Why is the client request nearly always:

Can you put this on the homepage for us please?

and not:

We have some new content ready for our website that we would like to feature, where do you suggest is the best place to put it?

Typically, we designers are hired in the first place because of our design and user experience expertise. Why does it always seem like, over time, this relationship deteriorates, and that original respect is lost.

Ultimately, I think it’s because the vast majority of clients have some sort of repressed wish to be a designer themselves. They just have this really strong urge to show you “who’s boss”, and they need to feel that they’re the ones who are in control for every step of the process. God forbid they would trust us Web Designers to do our job! I wonder if they exercise such control in all areas of their business… Somehow I doubt it, I mean it’s not like I’d suggest to my dentist the best way for them to pull a tooth out or for a mechanic how they should fix my car.

The reason I’m paying them in the first place is because they’re both trained professionals in their specific fields and as such I expect them to be able to do a far better job than I could do myself. There’s also a certain element of trust involved with this as I don’t demand to see what qualifications they have before letting them get to work. I naturally assume that if they have a professional looking workplace and happy clients that they are a trustworthy professional. Obviously there is a few other things involved that strengthens my trust, such as the language they use and how they talk me through the procedure they’re going to be carrying out and the tools/parts they’re going to be using, but these are only helping to reaffirm my trust. I’m not doubting them from the instant they start work – If I did then I wouldn’t have chosen them to start the work in the first place so when choosing a designer your trust should be the same.

However this is not how the world we live in works (yet), and as I highlighted at the start of this post, clients often doubt designers, so it’s up to us as web professionals, to help our clients by not always taking the easy way out and caving into their demands and instead helping them by suggesting the right way to present information. It might feel scary/risky saying that you disagree with a clients demands, but as long as you ensure that you do it tactfully and by making sure you back up your opinion with reasoning and logic, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised about the reactions you’ll get, as many clients will find it easier to respect your decision making and opinion if what you’re telling them is something you can stand behind, support and feel confident about.

At this point I know that some of you might be saying things like: Why aren’t you using Fireworks or why aren’t you designing directly into the browser? Both good questions, in answer to the first – because I personally prefer working in Photoshop and to answer the second question, I’ll point you towards this article by Sarah Parmenter: http://www.sazzy.co.uk/2012/02/why-i-cant-design-in-the-browser/.

Now, with that out of the way, back on to why Photoshop CS6 has got me excited!

Typography

For me this is the big one – paragraph and character styles. InDesign and Illustrator have had these for ages, but letting you store a text style and apply it to sections of text throughout a document will be an amazing timesaver and will also help with design constancy. You can even edit the master styles and have all instances update which is sure to be a god-send for when a client demands changes to a large document.

HEX Colours

The colour picker now accepts colours that have a # symbol at the front and also 3-digit values (e.g #fff). This might not sound like a radical change, as it’s really not, but nevertheless it’s going to be something that saves me a lot of time when coding a psd file into a website build. I’m hoping that Adobe will go one step further with this by the time Photoshop CS6 goes on sale as currently the HEX field is not automatically selected when the colour picker opens. Fingers crossed!

Auto-Save

If you’re a regular user of Photoshop, then just the mere mention of this new feature will no-doubt make you cry tears of joy. Photoshop has never been known as the most reliable of programs, in fact the only thing you could normally rely on was it’s ability to crash at the worst possible time imaginable. Now Photoshop CS6 can autosave as you work every 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes. It does this in the background so it shouldn’t interrupt your workflow but I’ve not tested this on a older machine, so would be interested to know if causes slowdown when it’s saving.

This is just a few of the new features that have been announced for Photoshop CS6, and there is a far more comprehensive article here (http://bjango.com/articles/photoshopcs6/) if you want to read more about them. For me, this looks like the first version of Photoshop in a very long time that has actually focused on improving the interface and going back to basics in order to save time for designers, so I’ll be eagerly awaiting the launch of the finished version.

After an initial weather scare of driving through a small shower on the way, upon arrival, although slightly cold, the day seemed to be setting itself up for a pleasantly rain-free and clear couple of hours. I was torn between taking my thick winter gloves or a thinner spring pair but eventually decided on the thick ones, which in hindsight was a bit of a mistake as the day turned out to get much warmer than I’d anticipated, but I can think of much worse things that might of happened so it wasn’t a real issue.

