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Accessible colour contrast
When designing and developing user interfaces, it's always good to use a colour contrast checker to make sure text is clearly readable, especially when placed against coloured backgrounds.WCAG 2.0...
View ArticleOptimising images for the web
Image optimization is about shrinking the file size of your images as much as possible, while keeping quality, so images look perfect but your page load times remain low.It's also good for SEO, as...
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3 tips for using colour in UI design
As I've just talked about accessible colour contrast, I thought I'd round up some quick tips for using colour in UI design.As I was learning to design, I found colour to be one of the hardest things to...
View ArticleFinding good fonts to use in your projects
Where do I find good fonts?One of the hardest thing I find when starting a design is to find the right fonts for my projects.Whether you are a fan of Google Fonts, or like buying more premium fonts...
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Achieve consistency using a font superfamily
If you are new to typography, sometimes choosing a type superfamily can really help give you a level up without much effort.What is a font superfamily?According to wikipedia:In typography, a font...
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How consistency helps your UI feel more designed
When you are designing something and it doesn't feel quite right, step back and ask yourself "what can I make more consistent?".Often new designers try to use just font size alone to differentiate...
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Make clearer calls-to-action with the squint test
A simple one today. If part of your design is supposed to attract someone's attention to something, try squinting your eyes to see if the key elements still stand out.While this doesn't stop you from...
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When to use uppercase in your designs
Use UPPERCASE (or 'all-caps') in your designs sparingly as the letterforms for uppercase letters are harder for the eye to distinguish, because of the equal height of all letter forms - it's difficult...
View ArticleUXCampBrighton March 2022 - UI Design Resources
I'm giving a talk at UXCampBrighton in March 2022 - here's a round up of resources and links I talk about.Links mentionedIra Glass - The Gap (video on Vimeo)Aesthetics - wikipediaEmotive Considerations...
View ArticleBetter UI design through first principles
After over two years of lockdown, I ventured out to my first conference face-to-face, and it was a tonic for the soul.Held at PlusX in Brighton, UXCampBrighton yet again knocked it out of the park,...
View Article15 lessons learned working remotely for a Product Company
While working remotely is not suited to all, I've been really enjoying it, so thought I'd write up some of the things that I've learned about working on a product team remotely, both in terms of...
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NetNewsWire - My RSS reading setup
Thought I'd note what I use for RSS feed reading (If you have no idea what this is check out: what is RSS?).I've tried a bunch of commercial feed readers and syncing services since the demise of Google...
View ArticleHow to access post content in template listing files
Why do this?You might want to show the contents of posts in listings, like a social feed for example.Solution:In your eleventy template listing you can use{{ entry.templateContent | safe }}(with entry...
View ArticleThings I enjoyed in 2022
Due to supporting vulnerable family members (which meant my wife was away 50% of the year), plus me starting a new full-time remote job, I was on my own a lot in 2022.I spent a lot of time online, both...
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Case study: Designing a better editing experience for Prezly
IntroductionThis is a high-level summary of a project I did product design for in October 2022, how we approached it, what happened, the outcome and some things I learned.At Prezly, we are now using...
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A quest to shoot better portraits
I'm saddened by the fact that I haven't picked up my camera in months - I was just starting to go out and shoot some street portraits semi-regularly but life got in the way.However I'm feeling inspired...
View ArticleCreating an 11ty blog post using Raycast
I've been loving using Raycast recently, and I wanted to see if I could speed up blog post file creation, given I used to create all posts initially using an Alfred workflow.Raycast has the ability to...
View ArticleWriting for oneself - setting out writing intentions for this blog
Encouraged by my colleague and friend Kate, I thought it would be good to set some writing intentions for this blog, to make it easier and clearer to put virtual pen-to-paper and reduce a sense of...
View ArticleAdding a draft mode to 11ty
While writing recently I wanted an easy way to draft posts and publish them, allowing me to share with others before publising to RSS or sitemap feeds, or showing in the blog index.Turns out with...
View ArticleReusing 11ty listing templates
I've been starting to tidy up my blog (which uses 11ty) and for ages I'd been creating a listing template for each of my blog, tutorials and design sections.My listing templates were something like the...
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