khal weir | blog

I follow over a hundred different blogs and twitter accounts, most of them tech related so I can keep up-to-date with the latest trends and topics in my industry; however I always take time to relax and read about my other interests.

The following blogs are among my favourites and most often visited; they all have great designs and some amazing content, I hope you enjoy them too.

kitsunenoir.com

How can you not love a blog that features ‘Space Suit of the Week’ ? KN has varied content covering fashion, music, culture and art, with frequent free mixcasts, downloadable ‘mixtapes’ based on themes and some fantastic wallpapers by guest artists.

topleftpixel.com

I first came across this photoblog while reseaching for a holiday in Toronto a few years back and have been following it since. I love Sam’s photography and the simple concept of uploading a photo every day, the site reminds me of my time in a fantastic city and the alt text included on every image detailing the equipment used even influenced my last camera purchase.

locallemons.com

I’m into food and enjoy cooking; Local Lemons is probably my favourite recipe site. The photography is beautiful, dominating the page and detailing all the ingredients and stages required. Its clear that the author has a real passion for food – check out her ‘Fast Food Slow: Big Mac‘.

boutiquecycles.com

Bikes are another passion of mine, I recently added a third to my stable. Boutique Cycles is a simple site for proud owners to show of their custom bikes. There is a subculture of riders that make building up bikes an art form, sourcing just the right parts and dreaming up colour schemes.

littlewhitelies.co.uk

This one is actually an independent film magazine; the site features interviews and articles as well written review and encourages community feedback. Every copy of the magazine is viewable online, but I’d really like to own some of the printed versions if only for the amazing artwork.

Something I’ve come to realise as I’ve broadened my view on web application development, is to not rely solely on conventional sources such as books and blogs for learning.

Think about it, were you ever shown how to use a hand dryer? What can their design teach you about UX design? Good design is good design, it doesn’t have to be a web based to inspire you to create a fantastic new webapp.

Great customer service in an Apple store, a nice touch at a restaurant or hotel that made a difference to your visit… what can you take from that? How can you use what pleased you in the real world and apply it to your site or application?

The pride and attention to detail a master knifemaker puts into his work is inspirational, even if your product is virtual and your tools a mouse and keyboard.

Seeking inspiration from unusual sources isn’t new; the development methodology SCRUM is based on the sport rugby. The concepts of Kanban and Just-in-Time, first employed by Japanese factories, have also been applied to software development.

Nature has always been a valuable source of design inspiration, for example the nose cone of the Shinkansen bullet train is modelled on a Kingfisher’s beak and the Fibonacci sequence is also found in the iPod’s design.

Everything in life has a lesson to give, the skill is knowing how to find and use it.

This week I’ve been working on a new design for khalweir.co.uk, not something I’m used to – normally a colleague or friend will do design work for me and I’ll concentrate on development. I’m very much out of my comfort zone, but am learning new skills and will hopefully have something I’m pleased with soon, in the meantime I thought I’d share my story of a developer trying his hand at design.

I set about the task as I would a development project; I thought about what I wanted to achieve, sketched some ideas and broke the into site into elements. After a little while I’d more or less settled on a layout and had a few ideas for potential designs; so then went looking for inspiration and resources.

This is where I hit my first problem, I know I want a killer background and lack the Photoshop skills to make my own, but once I started looking I was overwhelmed by choice and at the same time found it difficult to find exactly what I was seeking; again finding a cool font proved to be difficult.

After gathering a bunch of fonts, graphics and ideas, I started putting them together in Photoshop to create a rough prototype, I was able to dismiss a couple of ideas outright at this stage and now I’m able to concentrate on the strongest. I still have a long way to go, the prototype isn’t built using the Blueprint CSS grid system and is well, still very rough.

So what have I learned so far? Design is very different to development and I still kinda suck at Photoshop

Some of the resources I’ve found useful:
Blueprint CSS Framework
@smashingmag
@gunkdesign
Texture Lovers
Abduzeedo