atMedia: Great Design

John Hicks, Cameron Moll, and Veerle Pietrers share their thoughts on what makes great design.

I was really looking forward to this session and was hopefully it would rekindle my enthusiasm for design. However, although it was an excellent presentation it has left me with a vague feeling of frustration.

The presentation basically looked at the three pillars of design:

  • Typography
  • Colour
  • Grids

However it was their initial thoughts on design that had the greatest impact on me. In short, great design takes time. The more you can think through a design, the more iterations you go through, the better the design becomes. And therein lies my problem. When you are in a competitive tender situation it is often the time allocated for design that gets cut in an attempt to reduce the price of the project. I often find myself rushing design in an attempt to stay within budget. It can be a frustrating process.

What the presentation has done is inspired me to start pricing projects more realistically in order to ensure design gets the time it deserves.

@media is almost upon us

Well I have just received my email from Vivabit giving me all the details about next week’s @media conference and it has finally made me look through the list of sessions. I have to say I feel like a kid in a candy store.

I have been intending to write a post on my hopes and expectations for this years @media conference for the last few weeks. However, it wasn’t until today that I have had a chance to look through the list of speakers and the subjects they will be tackling. And what a list it is!

Last year’s conference was a real turning point for me. I had become weary of web design and lacked inspiration and motivation. Listening to others enthuse really set me on fire again and led to this blog and subsequent podcast. So as you can imagine my expectations for this years conference are unrealistically high. However, the list of sessions did nothing to tame my out of control enthusiasm. It is as if somebody has asked me to list all of the areas I am passionate or concerned about and then made it into a 2 day conference.

Here is the list of sessions that have fuelled the fire of expectation:

Bulletproof Web Design

As somebody that has only recently embraced fluid design (as you can tell from this legacy site) I can’t wait to hear what Dan Cederholm is going to say to help people &#”;let go of pixel precision&#”;. My hope is that Dan can help me deal with some of the frustrating issues that arise from designing with ems and percentages.

The fine art of web design

I have been going through a bit of a stale patch with design for a while now. I feel like I am always having to fight clients to get anything other than the most mundane designs past them. Sometimes it is easier just to churn out the same old mediocre crap when you are faced with a difficult client. However, I am hoping that this session will put some fire back in my belly and make me fight my corner a bit more.

Fine Typography On the Web

Dave Shea’s presentation on typography looks intriguing if nothing else and I cannot wait to hear what he has to say about the state of online typography. Can we really be moving away from Verdana and Arial? Is there really a magic solution I am unaware of?

Mobile Web Design

I am interested to hear what Cameron Moll has to say on the subject of designing for mobile devices, as I have heard so many conflicting messages from &#”;just remove the stylesheet&#”; to &#”;mobile design is to web design what web design is to print&#”;.  It’s an area that I keep meaning to investigate in more depth because I believe clients will soon by requesting this from us as a matter of course.

The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0

Now this is a panel with a lot of potential!  Following Joe Clarks article on the subject I am hoping for a hugely constructive debate… that or a good old moan. I am open to either!

Don’t forget to say hello

To be honest I could have listed pretty much every sessions . How all of this is going to be crammed into two days is beyond me.

Anyway if you are going make sure you come up and introduce yourself. I will also be at the pre-event bash on Wednesday night so it would be great to see you.