Written at 5pm on 02.12.08
Filed under Life In The Real World / ALL CATEGORIES / Music
21 comments
I’m excited, because tomorrow is the first day of the recording sessions for my new album.
What? I hear you cry in confusion. You’re a designer - not a musician! Well, for those of you who don’t follow my ramblings on Twitter, I’m taking (most of) December and January off, not doing any client work, hanging up my designer’s overalls, and donning my musician’s cap. Of course, whether or not I create anything decent remains to be seen, but you’ll be seeing - well, hearing - the results on this […]
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Written at 11am on 27.11.08
Filed under ALL CATEGORIES / The Business
44 comments
This is a topic I’ve been discussing with some friends quite frequently, so I thought it was worth turning into a post. Ready for a bit of controversy?
Don’t expect to get any work done in the first hour of your day.
Resign yourself to the fact that it’s just not going to happen. Better yet: don’t even attempt to get any work done. In all seriousness, you will feel much happier - and end up being more productive - if you spend the first hour of the day catching up […]
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Written at 3pm on 24.11.08
Filed under ALL CATEGORIES / Publication & Recognition
8 comments
When I was a nerdy teenager and dreamed of one day becoming a rock superstar, I - like most nerdy teenagers who dream of one day becoming rock superstars - whiled away hours imagining various ‘rock’ scenarios. One of those scenarios involved me getting interviewed by magazines. Something about people wanting to hear my thoughts on the world seemed extremely alluring, but it was so unlikely that I filed it away along with the rest of my teenage daydreams.
Web design’s a funny thing, however, because although my chosen […]
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Written at 12pm on 19.11.08
Filed under This Site / ALL CATEGORIES
34 comments
A couple of weeks ago, I started advertising on my site. Before I go any further, please let me start this post by giving you my opinion on online advertising:
The majority of it is evil, shallow, intrusive, and pointless. However, there are a few occasional exceptions to the rule. SidebarAds are one of those exceptions.
The Deck / SidebarAds / Fusion Ads
Most of you are probably familiar with The Deck, the Coudal-organised ad network whose members are very big names in the web community (Veerle,
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Written at 11am on 14.11.08
Filed under ALL CATEGORIES / Publication & Recognition / Speaking Engagements
7 comments
With the end of the year rapidly approaching, and having just got back from 2008’s last speaking gig, I thought now would be a good to time to consolidate my presentations from all of the events I spoke at this year.
Future of Web Design - London, UK (April)
The first speaking event of the year was a particularly memorable one. On the day of the actual event, I got on stage with Andy, Jina,
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Written at 9am on 24.10.08
Filed under Web Design / ALL CATEGORIES / Wordpress
17 comments
Last week I launched the new version of samanthacliffe.com, home to hundreds of beautiful photographs taken by the exceptionally talented young lady known as - you guessed it - Samantha Cliffe. This young lady also happens to be my girlfriend.
Now, before you scroll down for my tedious explanations, please head over to the site and take a look around. Virtually every photo on there is available as a print, so if you want to buy one, please just let Sam know. Alternatively, you can visit her Etsy […]
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Written at 1pm on 21.10.08
Filed under Travel / Web Design / ALL CATEGORIES / Speaking Engagements
11 comments
UPDATE: I’ve got a promo code for WDN that’ll give you a discount on the ticket price. Scroll down for info…
I’m really excited to be announcing some more speaking events; this time for the first few months of 2009. I gots me some travellin’ to do!
Oxford Geek […]
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Written at 11am on 13.10.08
Filed under Web Design / Life In The Real World / ALL CATEGORIES / The Business
29 comments
Last week I wrote a post called Why being freelance does not mean you have to work more hours, which seemed to resonate with a few people. But I hold my hands up for deceiving you with the title, because - as I realised a couple of days after posting it - I didn’t actually explain the why; in other words, I offered no explanation as to how I work less hours now that I’m freelancing.
Not only that, but I came under some criticism (fair […]
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Written at 8am on 06.10.08
Filed under Web Design / Life In The Real World / ALL CATEGORIES / The Business
30 comments
Before I took the plunge and left full-time employment to set up my own business, there was one piece of advice that was given to me by almost every design professional I spoke to: Prepare to work a lot more hours.
So I went into it with a level head, prepared for this seemingly inevitable sacrifice. But I also went into it with a concerted effort to turn this stereotype around. In my mind, if I was sensible about the way I worked […]
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Written at 12pm on 18.09.08
Filed under Tutorials & Resources / ALL CATEGORIES / Wordpress
29 comments
UPDATED 03.11.2008 - A couple of small fixes (see the read_me file)
UPDATED 29.09.2008 - Please see this comment for info
Since I released my naked, bare-bones, blank-canvas, starting-point WordPress theme ‘Starkers’ back in January, a huge amount of people appear to be using it as the basis for their own projects, and it’s become much more popular than I ever imagined. As a result, I’ve finally updated the theme to be fully compatible with the latest (at the time of writing) stable release of WordPress: version 2.6.2.
If you’d like […]
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Written at 1pm on 09.09.08
Filed under Travel / ALL CATEGORIES / Speaking Engagements
12 comments
UPDATE: I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be speaking at Spletne Urice in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 29th October. The itinerary below has been updated.
SkillSwap Brighton
I spoke at the Bristol wing of SkillSwap last year and had a great time. This time around, I’ll be sharing the stage with my mate Paul Annett (Senior Designer at ClearLeft), who has a great-sounding discussion lined […]
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Written at 1pm on 01.09.08
Filed under Web Design / ALL CATEGORIES / Publication & Recognition / Writing
16 comments
Remember back in April when I blogged about my ‘Create The Perfect Logo’ feature in .net magazine? You guessed it: this post is of a similar ilk (read: shameless plug).
Some of you will know how I’ve talked about design theft in the past, as it’s happened to me on more than one occasion. It’s a subject close to my heart, so when .net asked me to write an article about it, I jumped at the chance.
Like the logo feature, this one’s made […]
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