Such is life I suppose! After a day or two of making some designs I'm quite proud of, today was the start of my 'eat healthy' and 'run daily' kick, and it's left my body in a bit of a sugar coma. I've cut the sugar out of my tea, gone back down to skimmed milk and been eating a shit tone of fruit and veg. I am not used to this nutrition, thus my mind is without sugar, and like the TUC, considering strike action.
So I took the day, post run / food shopping, reading a wicked book by Andy Clarke called 'Hard Boiled Web Design'. The book published by Five Simple Steps (who are Mark Boulton's publishing company - damn, I really wish I'd got that job now I'm into web...), and focuses on the debate of why we should be using HTML 5 and CSS3 now, as apposed to waiting until the W3C deems it as completed (Which, according to the book, will be around 2022).
The books is a nice, light read, filled with my kind of humor (as you can probably tell from the title, the book is filled with Pulp Crime / Film Noir references and at times, in the dialect of a 30/40's detective)! It gets to its point pretty quickly and from there, begins to break down the reasons why we as designers need to champion HTML 5 / CSS3 now to allow for an exciting web.
The most important lesson in the book so far (I'm only 90 or so pages in at the time of posting), is the emphasis that websites absolutely DO NOT need to look the same in each browser. While certain brands may require this, Clarke states that these slight shifts in the display habits and capabilities of browsers, should be embraced as a form of creativity, allowing for a more defined user experience (after all, different kinds of people use different kinds of browsers).
Now I've kinda come to terms with the fact that HTML only dictates to a browser what a page should look like, which was a silly hard thing for me to get used to. I'm a print designer, I like the level of control. But to embrace these differences as a higher level of creativity, well that just sounds like the right thing to do.
Suffice to say, I'm edging over to the dark side of web design, and as am such, am going to try to find a placement doing it if a certain dream job doesn't come off. I'll give the book a full review when I'm done, but from what I've read so far, it's defiantly worth picking up!
Other than that, something to watch and be inspired by is this! The Museum of Obsolete Objects, a youtube channel which I think is pretty damned funky! It's designed by German Digital Agency Jung von Matt/Next. It's an appreciation of (and almost a digital tomb too...) those objects and devices of yesteryear that have been replaced or improved upon by advances in technology. Why it's a youtube channel / the mechanical whisk (I bought one a few months back and still use it...) is in there, I know not. But it's still a pretty funky idea anyways. That's the second time I've used funky (now third...) in this paragraph, so it must be so!
Anyways, time for bed... I promise there'll be a more productive day with physical work tomorrow. That is of course, unless my brain holds me hostage until I resume putting 2 sugars in my tea...
M x
I bought this book when attempting to get into web design/development. I found it brilliant to read even when a lot of the material was over my head. I gave all that up before any of it sunk in, but I'd love to give it a go again, someday.
ReplyDeleteI can recommend a few more that are a little more beginner focused if you want Ry? (I'm pretty much learning from scratch myself) I've found to the 2008 version of the dummies XHTML book to be wicked, even if a little dated... There's also Mark Boulton's Practical Guide to Web Design (read about it here)that is a basic over view of good design practice, and I've also got a book called CSS: The Missing Manual by a guy called David Sawyer McFarland thats in my to read pile!
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