The Obligatory Blog
Why a Mac
July 28, 2010
I risk simply preaching to the converted with this post. If you’re an Apple user: you get it already. If you’re a PC person – you’ve probably heard the arguments before and are not convinced or don’t care.
However, I’m not going to try and convince you to switch to a Mac. Instead, I have an argument for you why, if you’re looking to hire someone like me, you should care if I’m using a mac.
I spotted this blog today: http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/867437854/fish-in-a-barrel highlighting the massive differences between an Apple webpage promoting one of their computers, and equivalent pages from HP and Dell.
Firstly, a few points why I believe certain people choose macs over PCs (in no particular order).
- They look better
- There’s fewer configuration options to choose from when going to buy one
- Hardware and OS is a very closed system – which gives fewer headaches when setting the machines up
- They offer more innovative features
- Apple go the extra mile in offering an exceptional user experience for software and hardware
Almost without exception – every web designer I know, or know of – chooses a mac. And that’s because that list above also applies very well to qualities that make a good web designer
- We care about how good our designs are
- We build websites that are easy for users to navigate and owners to manage
- We build to web standards, with accessibility, standards and scalability in mind so there’s fewer headaches as the site grows and new browsers with new features are released
- We keep up-to date with the latest technologies and use them when appropriate
- We always go the extra mile to deliver a site that we are proud of and what to show our peers for review
These are our values as web designers, and we choose macs because they represent them very well. If your web designer doesn’t use a mac, I’d have to question their values and how good a site from them could be.
Seriously, look at the screenshots on this page: http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/867437854/fish-in-a-barrel - which would you choose?
Another blog post from John Cowen - a web designer in Exeter working under the name Mekonta. If you liked this article, subscribe.
A Twitter Strategy
June 21, 2010
I wrote this summary on possible ways to use Twitter for commercial benefit for a particular company. It's not a hugely indepth report, and to some extent is often speculative - but I thought I would put it out and share should anyone find it a useful basis to think about how they are using Twitter. I’m increasingly convinced by Twitter as a means… Read more
Design by Error
June 12, 2010
When I was at art school we'd regularly be given drawing exercises where the main intention was to disrupt our regular drawing methods. There's a danger as an artist (and for designers too) that you settle into a comfort zone and your work becomes illustrative rather than investigative, questioning, and exploratory, which is what good art should… Read more
Where’s Navigation Going
May 31, 2010
I hate driving. I got rid of my car at the beginning of the year and everytime I have to get in a car now, it reminds me how glad I am not to have to do it regularly. If I know where I'm going it's not so bad, but when I get away from familiar roads and have to start relying on road signs I really hate it. On Saturday I caught the train to Reading… Read more
Say hello to my favourite fonts
May 12, 2010
Fonts are, unfortunately, an expensive habit. There are hundreds of good free fonts out there but (reasonably so), you usually have to pay for great fonts. A single font version might be just £10 - £20, but to be really versatile you probably want a few weights, almost certainly an italic version, a nice chunky one for headlines and… Read more
RSS problems
May 09, 2010
A quick note here for the benefit of those of you subscribing to my RSS feed. I've been attempting to make some tweaks to the template to allow for multiple categories to display in the same feed. Should have been an easy job - have done it on many other sites without difficulty. But it seems to have sent Feedburner nuts for my site. Sorry if you've… Read more
DVD’s, Trains and UX
May 05, 2010
User Experience is a big thing on the internet. Modern websites can be big and complex beasts and it's easy for visitors to a website to be overwhelmed or confused when it comes to finding their way around. It's so easy for a new visitor to your website to leave at the first moment of dissatisfaction, that it's crucial you do everything you can… Read more
Recipe Rich Snippets
April 21, 2010
Yesterday I was told about a new rich format snippet from Google specifically for marking up recipes. Which seemed an ideal little project to roll out onto Bilby Bites which, being a food blog, has a lot of recipes. The idea behind all of Google's rich format snippets is to identify to Google's page crawlers specific pieces of information. You wrap… Read more
I signed up for Twitter way back in 2008 when it first started widely recognised. I posted maybe a couple dozen times over the next 6 months, and then got bored. Since then I've just been puzzled by people's enthusiasm for it. Last week though I read a blog by John O'Nolan that explained how he'd picked up a big client (Virgin) through Twitter.… Read more
Organic Arts
April 16, 2010I found out today I'll be starting work on a new Organic Arts website. It's run by the same guys responsible for Love Local Food who's website I launched a few months ago. Similar to Love Local Food, Organic Arts is a not for profit organisation based in Exeter, in their own words: OrganicARTS promotes the arts and rural issues through educational… Read more
Redirect
April 14, 2010I'm fairly passionate about environmental issues. And I did have quite a number of blog entries relating to climate and ethical living. I have been reluctant to take these off the site, but eventually I've had to relent, for 2 reasons really. I'm not finding enough time to write decent, thoughtful articles - and what I'm publishing isn't adding… Read more
Simplify
April 11, 2010
There's a few scenarios that happen when putting together a new website. One is to take it as an opportunity to include everything you've every wanted (or more importantly thought you wanted), because it's usually more economical to get it all done during the initial build process rather than have extra design/development done later. A second… Read more
Big new website
April 10, 2010I'm being rather cautious what I write here. As well as Mekonta, I work as the web guy for another big company in Exeter, where I'm responsible for their numerous websites. In an effort to be duly professional I try to keep each job separate and not list work done outside of Mekonta on this site. However ... we just launched this site - which has… Read more
My Elephant
April 07, 2010
I spent a crazy amount of time looking for a graphic to use on this website when I relaunched it. It had to be representative of what I do as a web designer, but nothing too cliched or obvious. I wasn't ruling out photographs per se, but my gut feeling was that an illustration would be better. Less specific and more open to being adapted for use… Read more
Wrong Doc Type
April 07, 2010I spent a ridiculous amount of time this morning debugging a problem on this web page. There's 2 jQuery effects happening on the page. A Zoom effect when you hover over the image on the right. And a lightbox effect when you click on a thumbnail at the bottom of the page. I got the hover effect working easily enough, and have the lighbox effect working… Read more
Expression Engine Links
April 01, 2010This post is primarily just for me. Most websites I build at Mekonta now are using Expression Engine, which I firmly believe is the best web CMS available. Lots of other web designers and developers agree and many are kind enough to write all kinds of plugins and extensions to add all sorts of functionality. This is a list for my reference of a… Read more









