The general feeling on this one from the world’s web designers is that the fold doesn’t exist and to a degree they’re right. Obviously computer screens and monitors don’t fold, the terminology has been adopted from the graphic design world where newspapers were folded for display purposes – hence the important information being displayed above the fold.

Another reason why the fold is considered not to exist in web design is the various different screen resolutions that monitors can display information at, because of this there is no one cut off point after which users have to scroll, it varies from screen to screen.

So while the actual fold doesn’t exist, the concept of the fold does and it has an important place in web design. Not every user that visits your site is going to scroll, that’s a fact, so in general it makes sense to place your most important information at the top of the page where it will be seen by the most eyes. Take a look around a few sites, where is the navigation placed? where is the shopping basket? the logo? All important pieces of information and all at the top of the page.

Obviously you can’t have all your information at the top of the page, you need to prioritise the information that appears on your site and arrange it accordingly, but make no mistake the top of the page remains the most important area on a website.

I love to read design blogs and there are some very good ones out there. There are an awful lot of that offer all kinds of advice and ideas to people in the industry. I respect that, it’s great to give something back. Unfortunately there seems to be little separation between designing and blogging about design.

Most of the prominent web designers out there, the ones who I see appearing in the industry magazines on a regular basis have what I consider to be average portfolios. I’m not going to name names as this post isn’t about that, it’s about looking beyond the best design bloggers, it’s about really finding the best designers out there. The truth is, most of the designers I really respect, those that consistently produce excellent work aren’t blogging about design, they’re creating it and for that very reason they’re often overlooked.

So finally, along comes Adobe Browserlab and I love it! It’s fast, gives you multiple browsers to choose from (all the major players), allows you to compare screenshots from different browsers side by side or even use a very slick onion skin method to overlay them.

So far so good!

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the series, it offers an insight into the applications that designers use on a regular basis and a little bit of info about why they use them.

So if you’re a bit of an app junkie like me, read the interview!

Over the past few months I’ve been having all kinds of trouble with my one time sweetheart, my 17″ Macbook Pro. It all started 4-5 weeks ago when my mac was fast approaching it’s 2nd birthday – after a long day at work I put my mac to sleep, tucked it into it’s second skin and made my way home. Now I’m a bit of a workaholic and truth be told, my mac never gets much of a rest. But when I went to wake it up – nothing. I scoured the net, tried every trick I’ve ever learned, but nothing worked. So I took it to an authorised Apple service centre. As I was passing the Mac to them, I heard something loose rattling around inside. Not good.

After a day of keeping my fingers crossed, the call came in – the logic board was broken and there were some loose ‘clips’ inside. It cost me a cool £750 to get my baby back up and running again. United again, I figured we could soon make that money back. Wrong.

A few days after getting my mac back, I noticed another loose item inside – another clip had worked it’s way loose (what the hell are these clips?) and had to be removed. A few weeks go by and everything is fine, until one day, the track pad stops working and I had no idea why. That was until I felt the underneath of my mac and noticed that the battery had swelled up and bent out of shape causing the trackpad to stop working properly.

So at present I’m without a battery, I have a laptop that can be on my lap, just as long as I’m sitting somewhere near a socket. Apple have very kindly agreed to replace the offending battery, however I can’t help but think that my 2 year old computer is falling apart at the seams and hasn’t fully justified it’s whopping price tag (£2000). And I haven’t even mentioned the electric shocks it likes to give me when I’m working (I didn’t even have to pay for that extra!).

Did I consider switching to PC?

Yes I did.

For about 4 seconds.

Twitter and the freelancer seems like a perfect fit. As a freelancer you either move around quite a lot or you end up working at home on your own with little outside contact. This is where Twitter steps up – you can build a network of colleagues to communicate with and these colleagues can be anyone, from anywhere – heroes, idols, friends, peers, former colleagues, celebrities – whatever you want. Need some feedback on your latest design? struggling with some code? – consult your new found community!

As you build and refine your network, you’ll also notice that news breaks quickly on Twitter, which is very handy indeed when you work in a fast moving industry and staying on top of developments and trends is vital. Where did I first hear about Google Wave, Adobe BrowserLab and Cristiano Ronaldo’s £80m transfer to Real Madrid? You’ve guessed it!

