Writing

A brief thought about collaboration.

Bradshaw’s Guide brings George Bradshaw’s 1866 descriptive railway handbook to the web. Today I’ll cover some of the typographic decisions I made, and how they lead me to believe that we still lack the necessary tools for web typography.

A selection of websites of sensational design and superb development.

My short break in California has so far included four hour-long trips on Caltrain as I hop between the cities of San Francisco and Palo Alto. These short periods disconnected from the web, have allowed me to catch up on my reading list.

Based on the 1866 edition of George Bradshaw’s handbook for tourists using Britain’s nascent railway network, my latest project puts his historical insights into the hands of a new generation, many of whom use the same routes he described 150 years ago.

Since Mikey joined us in February, the number of designers working at Clearleft is at an all time high. As the company grows, we want to maintain the same level of knowledge sharing and collaboration that happened more spontaneously with a smaller team.

An Event Apart, The Next Web and The Guardian are this month’s responsive recommendations.

When awards are given out, they should encourage everyone to be finer practitioners, not louder personalities. Instead of putting people – however deserving – on pedestals out of reach of new talent, when done right, they can promote inclusivity and celebrate our collective achievement.

Skinny Ties, Microsoft and Anna Debenham feature in this month’s responsive recommendations.

As the page turns on another year, just enough time to close the book on a few personal projects and responsibilities. In doing so, I hope to free up some time (and mind space) for new projects to be unveiled in the new year.

The Christmas break provides the time to tie up loose ends and make much needed progress on personal projects. At least, that was the plan. Once again I find myself distracted by the task of making this website just that little bit faster.

Earlier today, 24 Ways published an article in which I outlined five reasons why I believe two current proposed markup patterns for responsive images are largely redundant. Here I provide some follow-up, and hopefully clarification around the points I raised.

I engage with the two main approaches to the matter of responsive images and finds them wanting. Could “Bah, humbug!” be a reasonable response to markup excess?

Justin Avery, who curates the Responsive Design Weekly newsletter, asked me four questions as part of his December Interview Series. Here are my answers.

Quartz, Nominet and SB Nation are this month’s responsive recommendations.

After attending Build in Belfast last month, Chris Armstrong gave Ethan Marcotte, Chris Shifflet and myself a tour of the Causeway Coast which, as the name suggests, is home to the famed Giant’s Causeway.

XOXO, Design Intellection and The Cut are this month’s responsive recommendations.

Fifty years after the release of Dr. No, James Bond returns in Skyfall, the twenty-third instalment of the longest continually-running film series in history.

Website optimisation can be a cruel game; everything has a number that begs to be reduced, but doing so requires a lot of experimentation, research and testing. And when you’re playing with the last hundred or so kilobytes, there’s little reward for your effort.

Microsoft’s Build conference site, Supereight Studios and Palantir are this month’s responsive recommendations.

At the beginning of this year I was struck by a realisation, prompted in part by the discussions around responsive images but also the artistic ingenuity of the image optimisation techniques being used by Jeremy. How might the visual aesthetic of the web change if we were to acknowledge its nature and embrace its constraints?

A page on my website, dedicated to a cat.

Adobe recently announced a new suite a products and services for web developers, called Adobe Edge. .net Magazine asked me to provide some thoughts.

When every device begs to be connected, it has become easier – almost necessary – to accept the adaptable nature of the web. Responsive web design is an emerging best practice, and our layouts are becoming more flexible. But often, innovation is focused on technical implementations while the visual aesthetic remains ignored. To put it another way, we’re embracing “responsive” but neglecting the second part: “design.” Now is the time to seek out an aesthetic that is truer to the medium.