The Lionheart has two routes, a 100mile one and a 100km option. I’d opted for the 100km as I’d figured I wouldn’t be at full fitness considering that it’s still quite early in the year. I’m glad I did, as although I finished in a personal healthy 4.32, I’d fallen behind the other guys I was cycling with at around the half-way mark and by the last 10 miles my legs were definitely starting to feel it.

The course itself was quite interesting as it had a few surprise challenges as well as the well known ones. The course started by doing a small loop behind the Longleat House and then going up a towards the main entrance which is a relatively challenging hill to tackle before your legs are properly warmed up.

The organisers of the Lionheart sportive had decided to use village halls as their pit stop feeding stations, and while I can see the benefit of doing that, it did lead to a couple of less than perfect scenarios – The first stop was at around 15 miles in, which myself and all the guys I was cycling with felt was a bit too early into the route to warrant stopping at, so we sailed on by. If it had been placed between 20/25 miles then I’d of stopped to re-fuel and re-stock on energy supplies. The second (and last for the 100km riders) pit stop was around the 40 mile mark which was much better, but unfortunately the village hall in question fell in the middle of a steep hill so trying to push off and clip into your cleats after stopping was a challenge in itself, with many riders opting to walk up the hill before remounting.

The food inside the the pit stops left nothing to be desired though, as they had an amazing choice of quality food in plentiful supply. I grabbed a quick coffee and fuelled up on bananas and the (quite frankly genius inclusion of) Christmas cake!

Not long after that stop came the infamous King Alfred’s Tower Climb, which brought back painful memories during last years tour of Wessex, and this year included a timed ascent aided by the helmet chips we were all wearing. Personally I find that hill intimidating enough without the need to be timed, but it was a nice inclusion for those mad enough to want to race up it!

I actually passed someone riding a mountain bike on that hill, which initially seemed like an odd choice for a road sportive, but on second thoughts, I can see the logic as some parts of the course had a great deal of mud on the road, particularly when passing near farms and going through the Stourton forest.

The last bit of the Lionheart included a 2km climb at the end and with tired legs, this last climb had a lot of people walking, and others with painful faces. But with every accent, you get to have a descent, and the the one down into the Longleat estate was uber fast and made the sight of the finish line even more enjoyable!

The medals given out upon finishing were pretty nice and in my opinion a lot better than the one I received for completing the tour of Wessex last year and the stew/hot-pot food that was being dished out was veggie friendly, so colour me impressed and count me in for 2013!

I spent a lovely long weekend in Brighton a few days ago , hanging out with some friends and generally relaxing and having a break from work, although I did get roped into quickly fixing a WordPress theme while I was there!

During one of our deep and meaningful completely random conversations, one of my friends said that she felt like she didn’t like the predictability of how life’s traditionally laid out. You finish education, get a job, get married, have kids and get divorced and die alone live happily ever after…or something like that.

I can’t remember what I said in response at the time but it seemed like a strange analysis to me, but maybe that’s because I’ve never really been the most traditional type of person and neither is my family, so I’ve never really thought of life as a template that we’re all meant to follow.

Maybe I have an overly simplified vision to life, but surely if you don’t feel like marriage is for you then don’t get married. Think that kids would ruin your life as well as your bank balance? Don’t have them! Admittedly not all things are so black and white as those. Surviving without a job would be a challenge, but you can try to make sure that you get a job that doesn’t really feel like work which is almost like not having one!

For me, life is definitely not a template, and it won’t be for you either, unless you choose to make it so! For those that do – why? To me that seems like a very limited life. Life can be much broader and that’s a thought that has already been shared by a man who you might of heard of!

After several years of using both of the social networking behemoths, I have decided that unlike the vast majority of people I speak with, I prefer Twitter over Facebook.

Why? Because Twitter makes me feel happy! Facebook? Not nearly as much.

A lot of people don’t get Twitter, just look at the amount of accounts that have been set up and only tweeted once before being abandoned in favour of Facebook. In all honesty when I first started using Twitter, I too didn’t fully understand the twitterverse, but I persevered and now my Twitter feed is comprised of many fine-folk who work hard, are friendly yet ambitious and (fingers crossed) are on track to realising their goals. Compare that to my Facebook feed, which is comprised of many people who are obviously bored, and seem to like measuring how great their weekend was by how many pints they downed before throwing up and losing their shoes (and no-doubt also their sense of public decency).

