It's been a while. As you can tell from my previous post I've been elsewhere. All my blogging efforts have been on my book site. But I thought it would be fun to make my annual 'year in review' post here.
This year feels like a lot has changed and time has rushed past. On the work front I've been getting stuck in to my new job. In the relatively short time I've been at MORE TH>N my role has developed in new and exciting ways. I started by working solely with the web team, making small cosmetic changes to morethan.com's transactional pages. Once we saw sales and conversion uplifts from those changes I was given more scope, then more and more. Now my work stack looks like a designer's wishlist. So far I have...
- Created a new icon suite
- Worked with Michael Johnson on the new brand guidelines
- Rebranded and redesigned more4me, our customer site
- Created a social media campaign concept for RSA's new brand
- Worked with VCCP on the 2011 brand campaign (goes live Jan 1st)
- Designed the UX and IA for the new morethan.com site (launching early 2011)
- Leading the visual design for the new morethan.com site
- Developing the new 2011 brand campaign
- Designing a better UX for mobile users
- Implementing our User Testing policy
- Tackling the design and IA our morethanbusiness.com
Out of my day job I've been trying to push on with my book project. Although I'll admit progress has not been anywhere near as good as I had hoped. In truth I underestimated how slowly the print publishing world moves. My naive notions of having the content of the book wrapped up this year have faded away. Right now I'm questioning my approach and considering options for shoving the whole project back in to motion.
Enough waffle here's the lists...
My best bits from 2010
- work completed at morethan
- meeting a new batch of highly talented designers and writers
- completing the Brighton half marathon and Brooks 10k runs
- running guerilla user testing sessions
- scott pilgrim
- shows, albums, artwork and downloads from Gorillaz
- Inception
Worst bits from 2010
- endless train journeys
- tories in charge
- red bull winning the f1 crown
- illness and injuries
Inspiring things from 2010
- travels through Italy
- Mari Sheibley for Foursquare
- Rasmus Andersson for Spotify
- Pete Usbourne for Skype
- Tom Coates at dConstruct
- Rory Sutherland at UX Brighton
- That digital by Old Spice
- BBC GEL Project
- Baked in by Alex Bogusky & John Windsor
There was a lot more that I've either forgotten or decided not to share, but you might agree that it's been busy. For the first time in a few years I'm really looking forward to next year already.
