I popped up a quick post about the morning’s activity here, should you fancy a looksee.
Day 1 – afternoon
The highlight of the afternoon, and indeed the day for many people was the UX Masterclass with Web Standardistas. Despite their 19 hour trek from Belfast thanks to the infamous ashcloud they kicked ass to a packed room. It’s the second time I’ve seen them give a presentation and I’m completely enthralled by their attitude, work and passion for what they do. Their trademarked UX Recipe (which I will have to go into in a post all by itself) will hopefully raise the game for at least everyone who was there.
Allan Haley gave us the low-down on what Fonts.com are doing with their web fonts service. Now I get that he’s a sponsor and we need them to run these kind of events but it was all just a bit too salesy for me. It was nice to get a demo of what you can do with Fonts.com web fonts but I’d like to have seen a more objective talk on web typography taking a look at all the options side by side.
Paul Boag shook things up with his ’5 new skills every designer needs to know’ presentation. He had asked people via Twitter to guess in advance what these might be and got lots of the typical stuff in response – HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, web fonts etc. His response? If you’re not already using them, well, you’re screwed. Amen to that! His recommended toolbelt additions for designers:
- Marketing
- Copywriting
- Contextual Awareness
- Strategy
- Psychology
Check the Boagworld blog here for the full gist of his talk. I recommend the Boagworld podcast if you fancy some regular ramblings on all things web. It can be a bit long and chatty for my liking so consider the ‘bitesize’ version that’s available on iTunes too.
Thank you so much for the kind words Steph, we very much appreciate them. We’re glad you enjoyed the talk and it’s good to hear our style kicks ass!
We were honoured to have been asked to speak and had a great time putting the presentation together. When the ash cloud arose we were determined to get to London after all the work we’d put in.
We were delighted with the feedback and it was lovely to meet so many nice people. There were so many highlights from the two days, but we were chuffed when Mr Collison, who we very much admire, encouraged us to talk, “as often as possible, in as many places as possible.” High praise indeed.
If you want a copy of the slides to refer to for putting together something on the ‘UX Recipe’, we’d be happy to oblige. Also, if you didn’t get a Standardistas’ badge – http://j.mp/badgeschwag – we’d be delighted to pop one in the post. Just drop us an email with your address.