With the current “keep up or fall behind” state of digital design it is more important than ever to be seen as a leader in the industry.

There is so much amazing technology at our disposal that what seemed impossible 12 months ago is now totally achievable with a touch of creative thinking.

We have to strive to continue pushing the possibilities of what current technologies can achieve. It is about taking the standard information available to us and using it, or presenting it in a new manner.

While Facebook Open Graph Plugins are relatively new to the scene, there has already been some really top examples of putting them to use in a manner that benefits the user (as opposed to using them for the sake of using them).

Levis

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fflick is a movie review site that uses your Twitter account to show you just what your friends think of the latest films. You can either read a friends review or share your own opinions, it has a great design and integrates seamlessly with your twitter account.

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Safari only folks…

http://hakim.se/experiments/html5/keylight/03/

Nice place to see the possibilities of interaction from Hakim.se

With the increasing popularity and ease of use of smart phones and mobile devices like the iPhone/iPad and Android handsets, mobile data traffic is expected to rise 40-fold over the next five years at an estimated growth rate of 117% year on year – seeing data traffic figures rise from 8 petabytes/month to 327 petabytes/month in 2015. While admittedly a large proportion of this traffic will be video data, mobile web browsing will continue to soar in popularity, meaning demand for highly functional and content rich sites will rapidly increase too.

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In the previous article, I highlighted communication and problem solving as some key attributes a designer should be constantly striving to improve. In this continuation I will continue to explore the often overlooked skills which form the foundations for a solid and successful designer.

Understand what is, and what isn’t, possible

Developing a close working relationship with a developer (yes, I know how hard that can be!) is one of the most beneficial strengths a designer can have. I disagree with the statement that all web designers should be able to code, but I do agree with the sentiment behind it. It is not necessarily the code we have to understand; it is the capabilities and limitations of code that we must be aware of.

Not everyone needs to know how to code, but it is important to understand how code works and understand if what you are asking the developer to achieve is actually possible. Asking a developer to do a fully animated website in HTML and CSS is comparable to a client asking you to design and build their website using only paper and crayons.

It is important for anybody designing for the web, to read and learn as much as possible about the restrictions that are in place. It is imperative to bear this in mind right from the outset of a design. Yes, you might have seen examples of this JQuery technique and that JQuery technique, but you need to understand why applying 87 JQuery animations on one page is not a good idea.

If you don’t have a developer who you can bug with your questions, search the web, join discussion forums and read tutorials to discover what is possible. Then it is up to you to take that technique and make it work in the best manner to solve your problem.

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The internet has evolved. No longer are there a few ‘big boys’ doing all the cool stuff you like to play/purchase online, the new development tools are now cheaper and give you an opportunity to build sites that were too expensive 5 years ago. The growing concern is that the data you create and input into a website is now so easily moved around the web via API’s/RSS. What rights do you and the website have on this data? The DataPortability is one project that is trying to bridge that gap.

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After attending The Future of Web Design conference in London recently I can safely say it is a pretty exciting time to be involved in the digital industry.

As was to be expected there was a lot of discussion about the capabilities (and limitations imposed by particular browser/s) of HTML5 and CSS3. Admittedly, it is very exciting to be able to utilise these tools when designing for the web, however a few of the speakers touched on some points which I think are of much greater importance when it comes to the real future of web design.

Paul Boag mentioned that we should forget about the new technologies for the time being and focus on improving our Marketing, Copywriting, Contextual Understanding, Strategy, and Psychology skills. This is very much in line with what I believe makes a good designer, so I thought I would use this as a basis for what I, personally, would like to see for the future of web designers.

Over the coming weeks I am going to discuss in detail the often overlooked attributes which I feel make a successful designer in the creative industry.

What I hope to achieve is an increased awareness of the design industry outside the specific “digital space” and a more considered approach to the use of the new technologies which are available to us. Ultimately I would like us all (as creatives) to work towards avoiding an era of over-used CSS3 effects and being faced with a repeat of the original Photoshop filter overload.

So, while it is easy to get excited and spend all of our time learning the new technologies, I urge you to hold back and concentrate on improving your foundations skills before anything else, and only utilise the new technologies when the right project comes along.

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For those of you with an Android phone (specifically with a newish one – Nexus One, Xperia or Desire) have been waiting for the latest update to 2.2. This week it should be landing for the HTC Desire and it looks to set up an new level of Android freedom. Take a look at some of the main features: Read the rest of this entry »

A bit slow getting this on the blog, however a couple of weeks ago I attended the Future of Web Design in London.

This was a really interesting event, and was great to see so much talent come together in the same room.

There was a lot of interesting discussion on emerging technologies and design approaches, as well as an insight into the minds of some of the other leaders of the industry.

Props go out to Carsonified for putting on such a top quality event, all the speakers, and to all those that attended.

I will be following up with some opinion-based articles on a few of the topics broached at the conference in the coming weeks, but thought this would be an opportunity to show a couple of photos of some of the lighter side of the 2 days (My apologies to Ryan and Elliot for the “blown out highlight faces”)…

Interesting read over at Apple, Steve Jobs has come out and stated the reasoning for Apple’s refusal to incorporate Flash into their handheld devices.

It seems to be a very honest article, and there are some good points in there which do give a lot more weight to their argument.

Check it out here…