Sorry if that sounds condescending, I do have some lovely friends on Facebook, most of which also happen to be on Twitter as well…coincidence, or proof that being on Twitter means you’re smarter than the average bear? Who knows!

Personally Twitter helps to inspires me. I follow a lot of like-minded people, many of which often share links to inspiring resources that often spark new ideas. Facebook often infuriates me. People I sat next to in school type like they nvr wnt to an Eng leszon in tey’re lifes abt how dey h8 wrk.

Obviously I need to give my Facebook friends list a good pruning, which would solve a lot of these issues, but sometimes I feel I can relate more to the avatars I chat with on Twitter than some of the people I have met in real life on Facebook, although thanks to some of the web conferences I’ve attended, I have been lucky enough to meet a lot of the people I follow on Twitter in real life now as well. Maybe the next logical step is to get to know them well enough so that they become Facebook friends as well

Am I the only one who feels like this?

Compared to my other conference write-ups, (FOWA, inSites, WDC2011), where I basically just wrote up who spoke and what the talks were about, I’ve decided to do something a little different for my write up of the New Adventure in Web Design Conference 2012 (NaConf).

Why? Well for a few reasons. One, that I felt like doing something a little different as some of the write-ups can be a bit dreary if you weren’t actually there, and secondly, there was one or two talks that I genuinely didn’t think were very good, and I don’t want this post to seem negative, as Simon Collison put on an absolutely fantastic event. I think he was born to be a conference organiser, as everything ran really smoothly and on top of that, I can attest to the fact that he truly is a top notch gentleman who definitely deserves the praise he gets from putting on these events.

So what I’m going to do is write down one highlight from each talk, and hopefully these points should be a pretty good list of design advice, regardless of wether you attended NaConf this year or not.

1. Dan Mall:
   “Your client has to be your partner – they aren’t an extension of your team, they are your team”
   Treat clients as part of your team. Make sure you collaborate with them at each milestone during the projects development.
2. Naomi Atkinson:
   Don’t be afraid to move on and evolve your brand message, in order to get noticed by anyone, an industry or a company.
3. Travis Schmeisser:
   We need to “loosen the fuck up”.
   Remember custom MySpace themes? Despite normally being awful, they encouraged creativity and learning.
   Are we taking our jobs too seriously now? Have we lost the fun and joy of it all?
4. Robbie Manson:
   Don’t be afraid to fail. By experiencing more failures, we learn to make fewer mistakes. Also that accidents can sometimes lead to great results. Who hasn’t accidentally turned off a photoshop layer, or changed a blending mode to discover a really nice result every now and then!
5. Trent Walton:
   Don’t be afraid to break things. We should all try to push stuff forward to discover its limitations, and when we break things, we gain a better understanding of how they work, and are then able to make improvements.
6. Cameron Koczon:
   Design(ers) needs to be elevated in how they are perceived by companies. A design team must feel that it has both the authority to make product decisions and the responsibility for the outcome of those decisions.
7. Denise Jacobs:
   Allow creativity to come on to you, rather than rushing to find an answer while your brain isn’t yet ready.
8. Frank Chimero:
   “When everything moves – the only solution is to dance.” Design moves, and we can never stop moving with it. It moves the designer when it’s being made, it moves when it is published, and through its proliferation. If it’s good design then it will almost gain a life of its own!

Besides all the great and inspiring talks, I also met and saw so many wonderful people. I am very glad to work within an industry that is so friendly and welcoming, and I am very happy to know and talk to the people I do. I just hope Colly doesn’t need to be bullied into putting it on again next year!

But while just like the pustular, cancerous growth, that was the web 2.0 trend, this is certainly not a good thing, I actually think that the web is in the midst of some sort of natural development. Right now, the focus might well be largely on social networking, but eventually I predict that it will reach a stage where that will just be an underlying layer to everything that is done on the web.

Another positive point worth mentioning is how we’re also starting to see some of these social tools used for larger purposes than just updating the world on what you had for breakfast (Croissants drizzled with honey if you’re interested) – Facebook now has things like the Folding@home plugin, and both Facebook and Twitter have been used as communication platforms in organising revolutions, for example — I think we’ve only just started to touch the tip of a very large iceberg there.

