Category Archives: The Site

The new site


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Hey folks. A dash of the past and the road ahead My tardyness is beginning to precede me and I’m tired of apologising for it. Aside from complaining about how busy I am and continuing to craft weak excuses as to why the site’s upkeep has taken a nosedive over the past 6-8 months, backed up by tedious promises of upcoming content; I’ll instead bestow you with a little update of where Redswish will be heading in the future and hopefully inspire you to stick with me and stay, if only mildly, interested. The site started off as an experiement nearly 2 years ago, a blind date with blogging. I discovered that I enjoyed it and apparantly so did those taking the time to read my babble; so I stuck at it and tried to figure a solid direction for the website. However, as Redswish is almost exclusively the ramblings of a sole young fluttering designery type, me, a solid…

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New site design critique


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Hello all,

Aside from persuing the standard activities of any sociable teenager in my evenings and weekends; I’ve been squeezing in a bit of time to work on the concept and designs for the new Redswish blog. I’ll be looking to scale back the irrelevant nonsense (to some extent) and ensure a steady stream of personally crafted, but objective and hopefully inspirational posts on the subjects of web design, digital marketing and life experience etc. Although this isn’t a drastic change from where I’ve slowly been taking the website, it will become clearer, the tone of voice and theme of the new site will hopefully be obvious.

Redswish is however a site built and maintained for you, my loyal readers. So I thought it only justified to provide a sneaky glimpse of the design approach I’m using to construct the new site. However I’ve hit a slight slow patch, that’s right – I’m stuck. And I want your help.

Please take a look and come back to me with the harshest critique you can. I can take it, come on! I want the new site to be as good as it can be, and your feedback will be an important part of achieving that:

Design 1:

Design 1

Design 2:

Design 2

Thanks,

Nathan

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Long time no speak


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Apologies to everyone, I have indeed returned from my travels and am back immersed in the world of real life and work, although this site has yet to kickstart. The new Redswish website is in development and will be relaunching soon, packed with a fresh selection of (hopefully) great articles on web design, marketing, branding and everything in between.

So I’ve decided to hold off publishing any new posts until the new Redswish launches in a few weeks. If you can hold out till then that’ll be great – I promise it will be worth the wait!

Until that momentous occaision feel free to follow me on Twitter or contact me with any ideas for articles or any topics you’d like to see on the site and I’ll file it all in my mound of ‘things to do’!

Thanks for the patience everyone,

Nathan

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There and Back Again


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Hey folks, for those of you who don’t know I’m actually heading off traveling for 3 months. In fact, I’ve already started and forgot to let you know!

As much as I’ll try, it’s going to be difficult to ensure regular, decent computer access whilst backpacking through Indonesia, Australia and Japan so you may not hear much on Redswish regularly, or even at all, until I get back in October.

I will however be putting some focus into a travel blog, which really stretches me thin enough as it is. If you fancy checking it out, it’s not quite finished but I’ll be building it up as and when I can at thereandbackagain.nathanbeck.co.uk.

But I promise when I get back it’s a big step forwards for Redswish. There will be a redesign, possibly a slight rebrand a definite and solid change in direction. We’ll still chat about web and graphic design but also lots more. As I’m learning – there’s a hell of a lot more to being a great designer online than just a knowledge of HTML, CSS and a copy of Photoshop.

I want everyone to be a part of exploring and sharing that.

So, one last musing for you before I log off and get the backpack on. I was sat in McDonalds before (I know – visit a far off foreign country and eat at McDonalds… leave me alone!) and I wondered why they charge less for people eating out than inside. I used to think it was to save seats, which may apply at peak times. But no, it’s defnitely more than that, and so simple.

Persuading people to eat outside rather than in by charging a slightly lower price ensures more people with McDonalds on the street. Which means tens or hundreds of walking advertisements sporting the big yellow M on paper bags all over the place.

It’s quite possibly one of the most affordable and influential forms of advertising I’ve discovered. I can’t believe it took me so long to realise!

