Author Archives: danAdmin

I’m not going to explain these ones. Sometimes I make things for other people, sometimes I have a random project for myself.

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My wife and I produce a lot of cards every year – some are hand printed linocuts or monoprints, some are hand illustrated before being digitised, carefully edited and then sent to a printers. We make birthday cards, congratulations cards, change of address cards, valentines cards, mother’s day cards, father’s day cards, and of course Chirstmas cards! There is a burst of joy when receiving cards from other people so it’s only natural we wish to send love out to our friends and family via a stamped envelope.

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This was an attempt to create a new version of the Victorian parlour game Hunt the Thimble. The original game is fairly simple: an object is hidden in a room and the other players then have to hunt the object with the last person to spot it being the loser. I introduced a time limit and goodnatured forfeits for those unable to spot the chameleon in time.

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William Waugh & Sons (Builders) Ltd commissioned a booklet to celebrate reaching their 200th anniversary. They are one of the oldest family firms in the UK and the booklet contains a fascinating brief history of the company and some of the work undertaken over the years alongside an overview of the staff and stakeholders today. I was able to provide photo editing and publishing design for the booklet – including photo restoration from a silver gelatin print of the founder, Robert Waugh, taken in 1869.

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User centered design by definition involves aiming the end design squarely at the users and the best UI/UX design directly involves the users in the process. However since UI/UX design is a relatively new field compared to more traditional design roles such as typography or graphic design there is less concensus within the design community about applying syntax, appropriate methodology, suitable tools or techniques etc. What designers do hold in common is the desire to create products or services that fit the users better and this is where I have been particularly focused in recent years.

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Raw data is only useful once it has been digested properly with consideration for context and potential bias has been highlighted. Naming assumptions is extremely important so that if, in the future, we find out an assumption was false this can be identified and disasterous suggestions/moves can be avoided. Some questions are too open for precise measurements so we can employ qualitative questions that allow for an honest answer or more accurate information. We have all filled out a questionaire where our desired answer falls outside the available choices and this is where an open question works better than a tick box answer. The data collation will be more difficult but the information may be that much more useful!

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Creating logos or new brand identities requires a knowledge of your audience as much as it does a knowledge of what you need to represent. I like to test out a wide range of ideas and refine them down with rapid, iterative test strips so that my clients can be involved in the evolution of their brand.

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The effort that goes into creating effective branding is usually invisible to the users or consumers of a product. Simple, obvious and concise is difficult to achieve and by design you will never see the mountain of work that was built upon to create the end product.

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I was commissioned to resurrect a website for the Friends of Figgate Park, a local non-profit who look after Figgate Park – a beautiful park in Portobello. The previous website lost it’s database after some kind of malicious attack and I was able to piece together a replacement from the many years of (now contextless) content. The site now acts as an announcement board and gallery for the park as well as Friends of Figgate Park.

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Mother Hen Publishing was an independant Scottish children’s book publisher that commissioned and produced many interesting educational books. I was brought on for design, layout and image manipulation with several of these books.

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