For me one of the most interesting developments to appear in social networking recently is ifttt.com as it lets users create simple tasks that can greatly extend existing social networking sites functionality while also helping to merge the services that the user/s personally use.

Another thing I’d like to point your attention towards is a little Javascript plug-in called socialite-js which handles the activation of sharing buttons for you. All you need to do is write the default element any way you care and then activate it with Socialite, any time you wish!

The benefit of using this script is that you can provide more accessible defaults for each button. So instead of Facebook’s empty <div>, or LinkedIn’s empty <script>, you can have a friendly link to the alternate sharing URLs.

They’re both well worth checking out, if you can drag yourself away from your “Latest News” feed for a micro-second!

I realise that this will be of almost no-interest to any of you, but I’m doing it more for myself than anyone else so you’ll just have to indulge me…or you could just stop reading now!

So, in a nutshell that was my 2011. I wonder what 2012 has in store for me. Whatever it is, if it’s interesting I’m sure I’ll post about it.

Happy new year y’all!

Before 2011 is a distant memory I want to take a little time to look back and see how far the web design industry has come, for me it’s been a hectic year combining working on loads of different things and getting the chance to be part of some new and interesting projects that have helped me to develop more as both a designer and as a coder.

One of the big things that I delved into was HTML5 and I’m still not convinced that it’s the future of markup! Now before anyone starts complaining, I am fully aware that if I don’t have a need for the new elements, no one is forcing me to use them – I can still use HTML4 and I’ll be just fine. However I’m just not convinced that having tags that are so complex in their usage scenarios is a good thing as there is always people that are going to be using them in the wrong context. Maybe I’ll do a full post on this subject soon.

One of the things that I have been convinced by is Responsive (or Adaptive) Web Design. I’d already read a lot about it, but after getting the excellent book by by Ethan Marcotte (http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design), I couldn’t wait to get building my first responsive website!

Leading directly on from that I’m also a convert to the ‘Mobile First’ way of designing and I’d suggest anyone who’s looking into it to read the great book by Luke Wroblewski (http://www.abookapart.com/products/mobile-first).

I’ve finally started using RSS feeds/Google reader to keep track of all the many blogs I like to follow so that I’m alerted when they publish a new post, and I can’t understand why it’s taken me so long to realise the benefits of this!

After working on a big project (Step Success) that required a user registration process and apps that they can use, I now fully appreciate how invaluable ‘user testing’ is! It also made me realise how much we sometimes expect users to know and understand the web, because as we spend so long using a computer we take a lot of things for granted. It has also made me agree very strongly with the following quote!

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” Einstein

2011 has been the year that I attended my first web conference which was in Bristol , and with it being such a great experience, I’m happy to say that I have managed to fit in another two (FOWA in London, and the lovely Bristol based WDC2011), and have another one lined up in January!

In a related point, I have met some great people throughout the year and have been amazed at how friendly the majority of web people are! It really is stunning just how amazing, precious, and endearing our web community is And how incredibly lucky I am to be a part of it.

I feel that for this year and the next, (and the next, and the next ect…) it’s going to be an incredibly exciting time to be creating things on the web. The way browsers keep pushing to become more advanced, the way they’re taking web standards more seriously, and loads of brilliant ideas from smart thinking people in general have enabled us to finally begin to web design. We’re no longer forced to think of the web as a digital reproduction of physical pages, but rather to finally embrace it as its own thing.

Remember the web is an ever-changing beast, full of imperfections and limitations, but it is also full of progress and experimentation. And that’s why we love it.

5) Fishin’ for Woos – Bowling for Soup

I thought my connection with Bowling for Soup had come to an end, as I’d not been tempted by their last two albums and was thinking they’d past their prime, but I still love seeing them live so could’t resist going along when they announced they were going to be playing the 02 academy in Bristol. The gig was everything I’d come to expect from BFS, but I was surprised when they played a new song that sounded a little different to their newer stuff, and instead sounded like old school BFS! Encouraged by that I picked up a copy of Fishing’ for Woos and it’s a mixture of Acoustic and Punk Rock music with upbeat, uplifting songs. It gets better every time I listen to it and I consider the song ‘Turbulence’ to be one of their finest to date. It hits the mind, heart and soul with surprisingly calm chords and lyrics that can touch you. Even if you’re not tempted by the album I recommend giving this song a listen as it’s worth a slot in any music library!