So what initially seemed to me like little more than an extension to one of my most hated facebook features (status updates) is now growing on me rapidly, and is fast becoming a tool that I consider a necessity.

Over the past 4 years I have established a method to my work, a set of rules that have formed my working code which have now become habit…

• Communicate Well And Often – in my opinion this is the single most important attribute a freelancer has, I value it higher than quality of work. If you effectively communicate on all levels this can alleviate the fears of clients. You need to communicate, what you do, how you do it and the way you work. Communication is often the key to retaining clients and being re-booked.
• Work Quality & Consistency – you don’t have to be the world’s best designer to make a freelance career, what you need to do is be consistent. As with any industry there are requirements for all levels of capability. If you continue to produce work at a consistent level, this will define your standard and it takes the risk away from hiring you.
• Maximise Your Possibilities – if people don’t know of your existence then it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, you won’t get booked, you won’t get any work. Get your folio online, start using services like Twitter, LinkedIn, comment on blogs, keep in touch with everyone you meet – hand them a business card – you never know when they might need your services or know someone that does!
• Be Adaptable – all agencies and clients differ in the way they like you to work. You need to adapt to their methods and quickly. You may be asked to do things that may not be your niche from time to time, if you effectively communicate this but also adapt to the requirements then this will reflect favourably on you.
• Use Your Initiative – hugely important in the design world. There will be times where if you’re working in-house there will be no-one around to answer any questions you may have. You need to take the initiative in these situations and use your experience to make the right decisions.
• Be Pro-Active – when you’re closely involved in a project you will see opportunities to aid your project, you need to recognise these as early as possible and capitalise on them.
• Listen To Your Instinct – there are good clients and bad clients, you need to work out which category any potential new clients fall in to before you agree to work with them, this is usually a lot easier than it sounds. Look for signs in early communication you have with a client, whether it’s on the telephone, by email or even face to face – the signs are almost always there to see and they’re not usually hard to spot. As soon as the alarm bells start ringing you need to take action fast, your instincts are usually spot on.

Hopefully these methods may help you out with your freelance career. They’ve kept me busy over the years!

The way I see design, it’s all about educated decisions. From the very start of a project you will make numerous decisions and you will discount certain things based upon a combination of the current brief, your experiences from the past and what you believe is right for the project. Producing multiple varying visuals goes completely against this.

Putting myself in the clients shoes for a moment, were I to receive 3 different visuals from the same agency I would question it. It would send me the message that the designer/agency weren’t confident in their approach and trying to cover all their bases. I would question whether it was the best use of time and resources. If I’m paying someone to design something for me, I’m paying them to make these decisions and present me with their answer to the brief.

And finally… anyone who has submitted multiple design variations to a client in the past will know that inevitably the same thing will almost always happen. The  client will select elements from each of the designs submitted and ask you to put them together – something that you should have done in the first place.

If anyone out there has any interesting takes on this I’d love to hear them!

A quick search for web design trends will return you a huge amount of results. Many of these show examples of these so called trends in use – big fonts, photographic backgrounds, handwritten fonts to name but a few. It’s very easy to focus on a particular element of a website you like and to find other websites that also do this (the countless css galleries out there will help you out), but that to me is more indicative of the scale of the web design industry than of designers jumping on a particular style bandwagon.

Of course, we operate in a very fast developing industry and technology will play it’s part in dictating some of the guidelines but design to me is not about trends, it’s about solutions. It’s about finding the best possible solution to the brief regardless of current techniques and trends.

Just lately, as I approach probably the busiest I’ve ever been in my career I’ve learned to embrace the deadline and it’s become one of my biggest allies.

Deadlines set targets, they unite the project team (client included) and get them all focusing on a single goal and that is a good thing. Everyone needs to be singing from the same sheet if you want to deliver a knock-out project on time.

So what happens when you don’t have a deadline? Expectations differ, decisions become less urgent and prominence gets taken way from the project. This leads to a very unordered work-flow and ultimately makes the project much more difficult to manage.

On any given project, I tend to set numerous internal deadlines as well as numerous deadlines with the client. Why? I do this because it is much easier to manage a project in small chunks. It allows you to constantly assess how far you are from your goal and is a really good way of helping you to plan should you start to run behind or even in front.

Don’t fear the deadline!