But as soon as you let the client call the shots, you are a pixel pusher, bowing to the whims of a client.

Thing is, if you don’t tell them, they won’t know (what not to do). Laying out the rules early will avoid things like this being said:

• I’ll know it when I see it.
• I think we’re nearly there.
• I showed it to my son/daughter and they suggested…
• I’m not feeling it yet.

You get the point.

The thing is, the design process should be a collaborative one, just make sure you lay out what work the client should be doing.

Clients know their business better than you do.
You know design better they they do.

With this quick understanding, make sure that the client makes the business decisions, and you make the design decisions.

LinkedIn recently launched their new iPad app, and 95% of it has been built in HTML5: http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/02/linkedin-ipad-app-engineering/

The Financial Times decided to ditch their native app for a web app and have had some promising results: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/financial_times_proves_html5_can_beat_native_mobil.php.

There are many articles on this: http://mashable.com/2011/05/23/mobile-commerce-apps/ and http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-sites-apps.html and: http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2011/09/27/mobile-web-app-vs-native-app-its-complicated/ and although twice as many people access mobile sites compared to native apps: http://www.internetretailer.com/trends/e-retailers/ the conversion rate between them are interesting (Apple has a higher conversion rate for native apps, Android is about the same, and Blackberry is lower).

Although from the technical point of view, an app can be largely be made to just run in a browser, the question comes down to support, and usage.

It would be really interesting to get your take on the situation. You can leave a comment below or reply to me on Twitter @paulrandall.

There’s a good reason for it; It gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how you solved the problem. You would be marked on the working out, and not just the final answer.

It’s the same with design work, if you can’t describe how (and more importantly why) things are done a particular way, then the client should (quite rightly) think of it as just a guess.

Being able to do this successfully is probably the most important skill to learn in client services, because without this, you risk a client reject or dismiss good ideas, simply because they can’t see how you worked out the answer.

So recently I have been reading/bookmarking/retweeting a lot of articles recently, but I am sure that these could be curated in a better way. Having followed sites that do something similar I may go down that avenue at some point, but for the time being I’ll post some here.

• Original Gill Sans sketch from the Monotype archives: http://instagr.am/p/J2pwK1mRc1/
• A tumblr blog for type lovers: http://type-lovers.tumblr.com/
• Evolve interactive magazine: http://www.evolvemag.net/ (via @tomwittlin)
• The difference between UX and UI explained with cereal: http://design.org/blog/difference-between-ux-and-ui-subtleties-explained-cereal
• The Memo Book archive, by Field Notes: http://fieldnotesbrand.com/memo-archive/
• A fun video about deadlines and creativity (demonstrated by kids): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgvx9OfZKJw
• Swiss typefaces: http://swisstypefaces.com/
• John Cleese on creativity: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/12/john-cleese-on-creativity-1991/
• Teehan+Lax release their ever-popular PSD of iOS GUI elements, this time for the retina iPad: http://www.teehanlax.com/downloads/ipad-gui-psd-retina-display/
• How to construct the famous Penguin books grid: http://ministryoftype.co.uk/words/article/constructing_the_grid/

I literally said ‘fuck’ out loud. workfu.com is lovely. LOVE-ER-LY

— Paul Randall (@paulrandall) February 29, 2012

I was blown away. I’d just never seen anything like it on a homepage recently.

Again, I think this comes back to confidence in design. Knowing that you’ll be able to convey the desired message in such a simple way without additional clutter

When this sort of design pays off, it does it in a big way. I really made a connection and felt compelled to engage.

Being able to succinctly explain what your product or service is makes such a difference in our fast-paced lifestyle.

Forget the elevator pitch, we need to work on a eight-second pitch for the web.

1. Write a post called Ideas of March.
2. Write about why you like blogs.
3. If you don’t already blog regularly, pledge to blog more the rest of the month.
4. Share your thoughts on Twitter with the #ideasofmarch hashtag.

Point 1, done.

Why I like blogs, and blogging

I believe that writing about something helps you to understand it in a different way; in much the same way having to give a presentation or explaining a topic to someone means articulating the topic.

This skills is vital for any professional.

If there is one thing I have learnt whilst being a designer, it is that articulating yourself well makes you a better designer. Explaining designs to a client, boss, or colleague is key. In the past I wouldn’t have been able to describe why I created something the way I did; I felt (wrongly) that talking about it was art bollocks and not necessary.

Describing a design is as important as designing it well.

What I wasn’t aware of was all the thoughts that went through my head whilst creating a design. A client can’t see this, and so you have to articulate yourself to describe your design process. With the client aware of all the decisions made, they are more likely to ‘buy in’ to your work, as they’ve been taken on the same journey.

Back to this blog…

Never thinking of myself as a writer, my blog includes things that I want to explore in more detail. Blogging allows me to collect my thoughts and put it out there, primarily for myself, and secondly for anyone who is interested.

But my blog has never been an advert for myself. If there is one thing I have learnt from my website it is that the most lovingly crafted posts fall by the wayside in favour of posts that were created on a whim, but I don’t write for traffic, and neither should you. Don’t go for the cheap shot of a red-top headline when your content deserves better.

Writing more

In my professional career, i’ve set myself a few goals. Some of which have happened already, like being featured in .net magazine but to have my writing published somehow is still on the list, waiting to be ticked off.

