Future of stuff and things

Oops, should probably use this blog for some blogging. Okay, cool.

I’m at the Future of web design conference in Kensington Town hall.

10:48

Watching a presentation on creating websites for mobile devices. The presentation is beautiful – really nice slides and images, well thought out. Meagan Fisher showing off www.dribble.com

Technical difficulties with the microphone at the moment. Oops.

11:06

Listening to Brett Welch and his talk about better websites and happier clients. Some really fun slides :D

11:51

Breaktime! Got my free tshirt from GoodBarry through tweeting @HiGoodBarry with the words Kimono and Cake. Nice idea, little creative exercise in getting people to relate words. First speaker of the day had us try and come up with combinations of books/films etc. “The Lionel, the Richie and the Wardrobe” was my fave.

12:00

Listening to Mark Boulton now – should be really good. Use of typography in web design :) Book recommendation; Typography – Emil Ruder. Provide smart design defaults, choose good fonts, encourage use of styles over typefaces. “Help users make good design decisions”

Fonts built for the web specifically – Verdana, tahoma, georgia. The new Vista “C” named fonts.

12:37

Watching Robin Christopherson’s speech on web accessibility. Incredible to see someone use a screen reader, reading at 300wpm – scanning through H tags with Jaws.  For mobile/screen readers, reduce the amount of headings and links. Try and keep heading heirarchy (ie. Dont skip right to level 5 or 6 headings like The New Scientist site!

11m Disability registered people. 3m Web users. 100,000 with vision/hearing impairment.

13:22

Absolutely loving Mike Kus’s talk on design. Get inspiration from print, buck trends. (“Check out SM’s 2009 trends and avoid them like the plague!”)

Holy crap it’s April

I haven’t made a post in ages, I am a terrible, terrible blogger.

Most of my updates have gone directly into Twitter, my lovable microblogging friend, leaving this log book all crusty and unused. I’m sorry, Logbook – please forgive me.

I’ve settled into working at RoSPA. It’s great, I love it here.

I’m making all sorts of sites and getting the opportunity to flex both my technical and artistic design muscles. Today I’m mocking a couple of designs up in photoshop for one of our upcoming projects, with magnificent results. When the final site is up, I’ll be adding it to my portfolio, of course.

Life is grand.

New start

So here’s my day so far.

Woke up at about 6:40am to look outside and see a thin blanket of untouched snow.  Headed straight into the freezing bathroom for a shower, relished the hot water while I could, and got ready for the first day of my new job.

It was still dark outside by the time I had to leave the house. The cloudcover was grey, but the slowly rising sun painted it’s underside light blue for a few minutes, while I made my way to the bus stop. I tracked a pair of fox pawprints in the snow along the way.

While I waited for the bus it began to snow, and everyone huddled underneath the shelter. The journey was pretty unremarkable, apart from the slow speed we were doing through semi-gritted streets. My second bus stop was just as crowded, and twice as snowy.

I had to stand and wipe the condensation from the windows to find my bus stop, and only made it to the office with a few minutes to spare.

Kevin and Matt are nice, I’ve been taken through usage policies, emails, the sites and the updates they’ve planned. I’m already scheduled for a good five meetings in the coming week (a little scary). What else.. There’s a sandwich van that arrives every day, a local tesco and subway. Lunch lasts an entire hour, and while I can check on the 5punk forum during this time, I’m going to have to sacrifice 5kype :( Woe is me.

I may have the chance to learn all sorts of nice things (.net, ajax goodies) during my time here, and the mock-up for the new RoSPA website looks awesome, all sorts of fancy gadgetry going into it.

Uh so yeah

I got a job. That was nice.

I start work in January, so I have all of December to myself.

Good times are in the pipeline!

Cry Far

Listening to music at 80% speed on Goldwave and working on this website.

I’m all sleepy and tired, but that’s due to Far Cry 2 being so excellent.

I mean, like. Eye-poppingly excellent.

Left right and centre

Guess I should probably update.

Didn’t get either place I interviewed for, but both said I was very good, and I just missed Wolseley by a whisker. Better luck next time, eh?

Had all sorts of agencies call me up and tell me about promising posts, not least a call yesterday detailing a nice little creative company. Shame it’s so far away though, it’d be great to get somewhere in central Birmingham so I don’t blow all my money on transport. Might be worth it though!

Brum Bash starts tomorrow, gonna go and get some extra booze and snacks for the guys.

Suspense

Waiting for a response from Wolseley.

I keep being told it’s promising, but I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for a reply. I just want to know if I have this job or not! Painfully slow process but I just gotta wait for now.

Louise at Edge is on holiday too, and the guy that phoned me about a job in Birmingham two days ago (and didn’t leave any contact details) hasn’t called again. I feel in some sort of unemployment limbo! Terrifying.

Also, International Talk Like A Pirate Day was good. And lo, I chuckled at things.

A challenger appears

Nice man from a recruitment agency called me up yesterday and sent over a graphical mock-up of a web page for me to turn into an actual page.

Though scary, and challenging, (going through someone else’s idea and turning it into reality) it’s quite refreshing to be doing some serious design thinking again.

The place is in Leamington Spa though, so not exactly near.

From off to on

I just need to forget about some things I think.

Went to Tezz’s today and chilled out, started the afternoon with an all day full english breakfast to die for.

Played that eye of judgement game and won by chance.

Sleepytired, broadcasting my games all night. Gotta work hard on this photography site tomorrow!

Human after all

Got all the stuff I need from Still Life In Motion at last, so I can get cracking with the site.

Deadline is mid-September, which I should clear by a couple of weeks no problem.

Gonna go and grab a newspaper today and see what jobs are up for Web Designers.