My hand-picked highlights:

Cardboard City workshop with the Irish Architecture Foundation.

Think you might have the next Richard Rogers on your hands? Why not your little ones flex their architecture muscles at a fun hands-on workshop.

• When: 8th-11th July from 11am-1pm
• Where: 5 Scarlet Row, West Essex Street, Old City, Temple Bar
• Age: 9 – 12yrs old
• Price: FREE—booking required, click here for details.

Cirque de Legume

I saw this at Absolut Fringe last year and I laughed until it hurt. You’ll either love or hate this crazy circus duo.

• When: Thursday, 7pm
• Where: Meeting House Square
• Age: all
• Price: FREE

Check out the full programme here or if you’re around town do grab yourself one of the programmes to help plan our your weekend in and around Temple Bar.

In Cork this weekend? Check out the Street Performance World Championships. Last year was brilliant craic, even as a volunteer. This year is going to be even bigger taking over both Fitzgerald Park AND the Mardyke Sports Grounds. If you can’t make it we’ll be posting all sorts on the blog over the weekend so check it out at spwc.wordpress.com, Facebook and Twitter.

In Dublin for the weekend? Well why not give the Tweasurehunt a go. The last one was a great laugh and great exercise to boot.

Jason Santa Maria on his favourite typefaces.

Bringing psychology to the web design toolkit. Stephen Anderson‘s note cards are available to pre-order now.

Looking for a freelancer of any description? Check out endor.se

Seth Godin enthusiast? Join the masses for the “first ever unofficial official Seth Godin Linchpin worldwide Meetup” in Buskers, Temple Bar on Monday 14th at 7pm. Check in on FourSquare to receive a free drink on arrival.

And some light relief courtesy or Redmum…

Molly Holzschlag –  Progressive CSS3 Design

Quite a start to day 2 with Molly starting off with a call to action for all designers to have more input in the W3C Working Group. She presented a pretty matter-of-fact state of the web and where we are with CSS spec. The spec for CSS 2.1 isn’t finished and browser vendors and developers are already ploughing ahead with using the far from finished CSS 3 properties. It’s a all getting a bit crazy!

Posing the question of whether we should be going with a ‘progressive enhancement’ or ‘graceful degradation’ approach she recommended a ‘bridge building’ approach that somehow traverses the 2. Each project should be assessed individually for what kind of browser support you have to take into account but while you shouldn’t ignore older browsers and the problems they pose you need to get on top of what’s coming down the line.

Simon Collison – What Will Web Design Look Like in 2 Years?

An interesting musing on where the web and the web from a design perspective is headed. From questioning how the design process might change (should we design for mobile first and then desktop?) to the potential problem of the adoption of web fonts leading to widespread inappropriate use of typography on the web. Do designers understand grid systems properly and should they really be using them? How much web design in the next while is going to be purely experimental given the changes that lie ahead for HTML and CSS? His stunningly gorgeous website has more.

Aral Balkan – The Art of Emotional Design: A Story of Pleasure, Joy and Delight

One of my favourite sessions of the whole conference, partly because he spoke a whole lot of sense and partly because of his clear passion for what he does. He presented the question “why do we pay more for one thing over another?” Answer = UX. There’s a world of MP3 players available in the world yet the iPod still outsells them all despite not being one of the cheapest available. People like using them and are willing to spend a bit more for it.

For the second or third time at FOWD design and user experience is likened to our experiences with food. Essentially, to say that something is usable is like saying something is edible. Edible is fine but we want more than just edible. We go to a restaurant for more than edible food so let’s take that slant and apply it to user experience on the web. This idea I love.

And I loved his talk so much I’m going to have to give it some blog space all of it’s own. Seems I’m not the only one who gave him the thumbs up!

Bruce Lawson of Opera – How to build a HTML 5 Website (live demo)

As it says on the tin, a rapid how to for newbies on how to approach building a web page using HTML 5 markup and what the heck it’s all about and why we should care about it. Good overview and some useful tips on handling fallbacks for video formats in particular. Very much looking forward to getting stuck into the book that himself and Remy Sharp are writing on HTML 5 and its more advanced features.

Brett Welch of Adobe – Rethink Your Job (And Earn More Money)

Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting much from a sponsor slot but hats off to Bretty for making some really interesting and valid points about the business side of the design and development process. Some of the main points from his talk:

• Web designers need to think of themselves as web consultants (and consultant isn’t always a bad word!)
• Don’t expect a website to be a success without a strategy
• Set your goals
• Measure the results
• Don’t launch a website and leave it there – try a more iterative approach, agile development works on the web!

John Hicks – Icon Design

John Hicks of Hicksdesign is a well-known graphic, logo and icon designer who has produced some truly gorgeous work for well-know brands such as MailChimp and Opera. After a brisk step through of the history of icons and the concept of icon design he gave us some pointers and suggestions on how to approach the workflow for icon design including:

• Is an icon appropriate in this scenario?
• Choose the right metaphor
  • Realistic
  • Abstract
  • Aribitary/Symbolic
  • Application
  • A logo is not an icon!
• Is there an existing convention?
• Can you base it on familiar objects?
• Avoid too much detail and decoration
• Design on a grid
• If you’re designing more than one icon design them together to maintain context and coherence

Check out his work and his blog here.

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:

1. Marketing
2. Copywriting
3. Contextual Awareness
4. Strategy
5. 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.

“My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself.”

