Dec
2013
2013 is nearly at an end and here I am, writing an end of year blog post. Finally!
It’s been a case of “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” with my own website for quite a while. I've wanted to redesign it and to include a blog but I’ve just been so busy working on client projects.
However, inspired by one of Jeffrey Zeldman’s 10 commandments — “Thou shalt ship” — I decided I had to push ahead and launch the redesign by hook or by crook. There are a few things that will probably change over the coming months but I think it’s a big improvement, built on a solid and flexible new content management system for future development and as importantly it is now responsive.
I’ve been to three conferences this year, New Adventures, Shropgeek Revolution and Handheld. All three were excellent events and I got to meet a lot of great new people and some renowned speakers, some of whom I’ve followed on Twitter for years but finally got to meet face to face.
Working smarter
Inspired by what I’ve heard and learnt at these conferences my work continues to go from strength to strength. One of the biggest reasons for this is the difference in my workflow, moving away from presenting flat Photoshop comps to clients to instead moving quicker into the code and designing and testing on different devices sooner.
The proliferation of mobile devices means that producing an image of website on a fixed canvas such as a Photoshop file no longer makes sense. Of course it doesn’t mean that Photoshop is no longer being used just that I use it more to provide atmospheric elements to the overall design or if I just want to throw down some rough ideas.
Looking forward
So what will 2014 hold? Well, on the work front things are looking pretty healthy with work lined up already for the early part of it. As always, though, I will not be resting on my laurels and will still be striving to improve and hone my skills.
On the social side I have no conferences booked seeing as two of those I attended have announced that they were the last they were going to hold so I’ll be on the lookout for somewhere to go!
Hopefully, though I’ll be able to do a bit more socialising with fellow web professionals across North Wales. It's been great to meet up with some of them recently to chat over web stuff and to see that you can get great quality web design done on your doorstep in this beautiful part of Wales.
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