Our Blog: What!? We Like To Talk About
2012
January 5th, 2012
Last year, 2011, was a good year for us; busy, interesting, exciting, scary, all mixed into one. We learned a lot, honed our skills, developed new ones, new relationships, new ways of working, and created a lot of work we’re really happy with. We grew, too. We changed from a freelance outfit to more of a small agency, which was the scary part I just referred to – but it couldn’t have gone better.
We’re just over two years old now and 2012 is going to be a big year for us. We’re really excited.
It goes without saying that we want to keep doing what we did last year. Keep learning, every day, and keep producing work that we’re proud of by pushing ourselves at every opportunity. But we also have a few more specific things that we really want to do, and will.
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Building Awesome Mailchimp Templates
November 8th, 2011
I was given the task of building a MailChimp template the other week. It’s been a while since I’ve done one but I knew the basics of it all. Since I last worked on template building, MailChimp has made some pretty good progress… We can now have hideable areas and the interface that you use for building newsletters seems to be a lot less buggy.
What I’m going to teach you today is how to build repeating content areas, which look different, but use the same piece of code. You can then hide certain parts of the code to alter the layout. You may think this sounds pretty simple but there are a few things to take into account; namely who will be using your template, what skill level they have, and how compatible you want to make the template with email clients such as the dreaded Lotus Notes.
As this article is specifically aimed at MailChimp and their templates, I’m going to assume that you know what MailChimp template tags to use for hideable and repeatable content sections. If you don’t, you can find the template tag guide here.
The Task
Build a content section that may or may not have an image in it. If it does have an image, the image will be on the right, with text to the left and text underneath. The image has a border of 1px with padding between the border and the image of 3px. Here’s an example of the two content section options we’ll be able to achieve:
Movember!
November 2nd, 2011
This year both me and my fellow mo bro chris are taking part in the ever more infamous Movember season. For those of you who don’t know, this means that we’ll both be growing moustaches from the 1st to the 30th November in the hope that we can get some sponsors and “raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men”. We’ll probably look like we’re auditioning for the next 118 advert, but it’ll be worth it.
If you want to look at our ugly mugs for the next 29 days and follow our progress, we’ll be taking a photo of ourselves every morning here: http://dailybooth.com/whatcreative
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The Importance of User-Centered Design
September 8th, 2011
Let me introduce myself, I’m what you call “a user”
So, you might be thinking this is something of a contrived statement? One that is to lead on to an article full of humorous wit and intrigue, maybe with a twist! Well, I’m afraid such an assumption may lead to nothing more than bitter disappointment. But hold on and wait just a moment longer, there is a reason for doing so.
Okay, let’s get down to the nitty-grit, the nuts and bolts, the crux, the real reason why we’re all here.
Your latest site build has gone live – it’s looking good, it’s on-brand, it’s ticking all right the boxes, it’s a master piece of modern art, a real winner. The analytics figures are beginning to come through and traffic is hitting the site in huge numbers… It’s looking like a massive success, the client is going to be ecstatic, joyous beyond all belief. You’ve got them now; a roaring success and new business will indeed be yours for the taking.
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Ye Olde 960 Grid System
August 25th, 2011
There’s no denying that a solid grid system is imperative to the design of any successful website, but there’s not enough variety in what I’m seeing out there. It’s all the same, and it doesn’t all work. I’ve titled this post “Ye Olde 960 Grid System” because I think this grid (whether fixed or responsive) is exactly that. Old.
Mark Boulton has been talking about taking a “content out approach” to web design for a while now and I think moving away from the ‘standard’ grid fits into this approach perfectly. Unfortunately I haven’t attended any of the conferences where he’s been discussing this topic (so, sorry Mark, you may have covered this), but using the 960 grid (or any of the slight variations) as a starting point is too easy. It’s lazy. We should let the content decide the grid, not force it into a tried and tested method that’s supposed to be ‘the best’ way.
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