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24 ways to impress your friends

Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke is one of the world’s best-known website designers, consultant, speaker, and writer on art direction and design for products and websites. Andy founded Stuff & Nonsense in 1998 and for 20 years has helped companies big and small to improve their website and product designs. Andy’s the author of four web design books including ‘Transcending CSS,’ ‘Hardboiled Web Design’ and ‘Art Direction for the Web’. He really, really loves gorillas.

  1. Z’s Still Not Dead Baby, Z’s Still Not Dead

    Andy Clarke

    Andy Clarke digs deep into snow to find ways flat design can be brought back to life in CSS with the use of techniques to create a sense of depth. Like spring after an everlasting winter, perhaps it’s time to let a different style of design flourish. What a relief.

  2. Designing Your Site Like It’s 1998

    Andy Clarke

    Andy Clarke tells a tale as old as time, a tale of tables, framesets, fixed widths and spacer GIFs (ask your parents). Harking back to the methods that were appropriate to used to build cutting-edge websites twenty years ago, not only can we see how far we’ve come but can be excited for what lies ahead.

  3. Getting Hardboiled with CSS Custom Properties

    Andy Clarke

    Andy Clarke lifts the lid on Custom Properties, and adds a little spice with an elegant method for providing fallbacks for those with older browsers. Remember, at Christmas we all need to look out for our elders, be they friends, family or even just browsers.

  4. Designing Imaginative Style Guides

    Andy Clarke

    Andy Clarke unpacks his tinsel and untangles the Christmas illuminations to add some brilliance to the subject of style guides. Whether you choose a boxed pre-decorated tree, or lovingly choose each adornment to your Norwegian spruce, just remember to switch the lights on.

  5. Blow Your Own Trumpet

    Andy Clarke

    Andy Clarke encourages us to have confidence in the way we communicate with potential clients. Being open and genuine, and providing an insight into what working with you will be like can help prospective clients choose you over your competitors. So before you refresh your glass, refresh your website’s copy!

  6. Taglines and Truisms

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke poses the question, that if we’re all telling prospective clients that we’re crafting and designing delightful, beautiful and remarkable digital experiences, what marks any of us out?

  7. Monkey Business

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke unpicks issues of cost and value, specifically when clients question our prices. It can be uncomfortable, but there’s always wiggle room. Bear left? Monkey right.

  8. There’s No Formula for Great Designs

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke re-examines the formula used to convert static to fluid grids, and describes how he adapts it within his own custom grids to maintain connectedness in designs across devices. Like great design, there’s a perfect Christmas out there somewhere, but there’s no formula for it.

  9. Circles of Confusion

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke whittles his early photographic experience into an innovative approach to deciding what matters most in a user’s experience of a visual design – capture and order what needs to remain consistent, and share the process (and the port and stilton) with clients.

  10. Ignorance Is Bliss

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke shares a case study highlighting the benefits of progressively enhanced web design. Ever wondered how to convince your clients to let you use cutting edge web techniques? It may be simpler than you think.

  11. Contract Killer

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke rides into town to remind us of the importance of having a proper contract in place between those providing a service (usually us) and our clients commissioning the work. Projects that don’t run to plan are a fact of life, so make sure you’re prepared.

  12. Underpants Over My Trousers

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke looks to the world of comic books and graphic novels for inspiration in web design. Personally, I look for design inspiration is Christmas wrapping paper, which, as it turns out, is a less successful technique. On the whole I’d recommend Clarke’s approach above mine. Lesson learned.

  13. A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke details an approach for embedding production notes inside your document – a useful aid to project management and team communications throughout the development phases of any project. Sounds like Santa isn’t the only one who’ll be getting notes this Christmas.

  14. "Z's not dead baby, Z's not dead"

    Andy Clarke

    Andrew Clarke dusts off the CSS z-index property to take control of the depth of his positioned elements. Why not try it out for yourself and see how it all stacks up. Santa’s not the only thing in your stack this Christmas. Erm … ok, I’m outta puns.