Design
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A New Library for Birmingham
Architecture has never been kind to Birmingham, but then Birmingham has never been kind to its architecture.
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Learning to Sketch
Quite often at Clearleft we like to do activities together as a company. In the past this has meant visiting museums in London, a night out at the Brighton Comedy Festival and of course our popular movie nights. Last week however it was time to do something a little more practical.
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A New Visual Design Language for BBC Online
I’m a huge supporter of the BBC, yet for many years I was unimpressed with much of it’s online output, where inconsistent design and poor implementation reflected badly upon one of our country’s greatest institutions.
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Logo Spotting
My love of detail is often reaffirmed by my noticing the almost inconsiderable tweaks in the designed environment around me.
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URLs Matter
The humble URL has been on my mind a lot recently. Through a series of developments, this simple means of addressing the wonders of the web has been obfuscated and abused, to the point that it’s now seen as difficult to use and an affront to users.
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A Cohesive & Unified Identity for British Government
With an escalating national debt, the talk at this months party conferences is of cuts to public spending and smaller, more efficient government. I believe one clear way of achieving this would be to introduce a single unified brand across government.
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Le Corbusier, The Art of Architecture
Yesterday I went to see the Le Corbusier exhibition, currently showing at the Barbican Art Gallery in London.
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Tailored for England
The appointment of Fabio Capello has brought about a more stylish and confident England. Now they have a kit to match.
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Simply Walsall
In the last few years, two public organisations in Walsall have undergone renewals, and both have choosen to reflect this change with updated identities.
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Entry Archives, Grouped by Month in Movable Type
I have been using Movable Type for a number of years, yet the template code required to present an archived list of entries, grouped by month has always evaded me.
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Driven to Design
In a recent conversation with a client, he asked why I got into design. Its something I’ve been meaning to write about for sometime, so I’ll try to publish my answer here.
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Thoughts on the New BBC Radio Logos
This last month has seen the gradual introduction of a new set of station identities for BBC Radio, designed by Fallon, In this overarching re-brand, each of the BBC’s national radio stations have been given an identity that falls within an overall templated design.
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2012 and All That
Monday saw the much anticipated reveal of the most significant identity to launch in Britain since that of the Millennium Experience in 1999. My immediate action upon seeing it was one of restrained joy — it was great to see something new in a category of identities that have remained pretty conservative and predictable over the last 40 years.
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The One to Watch
Since childhood, I have been a closet fan of television idents (the bits of video that appear whilst a program is being announced). Back in the early nineties, when a channel got a new set of idents, it was a big deal, with all the press reporting on them and casting their opinions. Of course back then, there were only four channels.
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The Art of Podcasting
When iTunes 4.9 was released a few months ago, it finally included support for download and playback of Podcasts. This new means of delivery also allowed podcasters to supply album artwork, which in turn would be displayed in the application and throughout the iTunes Music Store.
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Recent Web Work
Time for a little update on some recent websites I’ve been involved with.
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Geekend
This weekend has, more than any other weekend, seen me glued to this 17" display.