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1 year down!


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waaay!
I noticed it was a year today that I first posted on Redswish. The site’s come a way since then but hasn’t been anything ground-breaking, not that I intended it to. I’ve tried to put a decent amount of time into the site but it’s not always that easy. Plus over time I discovered the value of quality of quantity (I think)!

Through constantly trying to better myself and the quality of my writing I’ve learnt a lot and hopefully crafted some articles that have helped and inspired people. If not, well I’ve wasted a lot of time then! But I do feel that if you were to read through all the articles mentioned below you’d see how my writing and understanding has matured over the past 12 months…

Anyway, just a quick thank-you to the regular visitors and commenters and even those that have popped in and never returned again. The odd bits of support and kind comments keep me going. Here’s to another year!

A quick summary of some of the more popular articles from the past 12 months:

That’s just a selection. I’ve also write and have guest written for other blogs including the Flame blog and iFoh designs.

Shout Outs

There are a lot of people, designers and companies that have inspired and influenced me over the past year. I’m really sorry if I forget anyone but off the top of my head I’d like to thank David Airey, Jacob Cass, Matt@ifohdesigns, Andy Clarke, Jeffrey Zeldman, Vandelay Design, Smashing Magazine, Adelle Charles, Chris Spooner, Carsonified, Elliot Jay Stocks, Nick La and so many more people…

Working at Flame since last June has been great fun, the people here are great and learning so much. So, here’s to another year!

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Long time no see, and other bits…


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CalendarFor the past few months I’ve been blogging on a regular basis, usually between 1 and 3 times a week, even 4 times if you’re particularly lucky, or if I’ve been particularly bored. However since my previous post at the start of the month, Redswish has been left neglected by me and kept busy by the loyal readers popping back to seek new news, and perhaps a few new readers who’ve managed to source the site through whatever means.

So, nearly 3 weeks since my last article, it’s surely time for something fresh, new and inspiring.

Err, well no. Not really.

With full honestly, I have been immensely busy this past few weeks. Yep, even too busy to blog! ‘Heathen’ I hear you cry. Alas, it’s true. And I assure you’d love to return with an unbelievable article of only the highest quality, but I can’t even stretch to that for you. So to keep you busy for what will hopefully be no more than a few days, I will offer you the following:

Fifty People, One Question

The wonder that is Twitter offered me a little jem today. I can’t remember who it was who recommended this short viral video, but I thank them for it.

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Are you really this stupid?


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You donkey!

Today I received 3 spam contact form results from nathanbeck.co.uk, my portfolio site that ties in with this site (click on contact at the top and you’ll see what I mean).

They were all ‘selling’ the same thing, but just spewed different bullshit each time.

Here’s the best:

Hello,
How would you like getting a logo’s (or) icon’s (or) header (or)template (or) banner designed free of cost for your website. We are giving away these services as a promotional measure for free of cost. In return we need a link at your site for each services at home or internal page(Except link,resources,directory pages).So to get a new services all you got to do is mail us back with the confirmation of link and the page where the link added for our site. If not interested in any of these offer,and interested to do three-way link exchange,please feel free to mail me back.

Regards,
Rebheka.

I’m a freaking designer, it’s plastered all over my site and about 3 inches to the right of the contact form Rebheka filled in!

Perhaps she used an automated form-filling tool, perhaps Rebheka is actually a poorly paid Indian child slaving away for 13 hours a day posting and reposting the above email to hundreds of ignorantly selected sites. Perhaps I need to use a CAPTCHA, but I always liked the simplicity of my contact form.

We’ve seen it all before

I know, I’m sure you have. I just cannot get over the stupidity. I mean, you’d at least use correct English grammer. That email reads like it’s been processed by a cheap language translator.

I won’t post my response, yeah that’s right I responded! I’m sure you can assume the tone in which it was written. I just can’t believe anyone would possibly fall for such an email, it surely can’t be productive on ‘Rebheka’s’ behalf.

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