Exciting and trying times the last few weeks, but after about 3 months of searching my partner and I have finally purchased our first house!

Having spent the last 2 weeks dealing with solicitors, bank managers and pulling my hair out in equal portions, I can tell you it’s such a relief to finally be done with the whole process.

Finalizing and moving in over 2 weeks or so, I imagine I’ll have little time for blogging, plus I’ll be without the internet for some time. Feel free to get in touch if required, you’ll just have to forgive me if I take a day or two to answer.

*insert sigh of relief here*

Pictures to follow once we’re settled in.

One advantage when working in print, is that once the design is committed to paper your work is done. With web design however, there is the never ending “what if” factor. What if I tweaked this, nudge that and change that a little.

It’s a bit of an industry joke that graphic designers are never completely happy with their work. If you frequent a few design blogs it wouldn’t be unusual to notice a little change every few months.

Depending on the particulars of your site making these changes can be more or less difficult. A static HTML/CSS web page can be edited and previewed locally, but if your running a php site, wordpress blog etc. there isn’t really a great way to preview the work offline.

A dummy site could be set up or you could make the changes to live site, neither of which is particularly time efficient, and worst yet a little mistake somewhere along the line can ruin the appearance of your live site for current visitors or even bring your site down depending on the nature of the error.

This is where Firebug comes in. The firebug plugin allows you to inspect, edit and preview HTML, CSS and javascript on any live web page without having to change or upload any of the sites files. Continue reading...

In recent days you may have read some of the brewing controversy over the United States Missile Defence Agency. The recent budget cut of 1.2 billion dollars may warrant some conversation if your interested in such things, though strangely, the growing controversy revolves around the MDA’s “new” logo design.

In addition to the Trajan wordmark, the logo features a planetary silhouette, a stylized missile and America’s trusty red, white and blue. Hardly surprising, but apparently its all about how you look at it.

The uproar comes from the above amalgamation, an apparently obvious merger between the Obama 08 campaign logo and the crescent moon symbol of Islam.

I must be missing something, but apparently between the logo design is a blatant announcement of Obamas intent to convert America to an Islamic nation and with the combined budget cut open the country to missile attack to facilitate the change.

And here I was thinking it’s just a logo… Continue reading...

We all talk a big game, now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is.
With two colours, a visual hint and a cryptic clue can you decipher the brands behind these riddles?

Thanks to VYRE, your aim is beat the 21 questions in a time lower than the rest of us.

How did you go?

19/21 for me, a few tricksters in there…

Glenn Jones is an illustrator and graphic designer from Auckland, New Zealand with a hugely diverse portfolio of clever, retro and wacky illustrations.

Availalbe as prints, shirts, calendars and more, his illustrators are worth a look. Here is a dozen of so of his designs. I’d love too see how this stunt riding penny farthing manages to land…

Continue reading...