Articles

It's not often - for me anyway - to be quite so fundamentally affected by an app as I have been with Strava. Whereas the majority of apps available today aim to increase your productivity, give you a hit of dopamine through gamification, or aid you in getting from point ... Read it →

This article was originally posted on the Clearleft blog Arguably the key deliverable we hand over to our clients is our pattern portfolio, comprised of two main components: The component library is a collection of all the front-end patterns or snippets we’ve extracted from our designs during the design an... Read it →

Better late than never, right? In retrospect, my 2012 was pretty huge, both professionally and personally. On new additions In the early summer we welcomed another Aizlewood into the world - Indiana - who is truly one of the most easy-going, smiley babies I've every experienced. As I write this she's ... Read it →

... absolutely nothin'! (Say it again, y'all) A short while back, I pitched for a project that I ultimately lost. After putting together a comprehensive proposal and fielding numerous questions (which I have no problem with), I was given the unfortunate news that I didn't win the business. This much is ... Read it →

Creating the content for your website can be a difficult task. You have to gather information, consult experts, write thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of words, source images and get people to contribute. It’s hardly surprising that so many organisations delay their own content creation until it becomes a cr... Read it →

In early November, Quality English were kind enough to Eurostar me down to Paris to present to their member schools on digital marketing. The presentation, entitled 'The demise of the desktop: Digital marketing and the mobile web' is now hosted on Slideshare, as well as embedded below. Here's the write ... Read it →

It's finally happened. After almost a year of waiting, a team of web designers, web developers, an agency and many talented others have been working with a well-known newspaper to launch the much-anticipated and new Boston Globe website. Why is this big news? Because the new Boston Globe isn't an ... Read it →

Should websites be built around the content, or should content be created to fit the design? Here’s an argument for creating content first – or at least thinking about content first. What is a website anyway? Websites exist to deliver content. Websites are the things we create when we have some... Read it →

I'm currently attending the Brighton SEO conference at the Corn Exchange. Huge turnout, and clearly this industry continues to thrive. But, I'll admit it. Over the years my view on SEO has become increasingly negative and pessimistic. This conference helped solidify that view. When I create sites, I'd like to ... Read it →

As I type this, I'm currently on a break from attending the Brighton Digital Marketing Festival here in sunny Brighton. On Monday I was fortunate enough to attend the surprisingly fantastic Update Conference, and the Friday before that I attended the annual (and highly acclaimed) dConstruct2011. As if that wasn't ... Read it →

Things have been pretty busy lately, hence the lack of posts. However, one piece of news worth sharing: CarbonGraffiti was selected to design and build the website for the inaugural Brighton Digital Festival, taking place across the month of September 2011. When I first came to Brighton in 2007, I couldn't believe ... Read it →

It’s been a crazy start to 2011. In fact, the last few months have been an absolute whirlwind. Here are some noteworthy the projects we’ve been working on, with services ranging from consulting to custom email design & build using MailChimp to full websites built on either Wordpress or Budd... Read it →

On January 27th I gave an hour-long talk on 'The Future of Digital Marketing', speaking specifically to the ELT (English Language Training) industry. The conference was put on by EnglishUK and described as follows: "The English UK Marketing Conference, organised by the English Language Promotions Group (ELPG), hosted by UKTI ... Read it →

I love football (and Arsenal specifically, if you must know). The business side of it fascinates me (check out my post regarding the MCFC site redesign) and I’ve always been fond of using football or aspects of it as an analogy for all things in business. This post is no... Read it →

We're conditioned to be reactive in life. If it's too sunny outside, we wear a hat. If it's too cold, we wrap up. As freelancers or small businesses, much of our time is devoted to working in a reactive state. We have clients who require a service, and we react ... Read it →