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ver the Christmas break I spent most of my time revamping my site, and when I say that I mean I spent most of my time playing with Brownstone.

I discovered Brownstone when the second edition of 8faces popped through my door featuring an interview with Ale Paul of Sudtipos. Sudtipos publish some of the amazing fonts I’ve been drooling over for a long time including; Semilla and Monroe. I am now also considering extending my overdraft just so I can purchase Piel Script, Affair, Lady Rene and the rest! Using such a quality font is a breeze – no kerning required and a MASSIVE choice of alternates.

So dotted around the site you’ll find little bits of Brownstone. I found it to perfectly encapsulate the feel I wanted for the site; cute, friendly and feminine. Hope you enjoy the new design!

ince discovering the Daily Drop Cap blog I have to say I’ve fallen in love with Jessica Hische‘s approach to designing. The idea of designing something every day just for fun has really inspired me. Now every day might not be an option to me but I’m hoping to do something every week and post it here.

Right now I have a collection of inspiring quotes which I hope to use to develop my skills and knowledge in typography (including hand lettering), colour theory and my overall creativity. After that I’m not sure yet but hopefully it will develop into something beautiful, something I can feel proud of and feel confident about. Read more

I like to have a color / colour wheel image on my desktop that I can can open whenever I am designing. I tend to use Creative Curio’s wheel but I also like the wheel in Veerle’s Color Angels presentation.

However, sometimes I want a wheel that I can edit by changing the hues or blocking out some colors so I can use the wheel in presentations to clients or colleagues.

After much googling I couldn’t find any PSD or AI color wheels so I made them myself and here they are for you to download. Read more

After reading about the new Web Standards curriculum from the people behind the Opera browser in Web Designer magazine, I checked out some of the articles today and I’m already at article 11! The curriculum will soon consist of 50 articles, currently 23 have been published. The articles are very easy to read and a great introduction or reminder to all involved (and wishing to get involved) in web design or development.

The curriculum is actually aimed at Universities to improve their web modules, which is very interesting. I know that on my university course (Events Management at Leeds Met, UK) there was a web design module in level 2 which actually constitutes of being taught to build a site in Dreamweaver. I didn’t take the module as I’d already taught myself to use Dreamweaver the year before (on placement) and I had already moved on to hand coding. Looking back now, maybe I should have taken the module for some easy marks!

It would be fantastic if more universities used this Web Standards Curriculum to bring their modules up-to-date and even inspire their students into moving into a web-related field. I know that my degree has only strengthened my career in web development because I have far more knowledge and experience of marketing, sales and client relationships than most students who have completed degrees in computing schools.

I am very tempted to send my old technology-dissertation tutor, John Nightingale, an email challenging him to re-write the Web Design module!

I was looking through some archived articles on Smashing Magazine and found a link to this Website Grader. The information it gives is very comprehensive, but not too complicated. Personally, I plan to use this site to demonstrate to my clients’ sites SEO and marketing strength, if I get any queries from them. It’s a great authoritative resource.

I found this diagram a while ago on Smashing Magazine and have refered back to it over and over again. Statistics are based on the w3school‘s figures.

Next time a client (particuarly those charities, not-for-profit orgs and government agencies) require any design to be created for a 800×600 resolution, I plan to challenge them!

Times New Roman would rule; Wingdings would be admitted to a mental hospital; Arial Narrow would be a red-neck racist; and Comic Sans would save the day. This is awesome (except for that last bit with Comic Sans?!)

I am loving this new generator at BGPatterns.com that creates tiling backgrounds in just a few clicks. So many possibilities with just a few simple options! Here’s one I created earlier:

Today I’ve launched my very first free WordPress themes!!

I was looking through my projects folder and discovered a mass of designs and web layouts that are going to waste. When I meet with a client we will develop a wireframe for their website and then I will come up with two design concepts for their site, lots of these themes will be developed from designs that were not chosen by clients but are still really good and some may have been from projects that never went ahead at all.

I’m really looking forward to putting these designs to work, there is no reason why they should just sit on my hard drive!

On my list I have 21 possible designs to use and I’m sure I will think of many more after that!!!

So… I hope you like and maybe consider doing some digital recycling yourself???

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