This fantastic typographic 'A' is in the inlay cover of the album

4) Hell on Heels – Pistol Annies

Despite being released in April, I didn’t discover this album until near the end of the year but it’s slipped easily into my top 5. Pistol Annies is an American country music supergroup composed of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley. Whereas many of these high-profile music side projects ultimately amount to little more than artistically torpid, self-indulgent one-offs, Pistol Annies defy that generalisation.

Hell on Heels is proof that good things can come in small packages. There’s eleven songs on the album and not one of them is over three and a half minutes long. Normally I’d point to that being a bad thing, but keeping the tracks short means none of them feel drawn out and never overstay there welcome! Also, I honestly can’t point to any of the songs sounding like filler tracks, which is another reason that I can’t complain about the shortness of the album overall. The album may be having fun with the concept of the three artist’s images, but with great lines like ‘I’ve been thinking about all these pills I’m taking, I wash ‘em down with an ice cold beer and the love I ain’t been making’, it would be a shame if Hell on Heels were the last anyone heard of the Pistol Annies. ‘Lemon Drop’ and ‘Trailer for Rent’ are my standout tracks.

3) For Now – Courage my Love

Most of you will never of heard of this little pop-punk trio, so to provide a little background, Courage My Love are twin sisters Mercedes, (guitar) and Phoenix, (drums) and David, (bass). Considering their relatively small stature, they rock surprisingly hard, but there is a little controversy with my next pick as my favourite song of theirs is not actually on this album as it was recored for a podcast: Tell em’ Steve Dave, but it’s still a top notch example from a fairly small but upcoming band, so I figure they’ll be happy if I recommend more than one of their creations. So what makes this so special, well the song I mentioned is called “I Sell Comics” and it’s all about being a kick ass comic shop employee, combine that with the fact that I’m a huge geek who likes comics, it’s easy to see why I think it rocks. Like I said, they’re not a large act, so give these guys some support, they deserve it, and I’m hoping that soon you’ll be able to say ‘I liked them before they were big’. Standout track from this album is probably the fantastically named ‘Anchors Make Good Shoes (If You Have Issues)’.

2) This Is Country Music – Brad Paisley

For anyone who knows me, it should come as no surprise that Brad Paisley features in this list. How can I not like a guy who actually used a mac’s start up sound in one of his songs! This album starts where his “American Saturday Night” left off, and if you’re hoping for a dramatic change then you’ll be disappointed as Brad sticks to what he knows best on this one. His style is definitely more pop-country so it’s not going to revolutionise the country music genre into something else, but when it’s this good, you really won’t care. The whole album is just nice, relaxing music that is perfect for some easily listening! It’s hard to pick out a favourite track when the overall quality manages to maintain such a high standard, but I’d say ‘Working On A Tan’ will remain one of my great summertime tracks for ages!

If for some reason the cover doesn't make it clear, please note the 'Explicit Content' warning!

1) Balls Out – Steel Panther

Could it ever have been anything else! When I started writing this list I had to have a good look through all the albums I’ve bought over the past 12 months, to decide what deserved to be included, but I already knew what would be filling the top spot! For those that don’t know, Steel Panther are like the 1980′s never ended, and I mean that in a great way! Their music is full of crazy guitar solos, powerful, energising riffs, and choruses so catchy you’ll be humming them in public without realising it, even if you don’t want to be, and for those poor few that have never heard a Steel Panther song, in one word, the lyrics can be best summed up as “offensive”. In four words, the lyrics can be best summed up as “really, really, reallllly offensive”. Yes the humour is juvenile, over-the-top and very rude but the reason that it works is because it’s all very tongue-in-cheek!

What sets Steel Panther apart from a lot of comedy bands, is that they are all technically very gifted musicians and have written some great songs on here. Steel Panther are rare because they clearly understand who they are trying to spoof yet are one of the few parody acts that actually ends up being better than the original influence. Anyone who enjoys b-tchin’ hard rock/metal in general will enjoy this album. Highlight track/s are ‘Tomorrow Night’ and ‘Weenie Ride’.