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With three years of iPhone ownership I’ve become accustomed to the design and behaviour of iOS, yet at the same time ignorant of other smartphone platforms. Thanks to Clearleft’s new mobile testing environment, I can now spend a week or so with different operating systems to get a feel for how they differ. First up; Windows Phone 7.

Facebook’s continuing hoovering up of top design talent has been worrying me for some months. The shopping spree continued earlier this month with the acquisition of Push Pop Press, a promising start-up building an innovative digital publishing platform.

Following the latest trends is fun but can also encourage laziness; you should think about design in terms of a particular brief rather than the particular fashion of the day. Yet it can be useful to focus on underlying trends: how we work, how we communicate with clients and how we’re now starting to appreciate the web as a medium in its own right.

I’ve been thinking about redesigning this website for the last six months, but haven’t been able to find a strategy for making these changes happen. To keep this project on course, I’ve defined a set of design principles.

Clearly communicating the fundamental aspects of your design at the different stages of a project can help you better communicate with clients, developers and your peers, ensuring your vision doesn’t get lost in the transformation from static comp to dynamic ever changing website.

There is often talk of there being no landmark design on the web, but I suggest it won’t be long before BBC News is considered one of the greatest design icons online today.

With Dave Gray speaking at this year’s UX London, Andy asked if he would then visit Brighton and run a sketching workshop for everyone at Clearleft.

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.

My love of detail is often reaffirmed by my noticing the almost inconsiderable tweaks in the designed environment around me.

The humble URL has been on my mind a lot recently.

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.

The appointment of Fabio Capello has brought about a more stylish and confident England. Now they have a kit to match.

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.

Influenced by the launch of Britain’s first new television station in almost 20 years, Channel 4, television design in the eighties saw experimentation with computer originated graphics. The graphic style during the nineties was also influenced by the launch of new channels – this time hundreds. The advent of multi-channel television meant the traditional terrestrial broadcasters, who for years had little competition, quickly needed to re-invent themselves, and branding played a key role.

The development of graphic design on the Internet, the problems associated with designing for this medium and some of the solutions.

The launch of television in 1936 saw the birth of a medium that could be easily exploited and enhanced by graphic design. However the early story of graphic design in television was one of limited resources and under investment.