Redswish - carefully crafted banter

A real web design curriculum

There’s constant discussion in our industry about the merits of education vs self-teaching. The general concensus seems to be from those that studied at University and further education that although it was great experience, it seldom had little impact or relevance to their roles within new media and web design.

In such a fast evolving, and still relatively new industry, standard curricula simply can’t keep up. Web designers teaching in educational institutions begin to loose touch with the latest trends and technologies, and by the time a curriculum has been created, amended and passed it’s already well out of date, and often innacurate. This leads to many students and those starting their web design education setting off in the wrong direction because ‘the breadth and depth of our medium can be daunting’.

However, WaSP (The Web Standards Project) have been working collaboratively with designers, developers and standardistas in the industry to craft a concise corriculum that delves into all the aspects of the minefield that is web design. WaSP Interact is a fantastic new community-driven initiative that provides a essential, up-to-date framework of reference materials including books, online reading, podcasts, videos and resources to stimulate and educate. To support this great selection of resources are guides as to how work should be assigned, monitored and tested in a school environment.

In their own words:

“WaSP InterAct is a living, open curriculum based upon web standards and best practices, designed to teach students the skills of the web professional. Adapt and reuse our resources. Contribute your own content and ideas.”

The breadth of the framework covers 6 core topics including Foundations, Front-End Development, Design, User Science, Server-side Development and Professional Practice. Within each of these areas it delves into sub-topics that really pad out almost every aspect, not just of basic web design, but every facet of what’s required to work in this fast-paced, demanding industry. But what really sets is apart is how open it is. Industry experts, ‘veterans’ and anyone with an knowledge to share on the matter can contribute resources, suggest new modules and how to improve and update what’s already there. This will ensure that the curriculum remains up-to-date, fresh, accurate and versatile.

This is a dynamic, real-time curriculum. This is exactly what our industry needs. This is important.

The potential of Interact is not just important to those in education, but to anyone working in web design and development. The resource database will only grow, will only get better. There is something here for everyone. So I strongly suggest you check it out.

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Connect! Published!

Hey folks,

My words have found their way to print, along with 99 other people. “Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era” is now available to purchase through Blurb. I talk about how we can use Twitter to build more personal connections. But that’s all I’m telling you – you’ve got to buy it to find out more!

The book is a fantastic collaboration of 100 authors from the marketing/new media/design industry that discuss current trends in social media and how we can harness the power of the social web from a marketing perspective to create my dynamic, personal consumer relationships.

Even better, the book is purely none-for-profit. Besides educating and inspiring, the aim is to raise money, and awareness for Susan G. Komen’s campaign towards the cure for breast cancer.

It’s a great book, it’s for a great cause. Please help out by grabbing a copy, it’s totally worth it.

• More information on the book and the Project 100.
• Get yourself a copy at Blurb.com!

Thanks to all the other authors, and thanks to the editor Jeff Caswell for making it possible.

Nathan x

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Dug up

A few of my posts from the Flame blog archives from last year. Possibly worth a gander:

Books or online tutorials

A discussion on the benefits of books or online learning, the clue’s in the title!

There has been mild debate in the office recently over whether we prefer online tutorials or the traditional printed word. This has been sparked by a recent subscription to Lynda.com, an online resource of video tutorials.

It seems that Lynda hasn’t been used as much as hoped or expected. But alas, this is not because we’re all too lazy to learn, on the contrary we’ve all been too busy to participate in 8 hour tutorials on designing fonts, modeling gorillas in 3DS Max or building a spaceship using only PHP and a dashing of AJAX (yeh I have no idea how you’d do that either)…

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Does anybody care what you have to say?

A muse about the value of blogging today and just how important is your voice?

Blogging has evolved, transformed and broadened massively over the years. I wouldn’t like to say ’since it was invented’ because, well it was never ‘invented’, it has just ‘become’, biologically… like a living entity. Anyway, enough semantics.

The origins of blogging have long since been lost in the mists of time, it is maintained that only scholars know the true reasoning behind the now extremely popular web activity and in some cases – business. I personally have only been blogging since January this year, and am constantly learning new tricks, styles and trends…

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Navigating large blogs

Some advice for designers on how to make large blogs more usable and easy-to-navigate.

With the exception of news-exclusive blogs, pretty much the entirety of blogs on the net feature topical or thematic content that can be useful and informative not only at the time it’s written, but for many months or even years down the line.

So when a blog grows and expands, it’s easy for older posts to get lost and unseen. Sure they’re still there, archived or categorized, but once your post count starts to rise above the lofty heights of 100 posts… chances are your old work, regardless of how well-written or useful, is going to attract less traffic from either external or internal sources.

The importance of internal blog navigation cannot be underestimated. It may seem obvious but a lack of categorization, clear navigation and tidy layout can have massive negative implications on a site’s usability, and therefore readership.

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The little things that matter

Considering how essential to the overall design even the smallest elements are, and how they should never be overlooked.

Sometimes it seems all too easy to simply throw up a contact form or a standard menu layout because at the end of the day – everyone knows how these things work, as long as they do their job, they don’t require much attention.

Oh how wrong that is. A recent string of articles from Smashing Magazine regarding Web Form Design Patterns emphasises the importance of the smallest design aspects, such as the placement of labels next to input boxes, wording, use of colour, shape, size and position and much more.

Read more…

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Which do you prefer – online or offline learning?

My latest post on the Flame blog covers the topic of offline learning (ie books and magazines) vs online tutorials, blogs and sites.

I personally probably prefer offline. Having debated with co-workers, print media seems to take the glory. This is down to a number of factors including a lack of distracting menus, images and adverts, the easier readability, the option to have a book open in front of you while keeping your monitor free, and because your are almost always guaranteed more high quality content from a book.

Check the post out here. And comment where you like!

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Sitepoint books for web designers

I would like to make a toast to the fantastic selection of web design/development oriented books delivered from Sitepoint. I own only a couple myself, the best of which is ‘The Principles of Beautiful Web Design‘, which I must say is a awesome book and reference.

Whether you’re a designer, client-side or server-side developer, project manager, freelancer, hacker, CSS Guru or jack-of-all-trades – you can be assured there’s something for you (how cheesy does that sound.)

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