a few people have asked where I am so I wanted to give a quick update. I’ve managed to get ill with a kidney infection (among other things – potentially glandular fever/mono) that has near incapacitated me.

Long story short; it’s meant my kidneys go through immense pain sometimes and my immune system is working overtime to combat it, which means I’ve caught everything that I come in contact with (colds, etc) and means that I am incredibly fatigued.

It’s been a never ending circle of Dr’s and blood tests. (And soon an ultrasound.) On a side note; today I found out my Phlebotomist is also a piercer. Not shocked at all as she was so quick.

This means I will be withdrawing from this years Startup Workaway also. I had to do the same last time and I feel incredibly bad for letting everyone down but I hope to be back in work as soon as possible and I would not feel it was right to take time off shortly after being back after being sick for so long, nor do I think it would be healthy for me with a much lowered immune system to be in a country like Thailand. I was looking incredibly forward to it so it’s a shame.

I wanted to thank everyone for their kind wishes so far also. I will be back and kicking ass as soon as I can. Right now I’m focusing on getting well enough to get back to work.

New Adventures Conference 2012 Wrapup

Photo by the talented Kitty Crawford

I haven’t been to a design conference since SXSW 2007. I got tired of the same old speakers talking about yesteryears technology which they still were catching up on.

In that respect, New Adventures greatly surprised me. It was fresh, on-point and absolutely fantastic. Like any conference there was a mixture of quality. My favourite talk was Dan Mall’s. I have a bias towards Dan as he’s one of the nicest guys on the web. He’s worked on some amazing projects but it wasn’t the Star Wars or Crayola site that he worked on that impressed me the most during his talk but the fact he showed some of his less lacklustre work too. Too many designers speak as if their first design is the perfect final image and the reality is that we work iteratively, creating new with the old elements. It takes someone very humble to be able to be so proud of the bad work, as it helped lead to the good work.

I also loved Robbie Manson’s talk. I’ve known Robbie from Twitter for a while now and have been super excited about seeing his talk. He utterly blew me away the fact that this was his second talk. I will definitely go out my way to see him talk again.

Travis Schmeisser’s talk was great also. I’ve worked with Travis in the past when I was at Hashrocket and he was at nGen Works. Not only is he a super smart lad but a very talented designer. I had high expectations walking in and wasn’t disappointed.

I won’t touch on the talks that I didn’t like as I don’t want to be too negative. The one thing I will say is; don’t listen to people telling you to be a ‘celebrity.’ Forget trying to be popular. Just do the best job you can and let your work speak for itself.

Simon Collison put on an absolutely fantastic event. Another one of the humble few with great skills and a natural born conference organiser. A top notch gentleman who definitely deserves the praise he’s been getting for the event.

I am going to aim to go to next New Adventures. If it’s anything like this year I will be happy. I’m not sure if I plan on going to any other design conference yet. I will judge it on a per-event basis.

I met and saw so many wonderful people. I am very glad to know and talk to the people I do. There’s a lot of great people in our industry. It provoked love for the community inside me that I haven’t felt in many years.

Being surrounded by the beautiful buildings that Nottingham had to offer, the people – both inspired and inspiring and inhaling the knowledge that was offered has enlivened the spring in my step.

A Brutally Honest Year In Review

The best friend & I

Canada

In February, my best friend and I work-holidayed to Quebec to see our good friends Nick Plante (zapnap), his wife Amanda and Nick Tomarello. It was the first time I’ve visited Canada but definitely not the last. We managed to book the time perfectly for the Winter Carnival where we saw such things as the ice hotel and went sledding.

The idea was that we would go out and visit the awesome sites during the day, and work on a project during the night. It worked very well and sparked us to create Startup Workaway (I’ll be at the next one!) The basic premise is to take geeks out their comfort zone, put them with like minded people and watch what they create.

Best Friends & Businesses

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good. The middle crumbled for me. During the middle of the year I lost my other best friend tragically, shortly followed by a romance becoming seriously ill with cancer, breaking down and going AWOL. It seriously broke me. Two people that I had spent years talking to every night without fail were suddenly out of my life. I tried to remain as professional and normal as possible for my business’ sake.

At the time I was running London Made and we had just grounded ourselves by taking on some free work that ended up being more than we could chew. It was a huge lesson and the first time in a very long time that made us a big loss. I personally ended up in debt over it and we had to fire our rather unsympathetic client. It made me realise I should have done it sooner. We were being taken advantage of and it was my want of exposure that kept us on it. The sacred promise of riches. The project was then handed to another agency and it is still yet to have seen the light of day.

Running a business is incredibly hard work. There are both extreme ups and downs of equal measures – much like normal life. I’ve run a company in multiple countries, multiple people. At the top of my game I had a maximum of 15 people employed/contracting with us. And I just mentioned one of the many bottoms. Without failure, there is no success and I am proud of my mistakes. They could have been a lot worse.

We still have one last client to release soon. I can’t wait. They’re adding a few new features and going through a Private Beta. It’s work we’re really proud of so I can’t wait to talk about it when it’s ready.

Being entrepreneurial is incredibly important to me. I’m a day dreamer, I spend my days in the clouds. Dreaming of what businesses I could run (and also if I was a super hero, how different my day would be.) I dream of winning the lottery but not spending it on my retirement but instead on businesses.

Mark Boulton Design

Work was great. I was wanting to move to a different city and expand London Made, maybe find a partner in the process. Everything was great. Out of nowhere I got asked if I would consider moving to Cardiff for Mark Boulton Design. I had met Mark many years previously and had much admiration for his work to benefit the industry.

I said Yes without hesitation and went for an interview. Though it was a big decision, I was very sure of it. I had no interest in moving to Wales, I wasn’t sure if I could work for someone else after spending so much of my life not doing so. However, my Lead Developer had got a good job offer, my contractors were all busy and I knew that I’d benefit greatly from having Mark’s mentorship.

Within the company I found my footing leading the UX on an awesome client. It’s been months of really hard work but I couldn’t be more excited for when it finally releases. My time at MBD so far has been a hell of a ride. (I also learnt the hard way – keep yourself hydrated or get knocked out for weeks.)

More Health

Since I arrived in Cardiff I got complacent with my diet and gained weight. I’ve been working hard on changing that. I’ve started swimming before work (I kept it up for 1-2 hours every day for 2 weeks — although that’ll stop when my hours change next month unfortunately) but I’ll try to keep it up somehow.

Cardiff

Moving to Cardiff was an amazing decision. I’ve lived in a few countries in a few continents but none has ever felt like home like here does. I’m definitely going to be settling here for a while.

Side Projects

I still try to keep up the side projects. I’ve got a ton of side projects I want to do but so little time to do them. I am however keeping up to date with Crummy.

I’m not going to pay for the renewal of designblogs‘s domain (previously of designablo.gs) as it’s costing me too much (I already pay for hosting.) However, I will give it a proper design and work on more.

Yearly Archives: 2012