Drawar

I went a few years ago and it was not really much good. Compared to a lot of the expos this was less internet and more marketing as the direct marketing fair is attached to it. I'm not sure if it's changed though which it might but when I went it was a couple of seminars stuck in inside tents and the rest was just stands people selling enterprise or business to business things from. As I said it could have changed but from the literature I got sent it still seems fairly the same - there was no networking potential when I went either it was just a trudge around and walk out - unless you were after cheap printing then you could have networked that. What was there internet wise was out of date and most of the products / demos were all enterprise based.

I agree with the cries of 'stop it'. Lets just stop the numeric madness and get about producing valid, solid applications that are innovative and grow with the new technologies. Web .anything is just marketing bottom feeding and we should all stop with the crazy. I think my head will explode if people start talking in wide numbers are web 3.0. 4.0. 5.0 to infinity.

Cool, thanks for the suggestions. I used to do a lot of macro work with my SLR so getting the ability to do that is a big thing with this one - somehow I end up doing some on the cybershot (for what it is and how old it is (2 years old) it does damn good), but I really miss the flexibility and quality of SLR. I'm prepared to wait, considering the UK Boxing Day / January sales as could be able to get a deal in those.

1. Realising I can't do it all myself.
   Learning to take time and get a good base of contractors I can call in to do larger projects or help when times need it has been a hard lesson for me. As a developer and designer I was used to 'doing it all myself'. I have learnt over time that this isn't necessarily the best thing. Whilst I always project manage and code manage to ensure a certain level as it's having my company name after all on it, I have had to learn to let some of it be done not be myself. It was hard and took years of my husband pushing me to do less.
2. Setting revisions.
   One of the big lessons I learnt luckily quite early on was to be careful to set revision numbers for designs in contracts. I learnt the hard way - I often seem to have learnt the hard way with most of these things.
3. Make it look good just for me.
   There are some clients who no matter how much you try and inform them about the web simply refuse to see that anyone would use a browser, computer or platform that is not the one they are using. They cling to this bizarre belief that their set up is the only one that anyone would use. Often this is browser blindness but it can extend into some really odd realms of 'everyone has the same as me' which can include more 'design' features like their love of royal blue and fuscia.
4. X can do it for cheaper y.
   I gave a long time ago competing beyond profitability. Sure I may loose some projects this way, but the bottom line is I can't compete with everyone. Initially it was tempting to come in low on a project just to win, this soon became a fruitless and profit loss situation. Now, I price what is a fair price for my market place and my location along with what works for me. I gave up a long time ago looking at x or y and trying to raise or lower my prices to match.
5. Frankenstein design.
   One of the most annoying things is showing a client a couple or so of designs and having them pick out x, y, a, b and c across them all. I have yet to see a client not create Frankensteinesque designs from this.

Arial over here - boring, predictable but good ole faithful for me.

Thanks a lot and yay! pink ;)

Too big also can be wrong. I usually opt for the column size (if it's after a post and not fluid design) and 6 lines in height. I've never found an issue with this size myself. I think too small is a big turn off - of course if they write a novel then scrolling is unavoidable and huge comment boxes are just as off putting as small ones.

Helvetica lover over here and I am still a sucker for Arial and probably always will be despite things being thrown at me for liking it ;) Tahoma I also like for a more informal font but the readability isn't so great sometimes on it.

I have a question sheet which is part of the consultation I do with any client. I also make a point of chatting to them prior to the quote and then book in a session to talk about the design and nail down what they really want. I don't have face to face interviews most of the time as don't have many local clients - I find skype and IM work just fine.

From this point I go through what they have answered in the design sheet and what we talked about. Some examples of the question sheet are things like colours like and don't like (for every like I always ask the dislike as that can often be more telling), mood they want for their site. sites they like or designs they like if it's non website based, company mission statement (I find this often very useful) and one of the most telling questions I find is when I ask them to choose 10 words to describe what they want their site to look like.

After this I do a bit of market research to see sites or designs in their field and from there go into moleskin mode. I then pick out after moleskin the colour palette I am going to use - often more than one as I do a colour variation sometimes. Then it's onto blocking and marking out in photoshop based on my moleskin sketching. I then flesh out each element as I progress to a complete design. I make a point of leaving a design if I can to brew at least over night as find I do better work when I let it rest and come back to it.

This is the design process for my freelance company design work and it also applies in less 'design' ways to development as I have a very similar process for that. I look back at it and every 6 months or so see what is working and what is not - I find it's better to constantly evolve it. Often the design questions are the most important so I try different ones to see what is working and what can bring the client's wants over better.

As I use a quite thorough design document to work out the form of the site before I go ahead and make the design up - I know the content that will be there so go with the front page first myself.

For a true brain freeze try creating a theme for Joomla that doesn't have tables anywhere on the site - I recently had to do this - you'd better like diving deep if you want to achieve that. To me word press is a dream to code and yep the loop is about the hardest bit really. Yes there are limitations - there are with text pattern, expresison engine... joomla... and so on and so on.

I'm also scratching my head over this 'drain' - it seems when something has been about for a while certain people just jump train and proclaim 'abandon ship it's not fit anymore'. Personally, I'm sticking as I'm quite happy with my ship thanks.

I personally think Joomla has to be one of the worst I've come across for the sheer 'hunt the code in the haystack'. Yeah they've got a wrapper design template but if you want to remove tables you simply have to hack to get that and it's into the actual php / pseudo html you have to go. Hardly easy or elegant. I've not experienced Express Engine but heard some good things about the ease of templating.

