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Yesterday was the “Visual Web Design Master Class” with Andy Clarke – if you don’t know it already – have a look at the website ‘for a beautiful web‘ (to see it in its full glory – view the site in Safari :). I had been looking forward to this workshop as its focus was on design rather than coding. Though I love learning more new techniques and clever methods for the technical aspects – I feel I don’t have the time to delve on the design aspect of my work, though I always wish I had.
So you can imagine my shock as I arrived at the chosen venue of StMartin’s to find the building dark and without power…! Thanks to a last minute venue change which seemed to have gone amazingly smoothly the workshop went ahead without much delay :-)
You can read more about this near disaster on Andy’s blog.
Andy started with a look at how to get fresh inspiration. As webdesigners we do look a lot at other people’s sites and their online work – taking inspiration from the design we work on ourselves. Breaking out of this habit – Andy listed a few things we can do to find inspiration in more unlikely sources: read a short story every day, read a poem every day, drive someone else’s car, look up, swap your iPod with a friend, read classified ads (for showing a lot of info in an condensed space), watch a bollywood movie, learn to ride a motorcycle, take a different route every week / once a week.
After this introduction – Andy’s presentation went onto typography and grids and was amazing – and I will not be able to do it justice here – so I will point you to the beautifully crafted designs on the FABW site’s blog: Typesetting The Waste Land
Another highlight of the workshop was the working lunch during which guest speaker Brendan Dawes did his presentation. Brendan was very dynamic and entertaining and inspiring, showing amongst others his Cinema Redux and one of my favourites DoodleBuzz.
Apart from a head full of typography, grids and inspiration – we all went home with a beautiful Moleskine sketchbook (squared) and Lamy pen. I love both – and the subtle branding is just gorgeous ;)
The workshop was brilliant, I thoroughly enjoyed Andy’s presentations, as well as Brendan Dawes talk, met some interesting people in my fellow attendees – and was happy to see Pixeldiva Ann McKeen again :-)
The day concluded with chat and drinks in the pub and I went on to join Andy & Sue, Mikey (Andy’s brother) and Owen Gregory for meal which was a lovely end to an inspirational day. Thanks, Andy :)
