Taking full advantage of your web browsers
A lot of people ask me how do they do that?
Have you ever wondered how someone has created something on the web? If the answer is yes then this blog might be of some use to you. I use a couple of tools to help me work out how a piece of design was built. The first is in your web browser is to view source. This can be done by going to (in Firefox) view – page source or “apple u” for short. This may be different if you are using different browsers etc.
Another way to work it all out is by using add-ons. Firefox comes with plenty of add-ons such as firebug etc. I use firebug, it means that you can high light various parts of the site and view the actual code for that part. You can also find keywords as if you were doing a search in Word. Confusing – it is a bit but can be very handy for debugging etc. However I bit of advice this will not work on flash and you will need the fla’s (original files) to sort that out directly.
To add firebug go to http://getfirebug.com/ and install it for free
How do you stay in touch?
There are various people out there with great knowledge of the digital world and sometimes its hard to keep a track of such a fast moving industry. Im going to give you heads up and tell you who I use and why.
Lets start with smashing magazine. They are primarily a blog site with great resources for trends, tutorials and just pure web knowledge. You can visit there site here. I use them for inspiration as well.
Mashable on the other hand are great for keeping me up to date with social trends and gadgets, which is very handy in my line of work. They also have an iPhone app which keeps the user inundated with the latest news. If you want to have a great read on social gadget trends then visit there website here
Neither site is better than the other they both help me to keep in touch and up to date – enjoy!
Cotswold Outdoor
Whilst at oomph I worked on Cotswold outdoor creating various advertising material online and offline. The work varied from photoshop to advertising material to general creative concepts.
Camping campaign
Xmas 09 Window graphic / poster
Xmas 10 front cover to a brochure
Boots, Daysacks and Jackets national press ads
Wilkinson Sword
The brief was to design an exhibition stand that would go to events, showing how young men should shave. Together with this stand I also designed a A6 6pp which the customer to then take away with them as a reminder of there experience.
Zeus Technologies
Zeus Technologies are a spy technology company. They have the ability to detect at ranges far greater than done before. I used a graphic image and selected an individual using their colour scheme. A basic easy to navigate site was the brief. To view the site click here
User Experience
UX for short is what web designers commonly know it as. A users experience can be landing on a home page to using an iPhone app to even working there way through an operating system. All of which I have designed in some form or another.
It is for all intense purposes a guide from start to finish through a piece of design. It can be simple or very confusing. All are user experiences’ in some form or another. On a personal level the easiest and simplest will deliver the best results. Planning is key and I like to use a program called Mockflow which is intergrated with gmail.
A bit of a sidetrack but Mockflow is a wireframe application which lets the user guide through a simple outline of the product. I have used these for websites and operating systems. It sorts out the confusions and lets the clients know what to expect. All in all makes for a quick and easy signoff process.
User experience or UX – my recommendations are keep it clean, simple and try not to get them lost!