That’s Johnny Depp on his own ink and what caught my imagination when I read about an exhibition called ‘Ink‘ being organised as part of this year’s Bealtaine festival. Here’s the spiel:

Age & Opportunity has commissioned photographer Aidan Kelly to photograph and exhibit his images of the tattoos of older people. If, as novelist Jack London said, tattoos are a sign of ‘an interesting past’, then this exhibition attempts to capture the history that has been absorbed into a body.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the results. The exhibition runs at the Original Print Gallery in Temple Bar from this Sunday the 16th (opening at 2pm) and runs until the end of the month.

Ever fancied yourself as a tattoo artist?

Well then this might be your opportunity to give it a shot and maybe even unearth a new talent! DontPanic! are offering up quite a unique challenge in their monthly design brief with a ‘Skin Design Competition‘. Yes, you get the chance to design a tattoo and see it being worn on somebody’s skin. They’ve got a volunteer all lined up for the live tattooing of the winning design on July 22nd! Check the link for all the info.

“…a raucous experiment in using new tools to erase media’s old limits. As the name suggests, we’re going to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days.”

A gorgeous interactive chart that demos HTML5 ‘readiness‘.

Some interesting research and results on font stacking for Mac and PC.

Nice little ‘how to’ post on integrating Twitter‘s @Anywhere tool into comments in your WordPress comments.

Streamline the use of conditional stylesheets for the various flavours of IE through some neat detection and simply adding classes to the body tag.

Like/need to keep your source code on your websites valid? Then you should check out StayValid, an online validation tool that can run multiple validation tests on a scheduled basis.

Not going to FOWD London next week? Seems you can purchase all the goodness for a mere £95 online. Slides and videos all available 24hours after the conference. This is a slight kick in the ‘nads considering my smashing workplace has paid significantly more for a ticket to attend and travel costs too. Judgement reserved on that for now.

The Absolut Gay Theatre Festival Dublin is on until May 16th. I saw an amazing production last night at The New Theatre called Whore Works which runs until the 8th. Check out the programme here.

Innocent Drinks Consumer Cam.

iPhone and Android app builder and CMS that integrates with YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter in one neat looking package – MobileRoadie.

Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers looks tasty.

Solsbury Hill gets the Scala treatment in Cork:

So Meteor Ireland launched a competition earlier via a Facebook App to find Ireland’s Social Networking King or Queen. Out of curiosity and hearing a little bit of a kerfuffle about it I decided to have a look. Here’s what I was presented with when I interacted with it:

My initial thought was ‘good job I actually bothered to read the ins and outs of this before hitting go’. I’ve never encountered a Facebook app that would what I would term spam your wall as well as your photos, videos & notes and friend’s news feeds.

Needless to say I clicked ‘Leave application’. Apparently Meteor are taking in and considering feedback on this ‘feature’ of the app. Hopefully they will revise it as I can’t imagine you will get too many people clicking ‘allow’ here or if they do being please about the app’s access to so much of an individual’s profile.

It’s got me wondering about the whole Facebook app development process. Do designers and developers follow the same steps they would if they were developing an iPhone or standalone web app? Is there any user testing? What about prototyping or wireframing? What works/doesn’t work?

Response:

..the access screen on our facebook app is a standard access screen as per Facebook’s rules and regulations. Unfortunately the messaging on this cannot be changed, however we can assure you that we don’t access any user’s personal information other than their name, gender and profile pic, which is completely standard for the majority of facebook applications.

Facebook simply wouldn’t provide the functionality to post a fun comment if it wasn’t allowed, look at Social Interview for example which has 4 million monthly active users! If people don’t want to partake in the app they can do one of many things: they can block an application from their own profile on Facebook, delete the posts the same as you would a comment from a friend, or opt out of this application if they so wish. Our search for Ireland’s social networking king and queen really is only meant to be a bit of fun for people and not mean to be taken too seriously. As mentioned above, people can request to opt out if they are nominated and don’t wish to be involved or can just block the app itself.

My mug by Allan Cavanagh

The Trim Hot Air Balloon Fiesta is on over the Easter bank holiday. I just love it, particularly the ‘special shape balloons’ and the ‘Night Glow’ event on Saturday night. Fingers crossed the weather improves for all involved!

The supremely talented Sabrina Dent is offering a Business Boot Camp service that sounds excellent and is ridiculously good value. Get booking.

So Dublin City Council are going ahead with the idea of renaming Archbishop Ryan Park (that’s Merrion Square to you and I). Panti has the info on how to get involved and an excellent suggestion on her blog.

Snaps for Stu who shared a link to a gorgeous wee font called Brownstone earlier. I’m also loving Boucle this week.

The name Pat Butcher has a whole new meaning for me today on Pat Phelan’s blog.

Thank you to Allan Cavanagh for the cool caricatures.

iMaxi on Etsy

Some tools graduating and falling from Google Labs, one of the best ones to graduate is ‘Forgotten Attachment Detector‘.

All sorts of funny – Stephanie from LazyTown. From Wikipedia:

“Stephanie (played by Julianna Rose Mauriello)[1] is a fictional main character from the children’s television show LazyTown…She has pink hair and is often referred to as ‘Pinky’ by Trixie.”

Tutorial: ‘How to Pull Your Google Buzz with jQuery‘ – if that’s what you’re into.

Typography: lovely open source fonts from ‘The League of Moveable Type‘, thanks to Stu for the linky.