Your Guide to the City at WooThemes Link
18th March 2010 3 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/421
City Guide is a WordPress theme I designed for the fantastic people at WooThemes.
We’ve developed this theme to cater for directory-based wordpress sites. For example, a guide to a city with shops, restaurants and other places of interest all archived in posts with geo-tags and custom content about the locations.
I was approached by the WooThemes Team late last year to design a new theme for them that was a going to be aimed at a niche market instead of the typical blog and magazine themes. The brief was to design a theme that allows one to best publish listings/ratings of attractions in a city and plot them on a map via the Google Maps API. A location-based directory that anyone can morph into something of their own for their local area, town or city.
It was a fun process working together, there was a lot of freedom and some fantastic concise feedback from the team. While I only provided flat PSD mockups the folks at Woo have done a good job bringing it to life and integrating it into their system for you.
If you fancy getting your hands on a copy of this theme you can get a rather generous 20% discount with the coupon code SAMBROWN for the next 2 weeks. Thanks to Woo.
How-to register an International Domain Name Link
24th January 2010 6 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/417
John Sutherland a fellow Edinburgh Refresher has written a fantastic little guide on:
How-to register an International Domain Name →
I had been meaning to look into this after seeing Gruber's fantastic http://✪df.ws short URL. Thanks to John's how-to guide I picked up http://ɯɐs.com/. Let me know what you nab.
Project52 - A personal challenge Link
3rd January 2010 9 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/413
Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!
Find out more about Project52 →
I have decided, along with some 500 other people, to take part in Project52, writing an article a week on my site for 2010. There are a whole host of other great people taking part in this and I can’t wait to read what they have to say on a regular basis. Be sure to sign up and take part.
Getting rid of the dotted border around links the right way Link
9th December 2009 Be the first to comment... http://sam.brown.tc/409
I heard Patrick H. Lauke from Opera speak at the FOWD Tour Glasgow on Keyboard Access Essentials and today’s 24 Ways article (which I hope everyone is reading) by Patrick does a great job of summarising one of the key points that he spoke about.
Removing the dotted line that occurs around clicked links in Firefox and Internet Explorer can be achieved with one super simple CSS rule :focus {outline: none;}. The big problem is accessibility, people using anything other than a mouse need :focus to see where they are within the page. Patrick’s solution to this problem is simple, and what I really took away from his article is that I should be applying :hover styles to :focus as well, something I have been neglecting to do.
URL ABC Link
27th November 2009 5 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/408
A simple game: Go to the address bar in your favorite browser, and type one letter. Start with "a", end with "z".A simple game brought to you by Tim Van Damme. What you got?
5 Essential Document Templates for Freelance Designers Link
17th November 2009 2 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/405
As a freelance web designer it makes sense to have a number of documents prepared as you tend to use the same ones over and over again. I thought I would share with you the 5 documents that I have prepared and ready to use, along with some excellent examples from other designers and studios.
Everything from a Website Planner and Contract, to Email templates and Invoices, some good resources here for the freelancers among us.
Lee Munroe shares 5 Essential Document Templates for Freelance Designers →
Rethinking The Fold - Presentation Ammunition Link
21st October 2009 1 Comment http://sam.brown.tc/402
The Fold is one of those mystical discussion points that I’m sure many of us have had to argue discuss with clients, thankfully Chuck Mallott has put together this fantastic little PDF presentation that I will definitely be using as future ammunition with my clients. You can see Chuck’s Rethinking the Fold presentation at his site or download a copy from SlideShare.
Xbox Sam - me and my Xbox 360 gaming escapades Link
30th August 2009 6 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/395
I have long been an Xbox 360 gamer and of late have been wanting to write a little about my experiences with it, game reviews and more. A few weeks back I launched another site to house all of that content: Xbox Sam. If you are a gamer yourself or fancy having a look at my first site that utilises Typekit head on over and check it out. /End Public Service Announcement.
David Airey's Design Pricing Formula Link
17th August 2009 3 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/393
I really like David Airey’s recent article on the ever evolving and on-going struggle of pricing with his rather interesting Design pricing formula.
level of expertise + project specification + turnaround time + service and support + level of demand + current economy + physical location = TOTAL COST
Read David Airey’s Design pricing formula →
Your guess is as good as mine as to what each of these numeric values are, but these are all definitely things worth considering when working out a price. I’d be interested to hear peoples thoughts on how the current economy and physical location should affect prices?
Elliot Jay Stocks on The Font-as-Service Link
7th August 2009 Be the first to comment... http://sam.brown.tc/391
“… we are now entering the age of the font-as-service: where the font becomes synonymous with web hosting, mobile data plans, and movie rentals. No longer fixed, fonts will be borrowed, subscribed to, removed, expanded upon, and provided on-the-fly.”
Elliot writes a great piece at i love typography on fonts as a service, with TypeKit and FontDeck paving the way forward the future of typography on the web looks great — albeit there are a still a host of unanswered questions regarding pricing, security and scalability.