My Journal

Many form elements can look pretty ugly, and although their consistent look helps identify their purpose to the user it’s also sometimes fun and useful to break the conventions. One element that is hard to change is the select box, mainly due to IE not implementing any CSS for select boxes, yet as the image shows below, I decided to try something a little more radical.

Continue reading “Select box replacement”

I frequently see posts that ask the question of whether or not formal training in the form of a degree is necessary to become a Web Designer. The response is usually no, as given enough hard work and determination you should be able learn it all yourself. From what I can tell most responses simply consider that any learning done at University could be done at home, but I don’t think this is the only consideration. So I thought I’d give my opinion, and start that with ‘it depends’.

As always personal situation comes into play, for many who ask this question in the community the simple fact that they have asked and are talking to the right people probably means they’d probably do just fine without going to uni. My case was a little different, it’s possibly unique; I’m not sure.

Continue reading “Is a University education worth it?”

I’m not one for off topic posts but after spending close to 60 hours playing Final Fantasy XIII I needed somewhere to vent my frustrations. With my experience of the Final Fantasy franchise limited to the two movies I bought the game simply on the weight of the visuals within the trailer. The trailer was movie quality and really peaked my interest in the story, the game didn’t bother me. Now after 60 hours of game play my opinion hasn’t changed and Final Fantasy 13 has a big problem.

Continue reading “FFXIII Review”

When the BBC first released the beta version of the new BBC homepage a couple of weeks ago I was initially disappointed. On first impressions it just didn’t seem a radical enough change and some parts just didn’t look balanced anymore with odd padding’s and margins. All this plus the clock was gone, sure it served little purpose but I loved the retroness of it. Sure the BBC gave a suitable response describing the changes they had put in place but this hadn’t answered my concerns. Something simply wasn’t right.

But now I’ve figured it out, they promised me so much more.

Continue reading “I’m sorry I don’t like the BBC Beta”

It’s always been a problem of web design that it’s not always so easy to come up with an original idea, can any idea actually be considered totally unique anymore? In the absence of talent and inspiration some designers will simply steal someone else’s work and pass it off as their own. Yet after reading Brad Colbow’s recent post it got me thinking about the thin line between what is inspiration and what is stealing.

It’s amazing when you think about the things that we don’t consider stealing that could be claimed as such. Is Google Buzz stealing the idea of Twitter or Facebook stealing the idea of Myspace? Because they’re simply ideas we don’t think of it as stealing, so how about the original ideas in web design. Was the second person to use the letterpress style stealing from the first, and at what stage did it become a trend rather than stealing?

Continue reading “When does inspiration become stealing?”