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New guy
There’s a new guy where I work, he’s been here a month now. After 7 incredible, fun and fulfilling years at @gdsteam I'm leaving to become Chief Digital Officer at @yourcroydon from Oct. Croydon's regeneration, growing tech sector and digital ambition are hugely exciting and l'm looking forward to helping my fabulous home borough. —… Read more
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Tips for young designers (or young people in any career)
David Airey’s blog has a nice excerpt from small NYC based design firm Sagmeister & Walsh’s answers page. The section on advice for students gives the following tips for young designers, but they’re applicable to starting out and succeeding in most professions. The parts that most ring true to me are: One of the most valuable things you can do… Read more
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Two new old tools – Mindmup and Tricider
Here’s two free online tools which do something you’d usually have to pay for. They’re not new, but they’re new to me.: Brainstorming/mindmapping/cloud thinking Whatever you call it, there’s often the need to get a load of ideas or thoughts out of your head and onto paper (or screen). www.mindmup.com is a free web tool and app which lets… Read more
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Roads that wirelessly charge electric cars
Here’s an ambitious forward thinking project – cables under roads which can generate a field which is picked up by a special coil built into electric cars to charge them. Highway England plans to run the off road trials of charging roads for 18 months before moving to public highways. Over next five years, UK will invest £500… Read more
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What time does your website close?
The Local Government Association has complied it’s list of the 10 most bizzare calls councils have received in the past year. While many people can be suprised at the range of services run their local council, crossword solving (“A call from an elderly lady asking for help on her crossword. Seven letters, James Bond’s cat… Read more
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Telling people’s stories by letting them tell it themselves.
So much of work within a communications team is about telling a story – using it to show or reinforce a connection between a person and and someone or something else. This is easier than it’s ever been in today’s digital world, and one of the key advances of the web has been its ability to empower people to… Read more
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(Very) Honest webdesign feedback.
How can you get really honest feedback about your website or digital project? Richard Littauer realised that when he gets drunk, he gets very honest, and it turns out people are willing to pay for his honest appraisals of their work. So he set up The User Is Drunk. In fact, so many people have been willing… Read more
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Don’t be offended if I’m not offended.
New York designer SwissMiss posted an interesting video about being offended – how the ability to be offended is a relatively recent privilege for the masses, while also questioning what being offended can achieve. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2mVGE63YU[/youtube] Found at http://www.swiss-miss.com/2015/08/im-offended.html Read more
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The best design is invisable
When something has been designed exceptionally well, you shouldn’t notice “the design”. You should be using a service which just works, not fighting to understand what the process is or guessing what you’re meant to do next. So here’s a video about the recently released film Mad Max – Fury Road. The connection might not be obvious,… Read more
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Great design doesn’t need to “wow”
Another post about good design. It doesn’t need to “wow” its audience, good design works. And it may look boring or dull, but if it allows people to accomplish what’s needed quickly and efficiently, and people want to use that design again and again, then that is good design. Matthew Ström at Medium.com writes about this in… Read more