What a day.  This is all I can say. Inspired, invigorated & thoroughly enjoyed are some of the words that come to mind.

I will fill you in…

The Conference Started with a bight and I must say breezy talk from Tim Van Damme, (No not Claude, Tim) on Passion. It was nice too see someone as equally as passionate about design as me, although if im honest he has every right, some quality work from the man. I unfortunately didn’t get to take many notes as I was trying to be uber designer cool and use the wireless, which as per usual at these things it fell over and decided not too work #waterfrontwirelessfail

Although it improved throughout the day, so it wasn’t all bad.

Andy Budd was next and an Inspiring talk was delivered on the Art of Seduction or should I say Seductive Design.  Yea I know I was struggling to see where he was going with it at the beginning, but it turned out too be an epic talk with some great Metaphors.  Approach, being a particular favourite as he said… ‘What is Beautiful is good’.

Next up was Mark Boulton from Mark Boulton Design, see what he did there. Nice.  This guy LOVES the Typography Shizzle Majjizle.  I particularly enjoyed the font-face talk on how we will potentially be able to use any typeface on designs in the future in CSS, but the problems we will face and how it will hopefully evolve.

Ryan Sims from Virb was next.  He is a chilled out dude.  But a man of great lines.  ‘Talent is the desire to practice.’ Get back to the Basics and take a look at how we can become good, better or even great.

My favourite was next, Wilson Miner from Every Block.  This dude had Beautiful slides.  Maybe one to many though, ha joking Mr Miner ;) I get asked all the time what do you do and my analogy is ‘Imagine if you are a builder, you do all the dirty work, and I come in and do the interior designing’.

The thing is I am wrong.

Designers and Developers work so closely now that they are a hybrid, code is design just as design is code.  The two together are mashed so that in turn you can see a project from origin to completion so that its finished just as you intended.  Its all about Design AND Build.

Eric Meyer took the stage at the last to speak on a more tangled web, it was a privledge to hear him as I had read some of his CSS Books in the past… Hes also hilariously funny.  He talked about how things are moving faster on the web like online operating systems and how we will adapt as designers to keep up… Unfortunately I had to leave early so I missed the end, if anyone wants to fill me in leave a Comment!

Congratulations to @goodonpaper for a fantastic job, and all other involved it was so good to see the web design community in NI together for such a fantastic event right on our doorstep… :) Here’s too Build 2010! And I reckon we may have given someone with a ‘Gimmick Hat’ something to think about ;)

Tim Van Damme, tweeted a great line… ‘Conferences should make you feel really small, but leave you inspired to grow. Build is doing that.’

And let me tell you it did.

So in the Leadup to Build Conference I attended an ‘Evening With Airside’ a Design Company in London.  Sometimes its good too feel inspired and after I had heard them I felt just that.

These guys are competent in all things Design, Web, Graphic Motion, Video all the Shizzle Majizzle.  It was interesting how they work on Projects and what their thought and Processes are.

However then came the icon line of the talk.

‘We should care for our websites, continue to evolve them and challenge boundaries.’  This struck a cord, sometimes I can get stuck in a rut, I need to rediscover the passion that I once had and push my own boundaries both design and life.

Thanks Airside (even though I didnt get a free calender) #badtimes

Airside Online

At the end of January I began to redesign my entire website.  I felt it had such an out of date look that I began to resent it, this is a bad sign when you really need it to make some money.

I began to look at some current trends and realised that the ‘new look’ for this year is textured backgrounds. This could be anything from ‘scrunched up paper’ too ‘rusty metal’ or how about a nice piece of wooden paneling? I thought I was watching an episode of Changing Rooms with Carol Smilie Smilie. There are so many sites out there offering free texture’s like here, here and here.

Ok so maybe that is not strictly true, I just included it for a good read but it got me thinking textured backgrounds make some great looking websites and in turn I decided to make one myself with a nice papery effect.

So here I have listed  Ten Great Websites with textures.  These all look great, but I am sure I have left some out, if you know of anymore leave me a comment ;)

1. Satsu Design, Isle of Man Web Design Agency

   

2. Scouting For Girls

   

3. Pikaboo

   

4. Element Fusion’s Internship Program

   

5. Revive Africa

   

6. Boot B – Unlimited Creativity

   

7. Web Designer Wall – Jobs

   

8. Lucy Blackmore

   

9. Slabovia

   

Courtesy of IFA Website

Lets get a few things striaght here:

1. I love football
2. I love the country I live in (Hi, Im Kyle Boyd im a Web and Graphic Designer I love it here and I love what I do… sounds familiar?)
3. I love my countrys football team

So I had a major surprise to find out out that the IFA (Irish Football Association) has a Cerebral Palsy Squad.  Brilliant.

