Strava made me do it
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 ... Read it →
November 14th, 2014
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 ... Read it →
November 14th, 2014
Feedback as playing card suits, Life Labs Learning Feedback. We all need it in order to improve. Growing up we had our families to provide feedback and help us course-correct ... Read it →
May 16th, 2024
A year ago this week my wife and I took our kids out of school to travel most of the world. Over the course of 6 months we travelled to 10 countries ... Read it →
February 10th, 2024
A long time ago I started a side project that died on the vine, called WIKN (What I know Now). The intention was to share warts-n-all advice to new designers, ... Read it →
June 5th, 2023
Image generated by Dall-E This is an introspective recap of my first year at ASquared: a Brighton-based, purpose-driven digital agency putting social and environmental issues at the heart of everything ... Read it →
May 17th, 2023
A couple weeks back the wonderful Aamna Hussain invited me to talk about agile and design (and other things) on her great Product podcast. I do love talking shop ā especially ar... Read it →
January 24th, 2023
Moving from managing pixels to managing people isnāt a straightforward decision. Many of us underestimate the change in pace, scope and challenges that come with a design management or le... Read it →
May 12th, 2022
Itās never a dull moment round here. Having had a month between jobs to lay low, I was itching to get back into the swing of things. The month ro... Read it →
February 9th, 2022
By all accounts the Kim Scott book āRadical Cando(u)rā has become a bible in Silicon Valley and tech circles. And rightly so, as the need for honest and open... Read it →
January 11th, 2022
In my binging of recent podcast episodes there was another from the Design Better show that caught my eye š / ear š. In the show with Scott Berkun I was reminded of the di... Read it →
November 20th, 2021
Meet Sophie. A business leader at a large organisation, Sophie oversees multiple products. She works with both her in-house product and design teams, as well as external partners. One of ... Read it →
September 20th, 2021
Imposter Syndrome. That feeling when you doubt yourself, asking whether youāre deserving of your accomplishments. You can't help but feel it's only a matter of time until youāre expo... Read it →
September 2nd, 2021
I really like talking to people. Introvert or not, Iām curious by nature and enjoy understanding what people are up to, what they do, and how they do it. So... Read it →
February 25th, 2021
When I spoke at the recent MUX Londonās āFestival of UX & Designā in September, I knew things would be different thanks to Covid-19. I just donāt think I realis... Read it →
October 21st, 2020
Agile and design. Like oil and water, the two donāt play well together. Yet as we create more complex digital products and services, they need to work to a co... Read it →
July 23rd, 2019
Digital transformation. It sounds so grandiose, doesnāt it? Like some sort of beautiful metamorphosis: an ugly caterpillar of old techš magically becoming a beautiful butterflyš¦, resplendent in its new digital ... Read it →
February 21st, 2019
Iāve just finished a long stint working within a large, risk-averse organisation. Being product-side for a change has been an incredibly eye-opening experience. Itās the first time in more... Read it →
January 21st, 2019
The retrospective isāāāin my opinionāāāone of the most important activities in any project. Routine post-sprint retros are a great indicator of project health, but end-of-project wash-ups are where the real gem... Read it →
August 1st, 2018
Sign-off. As Andy rightly points out in his recent post, itās a thing that shouldnāt be part of the modern digital designerās lexicon. I totally agree, and in som... Read it →
May 18th, 2018
Iām all for design systems. Iāve designed and created many, and theyāre a great way of unifying patterns, usage and language. They reduce time, save on costs and pr... Read it →
July 7th, 2017
Are designers evolving from just UX designers or just visual designers into multi-disciplinary generalists? There seems to be higher-quality design all-rounders coming back into vogue. Jack-of-all-trades When I was a ... Read it →
August 9th, 2016
As a visual designer working on agile projects, Iāve said before how itās easy to lose sight of the larger visual language in agile sprints. When youāre tackli... Read it →
March 9th, 2016
A few years ago when Mark wrote his article on performance budgets, we were working together on a redesign for a luxury travel holiday website. The use of large images ... Read it →
February 29th, 2016
A look into my use of Strava and how it's positively affected my behaviour over time. My name is Jon, and I'm a Strava user. I never thought I could ... Read it →
December 23rd, 2015
When designing a site, app or digital product, all of the elements on screen need to work together. They need to sing together, harmonise with one another and form something ... Read it →
December 15th, 2015
Always nice getting a shout-out on a podcast, this time regarding the Code for America work and element collages. Read it →
May 25th, 2015
This article was originally posted on the Clearleft blog. Most Hack Farm projects start as someone's itch that needs scratching. Last year's TinyPlanner was Boxman's need for a backwards to-do ... Read it →
February 10th, 2015
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 ... Read it →
April 9th, 2013
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 - ... Read it →
January 17th, 2013
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 ... Read it →
November 9th, 2011
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 ... Read it →
September 20th, 2011
Should websites be built around the content, or should content be created to fit the design? Hereās an argument for creating content first ā or at least thinking about content firs... Read it →
September 15th, 2011
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 ... Read it →
August 3rd, 2011
Itās been a crazy start to 2011. In fact, the last few months have been an absolute whirlwind. Here are some noteworthy the projects weāve been working on, with serv... Read it →
March 4th, 2011
Using A List Apart's article on Responsive Web Design (by Ethan Marcotte) as inspiration, this site now uses CSS media queries to determine a visitor's screen resolution and serve up ... Read it →
July 26th, 2010
Well, it's been a long time coming, but CarbonGraffiti has finally been picked up, dusted off, reconfigured, rethought, rebranded, rewritten and repolished within an inch of its life. Not bad. ... Read it →
July 9th, 2010
Argos. Clearly doing well as the UK's most popular 'catalogue showroom retailing' store in the UK. More than 700 stores, 130m customers and Ā£4.3b in sales in 2008 isn't bad. They also t... Read it →
August 18th, 2009
The English Premier League is big money. EPL clubs are as much businesses as they are generational sporting institutions, a point proven when cumulative wage bills total Ā£1.2bn, revenues top Ā£2bn... Read it →
July 20th, 2009
Here are the top 10 most-read CarbonGraffiti articles for April 2008: Free Email Marketing templates Outlook 2007, Part II Best of March - Email design round-up Design the perfect email: Dimensions & design 14 ... Read it →
April 27th, 2008
Let's work together. For fractional leadership queries, drop me a line.