I'd vote for sandbox also. Wordpress isn't that bad once you do one and it does make sense ish eventually. Personally, I find it one of the easier blogging systems to design for.

Green - usually the more muted brown greens but I do like lime green also. I sort of have a mild obsession with browns and earth tones along with green. I generally prefer the muted colours and sad to admit it but most of my wardrobe is brown. grey or green.

Personally I've got a veer addiction going on. I don't think I ever brought a type from Adobe - not that I can remember.

I agree a good type can not only go a long way with the project but set you up well for many more. Unlike stock images there just isn't a stock / cheaper resource of the quality in typography. More than likely I do think it's the time intensive nature of a good type set. Bottom line is a good type can often be the missing link in design - logos it's is usually a make or break. I can think of the amount of times I've seen a wonderful logo that was bar a little tweaking just an amazing type.

I think the times have changed somewhat for females in the web industry. I started in software engineering before moving into design and think the development field was then a lot more male than even the design community. I don't agree it's a rarity myself and certainly can see a fair few high profile females in the industry.

I like to use the mutter and release technique with old clients screwing up things. I mutter about the office for a few minutes, grumble into my coffee, click my portfolio link and delete it. That's my mutter and release ;) It's a shame but it's part of the joy of being a designer.

I do photoshop mock up and then the skeleton. My reason - I develop the sites I design and as a result I when designing use my experience. What is wrong is if you don't know about what works designing in photoshop. I believe the design and structure are the same thing when it comes to websites - no point in either being bad.

I'm not big on justified unless it's blockquotes. I am dyslexic myself and find it rather annoying when people play about with word formatting too much online. I have an oddly passionate hatred for center alignment also but not sure where that comes from - it just always looks wrong and bad to me.

It works really fast now I'm not using it ;)

Wow RightOn maybe it's my poor ole powerbook but it is slow for me.

I gave up after about 15 minutes of use. I kept feeling like I was using some kiddie concept browser - not sure how to convey the stupidness of the UI now. I loved the old one and the site was exactly right for a browser and really a great piece of work. I have given up on them if this is the direction they are going.... I won't be wearing my flock t-shirt much now it's become an embarrassing statement after this monster fluff up. Time to resign it to the doing decorating clothes pile then ;)

I really think it is a shame and god only knows what was going through the mind of the design UI wise or site wise for this version. Talk about a downgrade. The development on the browser also sucks it crashed 3 times in 15 minutes and was slower than a snail stuck in toffee.

I'm getting freaked out by all 3 of them and their snide happy clappy faces - looks more like a cult site than browser one now. 'Come join us and you too can look like this' (shudder)

In theory you could see anything that effects the visual as progressing or 'degressing' the web design profession. Personally, I don't see it as pushing forward so much as enhancing. WIth progressions in CSS though I think new techniques will be found over time so we find ourselves wandering in a few years time 'how the hell did we manage without this'. Just like we look at tables now and wave the tabular data stick at them with a frown.

I see web design as a live evolving thing or at least it is to me. I agree the golden age or more specifically golden phase of discovery for now is over but that is a good thing. We all now are using these techniques and making better the web one site at a time. What you can never fail to remember is the percentage of fugley, non standards compliant web out there and people still making such sites due to lack of education or having their head stuck in a table. Until every site is done it's not job done.

Yeah it errors a few times for me on loading and the time is an issue - all that aside it's the boundaries pushing that makes it a winner for me. Experimenting is something we often don't do as designers and this shows what can be done.

Good work Ryan - lifestream is something I'm thinking about adding to my blog and really like yours.

@Sean .... only one image I can send to you for you 'fold' comment 'there is no fold' ;)

I have used sxc but I generally don't go the free route and use istock - not free but not expensive.

It's what I love about yoga... you get a mental and physical work out. The problem with power yoga is not using the breath - the whole point of yoga is breathing into things - feeding your muscles and stretching into positions rather than snapping things like you were doing some aerobic work out. It really gets me the way people teach yoga around here it's all just asking for people's shoulders and other things to pop out. Ok... yoga freak stopping hijacking this post now ;)

@estaria: btw anusara is actually based on hatha as a form. Hatha is the breath and anusara is the action.

anusara: Anusara (a-nu-sar-a), means “flowing with Grace,” “going with the flow,” “following your heart”.

It's a very new yoga and hatha is it original so you would actually gain from hatha. Now the Gerri does yoga / power yoga is certainly one to avoid. I think it was founded in the late 90s. So long as you make sure a) your teacher is certified and b) it's not power yoga - you are usually going to only gain from yoga. The maddest thing is when you get to the breathing bit and realise for the entire life you've been breathing wrong and only using about the top 10% of your lungs.

I've got an ikea chair - it's the luxury office one and it has to be the best chair I've ever had. I have a bit of a messed up back but it seems to fit my spine and back perfectly. I do take regular breaks and find the yoga stretches work well. I've found the sun salutation great and the dog position also works well for cracking out the daily problems from sitting at a desk all day. I also find that consciously reminding myself to sit upright a few times a day really is noticeable in helping me. My new desk is also good, it manages to get my arms how they should be - my old one was more like i'd borrowed my parent's desk as I just looked silly sitting at it (arms stretching up to reach it isn't good). You don't have to spend a fortune to get a great chair, it's about the testing and getting one that is right for you - same goes for desk.

@Tyme your speechless, I've had to rewrite my post about it 10 times to avoid swearing ;)

If you want to make yourself feel even sicker try the offical website argh!.