A few people I follow on Twitter have wrote books. Their tweets during the writing phase make it sound like a kind of literary torture, but having your work in print, being able to buy it in the shops, and being in Amazon must be quite a cool feeling.

Don’t just say it then, do it!

In the coming months, lots of things will be changing for me, and I hope to be able to delve deeper into the process of designing, in particular for the web. It’s an exciting time with lots of innovations to come and I want blogging to become an integrated part of my work.

So I’m not going to get hung up on the design of my site (yes, it is the default WordPress theme at the moment) because people will hopefully be reading these posts on Readability, Instapaper, or an RSS reader, but I do hope to develop my site to include more development work, code examples, snippets and other tools in the near future.

Now it’s your turn…

If this post, or the Ideas of March concept has spurred you on to write your own, let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure I link to it.

As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.

I think this ex-Googler has it spot on: You can’t force people to use your stuff. How many of us have a Google account? And how many times did we use Google Wave, or Google+?

Giving Google some credit, they saw Google Wave was a complete flop and scrapped it; something Kevin Rose’s company Milk did today with Oink. Having only launched 3 months ago, they have decided to shut the service down for good.

Scrapping things takes guts (and a ton of money) but ultimately admitting you are wrong and moving on is a better thing to do then leaving it to turn into a ghost town.

Because of this, more people are talking about SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics. These XML-based images can store vector data, and so can be upscaled. Other options include creating special icon fonts, such as Pictos. I prefer the idea of using SVG over font solutions because the font method is just like using Wingdings; plus it adds non semantic letters to your code, even if you can hide them.

I was aware of SVG back in around 2006 during my college course. I naively thought at the time that was little point in learning about them, as I couldn’t see the advantages. If you want to see my first creation 6 years ago – this was it (if you view the image separately the text should zoom in):

So this weekend I decided to go back to my college work and create some SVG by hand. Luckily, for more complex designs, you can use something like Inkscape but I thought it would be interesting to hand code the icons I wanted to create.

First I started by drawing some very simple shapes on an 8×8 grid:

I then created a very simple XML file, and started adding the paths:

Note: The M stands for move, the L stands for line and the Z closed the point. That is as far as I got, but suffice to say that more complex icons won’t be created in this way. You can see the final version here: http://prandall.com/experimental/svg/img/pr-icons.svg

For the next part, I used this post as a tutorial: http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/01/16/resolution-independence-with-svg/ and the traditional process of displaying a background image. I ended up using an empty span because I found it easier to play around with, but as you can see from David’s tutorial this doesn’t have to be the case.

Conclusion

Seeing the browser support for SVGs, support is varied, but for progressive designs it is worth considering in your next designs. Do have a play, experiment and look into the new ways of constructing sites, because it is an interesting time to create websites.

See the finished article: http://prandall.com/experimental/svg/ (and make sure you upscale/downsize it to see the full effect)

On 23rd February the first ever Responsive Summit takes place in London. Thinkers and do-ers in the field of responsive web design get around a table to discuss how to make this easier for all of us.

http://responsivesummit.com/

This I can guarantee will enhance how we build sites in the coming years. Some of the questions I have are:

How we can serve up the right images for the right device?

Because of the responsive nature, images usually have to be created larger to compensate. I am wary of this because there have been discussions about increased page bloat and serving up multiple versions.

Further reading:

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-images-how-they-almost-worked-and-what-we-need/

Is there still a place for ‘mobile’ versions of websites?

With the emergence of responsive and adaptive designs, do ‘mobile’ versions still have a place on the web?

How do we ‘sell’ responsive design to clients?

This is of course, down to the agencies and salespeople themselves. High profile responsive sites, such as http://bostonglobe.com/ have helped, but clients still need to be educated. That is our job.

There is, naturally a slightly higher cost to designing responsive sites, but this is minimal and when compared to separate desktop and mobile versions is usually a lot more cost effective.

How do we present responsive designs to the client?

Designs are typically served up in visual format, most proabably created in Photoshop or Illustrator first. Is there a good way of presenting these to the client whilst conveying the concept? Which leads on to…

Are we going to abandon Photoshop?

Is Photoshop even the right tool to design nowadays. With frameworks and tools available to create demos relatively quickly will this be the standard in the coming years?

Should we still be designing in pixels?

With the emergence of the retina display iPad and multiple resolution devices, have pixels had their day? Has the concept of pixel-perfect designs gone in favour of percentage and em-based designs?

Any other questions?

You can submit your own questions before the discussion takes place on the 23^rd Feb by going to the website http://responsivesummit.com/.

It’s a fantastic book; you should buy it.

One thing I loved was his writing style: No fluff; no waffle; just the story. In short, succinct sentences. Here is my attempt:

- – -

People say that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

Paul Rand once said this about designing the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs:

I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.

So how can someone charge $100,000 for a logo, and others charge $100.

Confidence.

Rand knew he would understand the brief and produce the right logo.

People who aren’t confident in the work they produce will create a couple of versions, and let the client decide.

The client isn’t paying you to choose. They are paying you to design the right one for them.

That’s why they hired you.

It’s a cop out to make the client choose. It shows a lack of conviction.

It creates so much imbalance in the client/designer relationship you are saying “help me do my job”.

By placing the client in the design seat they will try and steer the direction for you because of your initial lack of conviction..

You’ll hear things like “I’ll know it when I see it”.

This will lead to you bemoaning the client for taking over the design.

But you see, they didn’t.

You invited them to.