Having an 18 month old boy opens up a whole new world of TV, books and music. I watch In The Night Garden nearly everyday (it's a 2010 version of The Teletubbies). What's amazing to see is how it grabs my boy's attention more than any other programme. It dawned on me one day that all the noises in the show, all the colours used, will all have been thought out by some background team. Why not use their hard work in a future webpage?! Picking colours out of screen-grabs shows some quite interesting colour schemes - colour schemes that could be used on any webpage for any audience. Search YouTube to see any of the characters below - you'll either find it strangely watchable, or a bit weird. The Haa Hoos The Haa Hoos bounce around the forest doing not much. They either can't talk, or can't be bothered. #74659c #22834e #9c4f59 #b6ae5b #69a4ac #7c2724 Iggle Piggle Clearly high on life, Iggle Piggle hops and squeaks around the forest. He seems to have some kind of involvement with ... [More]

Not all of us come from a type setting, graphic design or artistic background. I certainly don't. But there's plenty we can learn from people that do. Today I diced up the layout used by Marketing Magazine (part of Brand Republic)... both very good by the way. After scaling everything to 1020px width, using advanced trigonometry and all the fingers on my hands, I was able to work out that the magazine layout uses 5x172px columns with 20px gutters. I've assumed 2 gutter-widths either side of the design. (It could also be broken down to 10x76px columns with 20px gutters.) Not only is it clear that everything lines up to those vertical columns, but on closer inspection, the whole design is set to 172px and 20px intervals: The 'Marketing' masthead is 172px high with 2x20px margins. The height of the single-column image is 172px + 20px. The height of the double-column image is 172px + 3x20px. Another 20px gutter space is used for text under the image. There are 20px margins abov... [More]

Didn't get a pay rise this year? Well, guess what, we've only just managed to crawl out of recession so you aren't getting one this year either. Why wait to be given pay rise though? Why not just take one? That's why everyone should be freelancing. There are hundreds of opportunities waiting for you, just just have to find them. That's the only real problem to getting started — finding the work. On the flip-side of that, there are small businesses out there that are pretty sure they want a webpage, but have no idea about how to get one! Spread the Word The first thing to do is to jump on FaceBook (other social networking sites are available) and let everyone know that you are looking for freelance work. If you have a portfolio, obviously link to it, if you don't, just briefly let them know the kind of stuff you do. Remember, they're probably non-geeks, so just keep it simple, stupid. Depending on how much you use the site, that's now 50–500 people that now know you're ... [More]

Blogging has been around for years. You wouldn’t think so after looking at an averages SME’s website: The Home Page; About Us; Our Products; Contact Us. It’s all a bit stale. If your company doesn’t have a blog, it's well past time you got one. Prepare a little talk and brush your teeth, because you might just get a pat on the head from this. What’s in it for me? If you an in-house developer/designer, and don’t have plans on retiring at your current company, then you should always be working at self improvement. Even if you lean more to the technical side, you’ll always be required to write something… and write something well – proposals, documentation – all that fun stuff. If you’re a rock & rolling freelance superstar that doesn’t have a boss, then approach all your old clients with the same pitch. It can only bring you more money. The First Hurdle “It doesn’t really apply to our business&... [More]