Business posts

I’m a lucky person. Every day I get to do what I love, which is helping clients work out what their web project is going to look like.

As any good account handler or project manager will tell you, their primary role is to make sure that a project goes as smoothly as possible. This can mean managing people on both sides of the fence, and keeping everyone happy is no mean feat.

I’m a big believer that getting a project off to a strong start is integral to the success of that project, and for me that means helping the design team hit the ground running, and making sure they can begin doing what they do best as soon as possible.

I’ve read plenty of material recently describing account handlers as having a negative effect on the creative process of a project. These criticisms range from the account handler...

Recently, Condé Nast Digital undertook a complete redesign of the articles published on wired.co.uk. The aim was to provide a more content-first and immersive experience. These aims were established after research by our Information Architect.

We started on the path of fulfilling those aims over a year ago with the redesign of the GQ.co.uk articles and the introduction of what we call the ‘StickyScrollRead’ component, which allowed the editors to embed media that would be pulled out of the body copy at screen widths wider that 1000px and pinned on screen. That meant the user could continue to read the article and still refer to the peice of media that the copy was about. This proved to be a much more immersive experience and allowed the body...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very...

As I grew up, being a “creative child,” which was the description my school psychologist used to explain why I didn’t care for school or the usual subjects like math and why I wasn’t like the other children, my mother would get frustrated and call me “bull-headed, just like your great grandfather!” There was little hope for me being anything else but a pain-in-the-butt artist. It was, unfortunately, that incorrigible demeanor I had, either through genetics or experiences that would keep me from being an artist.

Talent for space, shapes and colors would never be enough until I learned to open my mind. Just having the talent to enthrall the other kids in my class, the “normal ones” who would gather around to watch me draw dinosaurs eating army tanks and superheroes ripping the head off our teacher and then point and tattle to that very same teacher that I was drawing naughty pictures — the very same kids who grew up to be Wall Street brokers, lawyers and politicians — would not be enough to make me an artist for my career. As I would find out years later, neither would art school. Not at first.

Things were different in high school. I was allowed to take elective courses and chose, of course,...

In the last post, we took an in-depth look at Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they have impacted on search rankings for businesses. Whilst we established that using black hat SEO techniques is likely to result in a site becoming penalized, we didn’t look at what’s known as gray hat SEO.

Gray hat SEO is, as the name suggests, somewhere in the middle of black hat and white hat. This means that whilst the practices may be perceived by some as being OK, for the most part they still break search engine rules and may result in losing rankings, or worse.

However,...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very...

Every time we begin a web design project, we do research. We research our clients, their customers, the website’s target audience, and the competition.

Throughout our careers, we research new trends, techniques, tools, and other designers. We’re always on the lookout for that one new thing which will make us better at what we do, or will make our jobs easier. We love our craft, so we read articles, analyze raw data, consult with experts, and more. What is life without improvement and progress?

But so often we neglect to research the one tool, the one common factor, present in every project you will...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very...

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very...

We all know that there are a few differences between small businesses and larger corporations, especially when they begin considering the web design aspect of their marketing plan and branding. And while for the most part, the nuts and bolts basics are often the same for both, small business owners and freelancers often have to make many more considerations before they get to the actual design.

Before approaching a designer, small business owners should already have some solid ideas of what they need and what they want (which can sometimes be two very different things) ready to present. Larger corporations have creative departments and teams at the ready to bring the company’s brand to the web with ease. The people at the top rarely have to get their...

The long, painful and drawn-out death of skeuomorphic design lurched forward another step this week with a redesign by the world’s biggest social media site, Facebook.

The new look is spearheaded by a logomark that is a simplified version of the pre-existing one. Although the full Facebook logo will remain unchanged, the round-cornered square with the solitary ‘f’ has been carefully refined.

The blue strip, previously positioned at the bottom of the graphic as a nod towards a light reflection has been dropped. The letter ‘f’ has...