I’ve Got Myself Employed, the Future of London Made & This Blog!

As of a few months ago I was in the planning stage of how to expand London Made. Over the years we have been getting far more work than we could take on and I felt it was time to expand. Interestingly enough, it was a job offer that changed that.

I’m not one to be in employed. In my 13 years of working on the web I have only spent 8 months in employment at Hashrocket. However, when I was approached about the oppurtunity of working with Mark Boulton Design I had an initial gut reaction that it was something that I would love to do.

I have learnt a lot from reading Mark’s blog over the years and already had been following some of the team on Twitter. Their knowledge and passion very much spurred me into thinking that it would be an awesome place to work. Exciting projects, passionate people and great knowledge. I am very stoked.

However, London Made as a consultancy will obviously be closing down as it becomes the umbrella for my startups and mobile apps. I would not say I was not a little sad, but it definitely is a choice that I have no regret.

Because of having work hours, I now aim to be able to update this blog far more too. I also have plans for speaking among other things.

I move to Cardiff on Saturday and start work on Monday. It’s exciting and I can’t wait to start.

If you want to work with me, I’ll still be available, along with a great team. Just go to Mark Boulton Design’s Contact Page and fill it out.

Introducing designblo.gs – Catch up on the best design blogs

Last weekend I spent about 5 hours testing out Heroku and MongoDB and I created designblo.gs. The idea behind it was to create a resource that I could point the people who asked me who else to follow for advice. Not only that, but as I plan to include popular blogs and even non-popular ones, even the Vet’s can find blogs they’ve not heard of before.

I have a few more people I would like to ask. Any suggestions on features or people welcome.

So check out designblo.gs now.

As for MongoDB. I still am of the same belief that I was before. It works somewhat fast for development but it’s not really for production. The ORMs are also still too immature.

The new London Made redesign.

We have redesigned the London Made website many times in the last year but we have expanded very fast. We have aimed to embody the new state we have reached and I think we have done so well.

We commissioned a custom illustration piece, as you can see on the front page. We really love it and I since we have had enough interest, we have decided we’ll use it on some t-shirts too.

We have removed the old blog in favour of keeping all our posts on this blog. We figured there was too much cross-posting and it makes sense to just have guest posts on here.

Unfortunately as initially planned Jonathan won’t be joining as he is looking out for his family and not wanting the risk that comes up with a startup, which is totally understandable.

London Made currently has some really exciting clients and a product coming out soon. Make sure to keep your eye out.

Click here to see the new website in action. I’d love to know what you think.

Introducing the new London Made

Visit the new site here

We are extremely pleased to tell you that we have launched the second version of our website. This comes from over a month of user experience testing (A/B Testing, etc.) and we are glad that we can finally share our hard efforts with the world. We introduced our first version of London Made over a month ago with the sole intention of testing the waters. I will be writing up a case study on the design decisions and thinking behind the website in the future.

Me, on “The new London Made”

London Made: The Partner

I can finally announce that I will not be doing London Made alone and that I will be running it with the talented Jonathan Conway.

Although I will still program, I will be able to focus more heavily on designing while Jonathan will fulfil the programming side of the business.

I’ve also updated the website significantly since yesterday to help reflect this.