Putting your foot down with ipsum?

Recently read a thought provoking article called “The effects of themed Lipsum on design” by Andrew Fox where he wrote that Loren Ipsum had a negative impact on design and we as designers should demand most of the content upfront, arguing;

“How can you design a message without knowing what the message is?”

Now although I agree with him in principle in practice this can cause a lot of issues. Putting your foot down might work if you’re a freelancer but if you’re in an agency or an internal design team you probably won’t have that freedom.

New URL shortener just for ME!!!

Ok it sounds geeky I know but since bit.ly have allowed a simple way to do this, lot of companies have stated a trend (pep.si, yhoo.it, 4sq.com, cs.pn) of having your own short URLS. So I got excited and created my own – http://mustafa.im/90UURD (ok not that short but it still makes me smile . [...]

Söz Bizde / We Have The Voice trailer (featuring ME!!)

‘Söz Bizde / We Have The Voice’ is a documentary focused on Turkish young people who are invisible to the policy and decision makers in Britain. I was lucky enough to be asked to give my views on citizenship, nationality & about Turkish-British identity.

Heres the trailer

Im getting published…. :)

Just submitted an article about things they don’t teach you in design university which will be published (very soon) by webdesignerdepot.com . Will post a link soon as it goes online.  I can’t wait!!

Finally….

iPhone finally came, now going through the process of installing everything on it, which to my surprise included a wordpress app. So now I’m writing this post from the phone. Although I’m thinking I’ll keep to blogging on my mac book, this is way to much effort lol : )

Design – Ten things they don’t teach you at University

Every now and then I meet up with old school buddies and as the night progresses we always have one of those conversations about what we didn’t learn at Uni. Sadly it seems what we were taught goes out the window soon as we enter the industry.

I started to wonder that if I knew then what I know now would I be a better designer? Or would it have prevented me from developing as a creative person? Do we need to learn in a ‘blue sky’ thinking environment even if what we are taught may never be used? I believe there is scope for certain truths to be taught to students to better equip them when they are entering the creative industry.

Myths of web design

.net magazine just published this cool article on some of the myths of web design (7 links in the navigation, 3 second rule) which to be honest im surprised that some of these still exist.

I think the problem is when you start making rules you just end up limiting yourself. We are ‘limited’ as it is to the technology of the time so why put more limitations on yourself. Surely we as web designers / developers should treat each web site we design / build as an individual piece that fits its own brief rather then trying to force self imposed rules on the look, feel and outcome.

Anyways check out the article.

Taking a trip down Internet memory lane

internetarchaeology.org is a archive and showcase of graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture.

Im especially liking the flash section loving the old skool tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeens