2010

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.

Slides and referenced transcript from my presentation at Multipack Presents

I’ve recently felt frustrated and annoyed as once again friends and colleagues open their wallets and buy the latest product unveiled by Steve Jobs.

I’ve decided to attend next years SXSW Interactive festival followed by a tour of North America. The details of where I’ll be visiting and for how long remain undecided, but I imagine my itinerary will be varied and involve much travelling by train.

A number of half-written posts have remained on my hard drive for so long that their incompleteness only serves to annoy me. So I’ve salvaged the pertinent bits and published them here.

A few months ago I wrote about not upgrading to the iPhone 4, regardless of the fact I’m eligible for a free upgrade. This turned out to be something of a radical position but I enjoyed the debate that followed.

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.

dConstruct has long combined its conference programme with the name badge, a simple yet cost-effective design. This year we hope to go one better.

Earlier this week, Simon Collison revealed the first fruits of his newly established private entrepreneurship. ‘New Adventures In Web Design’ is an affordable one-day conference landing in Nottingham on 20th January 2011.

Architecture has never been kind to Birmingham, but then Birmingham has never been kind to its architecture.

I can wait another year before upgrading my iPhone.

Much like the wider economy, football in this country is an overinflated bubble ready to burst. Two years after failing to qualify for the European Championships, let us see further embarrassment with an early exit from the World Cup. Then let us seize this opportunity to properly scrutinise the national game and its failings, rather than single out the manger or individual members of the squad.

As the masses on Twitter congratulate themselves on their latest technology purchase, I feel strangely removed from all the excitement.

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.

As an era of Labour government led by Gordon Brown surely comes to an end, I reflect on my changing political attitudes and the decision I’ll be making at the ballot box this coming Thursday.

I’ve finally released the long awaited update to my popular social media icon set adding 12 new icons and a few design tweaks for good measure.

Once again, I feel the duty falls upon me to remind those attending this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, that you really need not pick up that big, heavy, cumbersome and frankly useless bag of marketing junk.

I ended my review of 2009 promising to write more about green issues and how I plan to lessen my impact on the environment. Now I expand on those ideas further.

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.

Holiday and illness means this is the latest I’ve got round to writing a yearly review. Whilst today is possibly the latest I can get away with such a post, I still think it’s important to reflect on the achievements of the previous twelve months.

After two and a half weeks exploring various cities, it was finally on to Melbourne, the final stop on my short tour of Australasia.

Since visiting Sydney in 2003, often considered which city in the world might be my favourite. As I flew over Sydney Harbour I realised there was no contest.

Wellington will remain the most memorable stop on my brief tour of New Zealand, although perhaps not entirely for the right reasons.

Having arranged my flights into and out of New Zealand before deciding upon an itinerary, meant I had little time to really explore the South Island.

Before the tan disappears I’d like to record my short journey across New Zealand and Australia. So over the next few days, I’ll describe how I ended the decade down-under.

I hoped that almost missing my flight would be the worst my trip to New Zealand would have to offer, but thanks to overzealous immigration officials at LAX, that was nothing but a minor blip.