The squad meets every two weeks since its formation in 2005 and is coached by the IFA Disability Football Department team of Alan Crooks and Mal Donaghy. It recently secured its first away win with a 5-1 thrashing of the Republic of Ireland.  I am so excited to here about this as I always dreamed of playing football.  Its probably all too late for me now but its great knowing that their is a CP Squad for those with the condition that if they want to play some great football they can.

This is in itself can only raise awareness of CP and for that I am grateful.  I can only hope are boys can do the business as they prepare for the Home Nations Cerebral Palsy Tournament in England this July!

For more info see the IFA Website

After many years in the Web Design Business I finally made it onto a CSS Gallery, CSS Mania & CSS Wow. This was pretty special for me as I had never been featured on something like this before no matter how many times I submitted.  Getting onto a CSS Gallery is a great way to boost traffic but it also gives you a sense of feeling good, because you know that your work is appreciated by other designers.

Tips to get on a CSS Gallery

If you really want to be on a CSS Gallery here is a few tips:

1. Obviously your Design has to be built using CSS, or there would just be no point. :)
2. Make sure all pages validate both the CSS and XHTML, either transitional or strict.
3. Make a unique exciting and visual design, use the galleries themselves for inspiration but be sure not to copy another deign as that’s silly and you would never be featured.
4. Make sure to check after a few days as they sometimes don’t tell you, and you could miss your time in the limelight.

If you don’t get featured straight away don’t worry, go back tweak your design and re-submit.  Eventually you will come up with a winner! Like me here and Like me here

Image from BBC Press Office

I came across this story early this week and I wish I had seen it sooner.  Cerrie Burnell one of the new BBC Ceebeebies presenters who was born with only one arm has been the victim of a disturbing campaign by viewers parents who think that Cerrie will ‘Scare their Children’ because she has only one arm.

This really shocked me because I thought we had got past this type of discrimination, but it just goes too show that Disability Education at grassroots level is needed as soon as possible.  Children indeed can be scared of seeing something unfamiliar but if you talk to them they are very open for discussion.  I myself have proved this from personal experience.

A child is open too new things when they are younger, they accept things on face value.  This can be applied to Disabilities so that when they are older, it becomes second nature.

Unfortunately it seems the parents of these children cannot see that, they are worried that the someone with a Disability such as Cerrie will cause them too have nightmares.

I dont believe that for a second.  Some children are scared of Santa, but it doesn’t mean they stop getting presents from the big man in a red suit.

One parent is quoted“This new presenter is c*** – face facts – but because she has a disability then she was given a job. [It is] positive discrimination in my books.” (Excerpt from Daily Mail).  Its not the children that need educated, its the parents.

That is blatant disability discrimination! She was given the job because she was capable of doing the job, and what I have seen (yes I did watch Cbeebies) she does it very well. I can only congratulate the BBC on hiring her for the position. How many other disabled presenters do you see? Of course one comes along and people have to complain about it.  It undoubtedly will have positive affects in making children more aware by encouraging them to ask questions about Disability.  My whole ethos for creating the Disability Heroes

Disability Education at grassroots level, lets embrace it.  Not complain about it because its scary.

I have been working on the site for over a month and finally gave it room to ‘stretch her legs’  like any project or client work that I undertake I ultimate aim is to  create a funkadelic, effective and user friendly website.Over the years I have wanted to create a CMS which would allow me to make a great looking website but more importantly gave it some strength so that updating could be easier but inlcude social media tools like twitter for example.

WordPress became my friend.

I asked myself a question, what did I want from this new website?

1. Blog more.  I want to come up with new ideas and talk about them.  I might even throw in a few ’15 Greatest Blog posts’ type of posts too.
2. Northern Ireland is really turning into a new creative hub and its an exciting time to be a designer, to do that I must be recognised.  Therefore I bring you my new online home.
3. Socialise more and meet with other creatives.  With the help of twitter I have done this a little, but I wanted to concrete my arrival so thats why I have included my twitter updates on the new site.
4. WordPress.  I wanted to learn wordpress. Its a great blogging tool and used in the right way it can be a great CMS too, which is what I’ve used for my new site. This makes things a whole lot handier to manage and there are a tonne of useful plugins available to help achieve certain tasks a lot quicker.

I hopefully will keep to my new deal, and I can achieve all I want to with this new online home.  I appreciate any feedback so get commenting ;-)