- 8th - 12th November 2010
- Waterfront Studio, Belfast
Conference
Wednesday 10th November
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Handcrafted CSS
Seemingly non-obvious details can often separate good web design from great web design. You might not appreciate the quality of a well-designed website until you start using it, looking under the hood, putting it through tests, etc. Dan will share some of these details that matter most. By encouraging “progressive enrichment” to utilize advanced CSS and CSS3 properties that work in browsers today, to reevaluating past methods and best practices. This talk will show how craftsmanship can be applied to flexible, bulletproof, highly efficient and adaptable interfaces that make up a solid user experience.
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Conquer the Blank Canvas
When beginning a new project, we know there are an infinite number of ways to finish it, and an endless amount of variables to consider along the way. This can be overwhelming, especially when a project has few constraints. In this presentation, we'll start out with a blank canvas, and go through the process of building three unique designs. We'll talk about the milestones along the way, and we'll review different solutions to common design problems. I'll also describe my own design process, and give insight into my library of design techniques.
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Adding By Leaving Out: The Power of the Pause
We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pauses connote uncomfortable silence, an issue at hand, and as communicators, we smooth over silence with fillers. We’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring “um” and “ah” out. As designers, as much as we value whitespace, we tend to fill it. This distaste for the pause — and the inverse seeking an always-on state — is a daily battle we face. We’re impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if we become more comfortable with the pause? As it turns out, we can add by leaving out. From Edison to Underhill to web-based software, learn where the pause has power.
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The Shape of Design
To really think about design, you need to learn and think about everything other than it. Design is a vessel: the most important part is what it holds. As makers of things, the work gets better from outside influences, and gives us clarity about the purpose of the work: to inform, to persuade, and to delight. We'll spend some time ruminating on what it means to delight our audiences, think of different ways to do so through mechanisms like storytelling, and realize that the real benefit of making anything is to nourish lives.
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More Perfect Typography
At long last, designers can use real fonts on the web. But what now? Where do we go from here? Tim Brown has been studying type on the web for seven years, and has lots of ideas to share. In this talk, Tim will guide you through using typographic tools and perspectives that will change the way you design websites. Typography is an ancient art and craft; we are merely its latest practitioners. By looking to our tradition for guidance, we might once more attain our finest typographic achievements in this new medium.
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From Click to Tap
How do you translate the design and experience of your website or web app to mobile platforms? During their talk, Keeg and Tim will give you tips and examples they've learned from their own experience designing for a range of mobile devices. Learn what the do's and don'ts are in this young new trade by looking at a range of examples, both good and bad.
