Hamish Napier
______Here’s the logo for one of my good friends. He’s a tutor of music and dance and a superb folk and jazz musician, the logo is intended mainly for his website but hopefully I can talk him into some nice letterpress business cards. Hamish is a real talent on the piano with amazing theoretical knowledge of music, his enthusiasm and wit are infectious and he’s a joy to work with. Go on yersel’ Hamish….

MK Whistles.
______Got the new mk whistles site up in the spring there. For one reason or another forgot to post it here. Divot…
______Any how it’s a nice minimal site, modern open and focused on the whistles and the customers. Me and misha got this one together pretty quickly but not after much humming and hawing and scribbling boxes on paper. As with most of the sites I make these days it’s built on the wordpress framework which I still can’t fault, it has completely revolutionised how I produce websites. It has some cool additions like a random image rotator on the home page, although we’re still considering what tag lines will work for the target audience. Other nice additions are the sidebar gallery and enormous, comprehensive footer section.

JP Mowberry
______My good pal Benjamin hooked me up with a law firm he was working for and I got the gig of re-branding their company. It’s a while since I’ve done a plain straight down the line typographical ident and I’ve quite enjoyed it. Trying to find subtle but effective tweaks to such a basic concept is challenging and very different from my usual illustrative driven lunacy. The web site is nearing completion and there are a few more projects underway for some other law based projects which are showing varying degrees of individuality and progress.
______The law / solicitor sector in Scotland has a particularly dismal graphical appearance so it’s nice to be working on some classy simplistic design with a forward thinking progressive company.

schmO v.5
______So my never ending itch to redesign things has manifested itself into another version of the schmO. This one is quite a departure of designs of old, it uses a nifty javascript called supersized by build internet. Basically it’s a full screen slideshow with navigation, it cleverly resizes the image to fit whatever monitor it’s on. It has drawbacks, most noticeably image degradation on larger monitors but nothing is perfect in the world of internet. Also you have to use title and alt tags to provide captions for each image. I doubt google will like this but I’ll just have to wait and see how it fairs. The aim of this design is to get the my work to the fore and i think it achieves this with it’s minimal user interface. After all my trumpeting for simplicity lately I thought it would be worth practicing what i preach. If you use Internet Explorer 7 or below you will be asked to upgrade your browser on load. This framework quite simply doesn’t work on it so there was no point in trying to make it compatible. Across browsers it has some quirks, Opera seems to treat it quite strangely but it works fine. Safari, chrome, firefox all display it as I would like. The latest version of explorer has it’s bugs, as expected but they don’t affect the user experience to much so I’ve left as is.

Spad
______So my long serving pal Spad has finally got his own website up. I helped him out with a logo some ascii art and a little bit of wordpress tweaking. He is using the theme Aperio which is basic but a breath of fresh air in terms of its simplicity and wacky layout style. Spad will be posting new videos and music that he’s working on, his stuff is always cool and of distinct quality. Viva la Spad.
______ http://spad.org.uk

Authoring on Creative Boom
______So in a bit of a change of direction I’ve started to write articles for Creative Boom. It’s an online magazine centred around the creative industries. Go check out my first post here. I’ve also been beavering writing a few posts, taking photos and making videos for adventure blog high-8.
______I have to say the blogging phenomenon hasn’t really enamoured me that much until recently. I think the blogosphere is a little more focussed now and forging a path as a credible medium in it’s own right. The initial swathe of pointless witterings that were abundant have subsided (mainly thanks to twitter and facebook).  It is commonly accepted that just over 50% of created blogs are maintained which is all the better for those who are publishing usefull, interesting and inspirational articles.

Fonts on the Web
______Is this the year of Typography on the web? I certainly hope so. It would be nice to use more than 12 of the 1000′s of font’s I own. Fontdeck promises to host licensed and (mostly) free to use fonts that can be included in your site. Sounds good hopefully it will live up to the hype. In the meantime there is the slightly power hungry cufon which is effective but can be slow if over used. Typography on the web, bring it on…

IE 8
______So I installed Microsofts Internet Explorer 8, thought I should check out what challenges it will provide in designing web sites. They are varied and perhaps even more complicated than before. Although the browser has greater .css support (although not comprehensive) it throws up further obstacles through it’s convoluted compatibility mode. This is Microsoft’s token effort to accept standards but on their own terms. I think it is safe to say that many users are become more disillusioned with Microsoft’s pathetic attempts to maintain it’s monopoly, with many using other browsers and more so jumping ship altogether and using linux or mac operating systems. Please, I implore all explorer users to please download firefox. The web will always struggle to progress as long as users support this abhorrent application.
______The possibilities in .css3 are fantastic and a real progression in function and aesthetics for the web. Check out these examples for proof. http://www.zurb.com/playground. With all the other browsers providing or in the process of implementing support for .css3 internet explorer is maintaining it’s status as the thorn in the side of web developers the world over.

Treacherous Orchestra
______So a welcome return to Flash for me with this one http://www.treacherousorchestra.com. It’s great that the band decided to buck the trend for super useable, standardised web design. This site will not win any awards for use-ability with buttons along the bottom, confusing but authentic d-pad media player and vast amounts of space dedicated to vintage wallpaper and arcade machine facia. But hopefully it’s creative, stylised approach will prompt a renaissance in imaginative flash sites among the musical community. Although standards has helped progress the web greatly in the last year or so it’s noticeable that creativity and ingenuity has suffered as designers stick to the tried and tested idiot proofing that has become so wide spread. This site will be chalk and cheese and provoke reaction.

______So the site has some neat little features. Flickr Photo gallery using the excellent flashr api. RSS news and gigs section which gives the band total control of updating the bulk of the site. Add to this a superb youtube player by avalonweb germany. A special thanks must go out to them for help with integration and their superb open source ethos. There are some extra zany features to be added to the site in the near future so keep checking back…

______I had a few bugs initially with the usual suspect; Internet explorer. But I have managed to resolve all but one. Explorers chaching system can cause havoc with flash and there are some extremely intermittent problems with the browser re-scaling the movies. There is little I can do about it, refreshing the browser sorts it. When will microsoft give in and just accept that explorer is inferior to other free browsers and needs over hauled to follow standards. I managed to find a pals computer with Internet explorer 6 still installed on it, and it was depressive to use. Most of the sites I have designed in the last 2 years failed to work properly on it, and my own site schmo.biz didn’t even load. Please if you use Internet explorer what ever version please switch to Firefox, or one of the others you’re time on the web will be more secure and enjoyable. Plus no more ctrl alt deleting… For more info on how to get rid of this menace be sure to visit. http://www.bringdownie6.com/

wildwishmusic.com
______Another wordpress site here for Nuala Dalton and Irish singer songwriter based in Newcastle. The site follows on from the graphical concept for her debut album which should be ready to buy in January. The site uses a custom home page which has the ability to include a jquery carousel, and three snippet columns that lead the user into the main body of the site. The remainder is a standard single column with sidebar. The sidebar deals with paypal album sales an about box and mailing list. WordPress is working as a content management system in this instance. Again it’s a testament to the system, flexible, custom and useable. Check it out http://wildwishmusic.com.
______The album cover should be ready soon, so I’m looking forward to see how it turns out. I’ll post a photo when it arrives.