As part of the North project we’re developing in partnership with folly I needed to produce a new web presence. It was quite a quick job, as time and resource were at a premium, but I thought it would be fun to do a screen capture of the design process. I’ve condensed the entire process, which was about 5 hours spread over 3 days, into just under three minutes.

You can watch it below, or head over to Vimeo to see it in glorious HD.

This was a really quick job, implementing a design which is flexible and which can be developed over time. The foundation is a fairly rigid grid system with a strong emphasis on typographic style. I went through three different iterations before arriving at the final blue/green version. Most of the work was done in Photoshop, with some of the graphical elements sketched in Illustrator.

I really liked the second iteration, with the paper plane sketches, but it just wasn’t cutting it with the rest of the team. I’ll shelve that idea for a future project though, as I really like the aesthetic.

I hope this is an interesting little insight into the way I develop concepts when working on a new design. Feel free to let me know what you think, and whether you found it useful/interesting.

If you want to see the finished design in all it’s HTML markup glory, or just want to know more about North, then head over to the website.

On 9th May 2008, I spoke to students at Lancaster University as part of the “Insight to Creative & Media Careers” event.

The two-day event was organised by CEEC (Centre for Employability Enterprise and Careers) and included a wide range of speakers from different areas of the media industry.

As an experienced practitioner in New Media, I introduced a brief history of the industry, and then explored the 10 commandments for following a good work ethic, before concluding with some of my ideas about where the industry is heading in the future.

We filmed the presentation, and you can watch the whole thing, right here, right now.