Adelle Sans Released

In case you missed it, Adelle sans was released two weeks ago. Available in seven weights with matching italics, it is highly versatile and looks great in all instances. Read the Full Post

Underware workshop

A little reflection

From the 19th to the 21st of March I had the pleasure of attending a typographic workshop run by the pan-European design collective Underware, as part of the Ulster Festival of Art & Design.

Major Project Proposal

View the files here

My Gantt chart doesn't show up very well on my printed proposal so I decided to link to it on my website.

Week 12 - Finishing Off The Semester

A bit of reflection

With the first semester complete and the submission date looming in the near future, I can't help but reflect about my time on the course so far. I find it weird to think that 4 years ago I did not have a clue about web design, typography, grid systems or basic programming, but now it is a major part of my life and something that I hope will continue to be for a long time after I graduate.

Week 11 - Live Project

Branding

I spent this week working on the live project, a website for Belfast based jeweller Garvin Traynor. The site is only a beta version though, it doesn't display properly at all in Opera (That browser causes me just as much grief as Internet Explorer) the type doesn't look right in Firefox and the images need a little more work in order to position them perfectly, but it's a working beta version which is all that is needed for now.

Week 10 - Why You Should Love Reading

Reading is essential

At the start of November I posted a list of book recommendations from Build Conference 2011. One of the comments I received stated that I should list a few of my own recommended books too, which I regrettably never got around to. So I am going to use this entry to make up for that with a more in depth post on why I think everyone should love reading and I will include a few of my favourite books along throughout the post too.

Week 9 - Online Rewards Systems

Rewarding People for Using A Product

I remember when I bought an Xbox 360 six years ago and unlocked my first achievement, I thought it was a pretty awesome idea to reward people for playing a game. Now we have websites that reward users for their loyalty,and applications such as foursquare and Gowalla that reward their users with badges and pins, which is what I am going to look into for this weeks entry.

Week 8 - Taking a look at media articles

This weeks entry will be a little different than usual

The main goal I would like to achieve with my major project is to make people more aware of the information they are presented with on a daily basis and to become more critical before accepting this kind of information at face value. So this week I will be showcasing a few examples and discussing the effect they have.

Week 7 - Major Project Research

Digg, Quora & reddit

After talking with Nick about my major project he advised me to look into how websites like Digg, Reddit and Quora allow users to upload content onto their websites, so I will use this week to get a better insight into how they effectively do this.

Book Recommendations From Buildconf 2011

I created a quick list of books that the awesome speakers at build mentioned. If you know of any that I missed then please leave a comment below.

Week 6 - The Importance of Typography

A team is only as strong as its weakest link

Everyone knows the saying "A team is only a strong as its weakest link" and I think this applies to design as well. There is no point spending time perfecting a design or content and not bothering about the typographic factors too, to do so would only undermine the overall design effectiveness and that is what I want to concentrate on this week.

"If your type is bad, the design fails." - Jason Santa Maria. Buildconf 2011

Week 5 - Grid Systems

Talking about grid systems

I want to spend some time this week looking into grid systems and how they can be helpful to web designers. Grid systems also tie in pretty well with responsive design so it would be great if I could learn how to start putting them to good use together to improve upon my skills.

Week 4 - Clarifying Proposals

Feedback and improvement

I got talking to Gabriel & Chris about my major project proposal and I received some great feedback. They talked about how I needed to clarify a more specific area to concentrate on and what I intend to do that is different from current similar sites. They also pointed me towards a website called Quora that sounded similar to my proposal, so I am going to spend a little time this week concentrating on my major project.

Week 3 - Implementing a Responsive Design

Making a Website Responsive

Working on from my previous post about responsive design I would like to explain one or two things that I initially found confusing, and hopefully by doing so I will help make it easier for anyone else who finds it confusing too.

Week 2 - Responsive Web Design

The Fluid Web

Our second design lecture was largely centred around Responsive Web Design, with the Standardistas running us through a prototype of their talk on The Fluid Web for Frontend 2011, so I'm going to spend some time this week looking into responsive design.

Week 1 - Productivity & Motivation

Getting Off to a Good Start

First of all, here is the "homework" given to us in our first DES511 lecture.

So that's the first week of final year over and the work is already flowing. I had better get stuck in then and since this is the start of the new academic year I thought I would focus on productivity and organisation.

Project Proposals & Biography

Biography

Phillip recently completed a 14 month placement at PathXL where he had the opportunity to work across a broad range of projects. He is looking forward to putting improved skills and the new skills he has learnt over the last year to good use in his final year of university.