My OU work blog
I’ve been maintaining a blog about my work at the OU for the past few months. Up till now it was locked so that you could only read it if you worked for the OU. I’ve decided to open it up to hopefully get some more discussion around some of the things [...]

The OU science faculty have a brand new website courtesy of Green Cathedral.

Color Theory- Art Lozzi explains some techniques
“…color sense is not a subject or an item that can be taught in a class. It’s innate and it grows with exposure..” via simplebits.
(tags: webdesign colour)

Understanding the Pen Tool
The secret dark arts of the Bezier curve. Video tutorials.
(tags: webdesign)

HD TV in the UK
“HD Freeview won’t be an option [...]

Imagining that sometime soon the OU web colour pallette might be revised, improved and made more accessible, I’ve been playing with colour schemes using Adobe’s fantastic Kuler web app. Here I can select an OU brand colour and generate sympathic colours schemes from it. I then use a little artistic license to get semi-accessible colours [...]

Here’s a first stab at a “new thing” screen for My Stuff. Please ignore the unofficial design at the top of the image!

Big version.
I click ‘add a new thing’ from my My Stuff homepage. I arrive at this screen. I can then quickly create something non specific using the form on the left hand side [...]

Andy Sinclair-Pearson talks about global Intranets
My old boss had his presentation summarised and he makes some very interesting points: “When an intranet gets too large, and out of control because of publishing issues, you have a choice : either get more IT people or find an easier CMS.”
(tags: webdesign)

The Open University: Kitchen Konundrum (game)
Award winning [...]

One of the features of the “My Stuff” eportfolio is the ability to ‘tag’ items put into the application.
A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to.

Source: [...]

Simon Collison Interview on Digital web
“I’m not a fan of the agency production line, where one person creates mock-ups, another creates content, someone else does the CSS, etc. To me, that is very limiting for the individuals concerned, and can result in formulaic output.”
(tags: webdesign)

Avoid Edge Cases by Designing Up Front
“In the context of web [...]

…is no small task!

Big version
This retains the warmth from the yellow but feels a little washed out to me.
The limited colours available in the OU brand pallette really restrict the designs you can create if you need to be accessible. But I’ve been having a go.

Big version
This moves more into the red arena, away from [...]

Guardian Unlimited: Organ Grinder
Here’s a site that uses warm tones with OU-like white space. A lot of the interest resides in the masthead “sub brand” which we’re not allowed to do at the OU. Doh! Subtle design with good balance makes this part of the erather dated looking guardian webs
(tags: webdesign inspiration)