I first learned about Style Tiles in the days following Build Conference last year. Derek Johnson, who works alongside me at Website NI, spoke of the value of this new technique, he learned courtesy of Jeremy Keith’s informative workshop, when starting a new project.

Over the space of a few months trialing this new addition to our design process, we’ve found varying levels of value. Some clients found it interesting, it helped educate them as well as encouraging them to thoughtfully contribute to design decisions.

As always, on the other hand some clients didn’t understand why we were doing this, despite prior explanation, and simply opted for a random choice because they were being “forced” into making a decision.

Consequently, as there was little thought behind the client’s choice their benefit obviously waned.

Continued use?

There’s no doubting that Style Tiles provide an important step between research and visual design. However our future use of Style Tiles will be determined by that particular project’s context.

Some clients will always be uninterested with any prior work to a visual design, so sharing this kind of work may be time wasted.

Of course Style Tiles can always be created and discussed solely in-house.

Find out more at:

• Samantha’s original blog article
• Samantha’s article at A List Apart
• styletil.es

Here’s a few photos I managed to capture.

#1 Airport Train Station

#2 Leidseplein Market

#3 Bicycles

#4 Walking past a canal

#5 Amsterdam Central Station

#6 Fight the power

#7 Royal Palace

#8 Quiet cafes along the street

#9 Waiting on the train

#10 Stickers

Being my third Build I knew what to expect – at least I thought I knew what to expect. This years’ event was more thought-provoking, more well-rounded and more inspirational than the previous editions.

Here I’ve broken down my experiences to explain some of the engaging conversations discussed and how they’ve contributed to my personal improvement.

Workshop

The start to my week was an informative workshop – entitled ’Design to Communicate’ – hosted by Simon Collison.

We were challenged to delve deeper into our thinking, understand different perceptions, utilise visual language fully, offer affordance and thus become better designers.

There were some great take-aways from this workshop including establishing a voice for your content that helps build credibility, as well as how we can design systems upfront that can shape the websites we are working on.

Conference

The Standardistas

The day started with a friendly reminder of how designers can embark on ’The Journey’ – from the Standardistas.

The Journey encompasses how a novice designer should learn from masters of their trade in order to hold a deeper understanding of said craft and thereby progress to becoming a master themselves. They discussed how we needn’t neccessarily learn from them in their own space, typically nowadays we can follow and learn from afar. Or, as it sprang to my mind, even from the rest of the talks at Build.

Josh Brewer

Josh Brewer followed up with a honest presentation about relationships in design. He stressed how we should engage in a level of compassion whilst designing, as after all design is for people.

Josh also touched upon practical methods we should take full advantage of such as the Golden Ratio, as well as providing examples how they’ve been employed to great effect by #newtwitter and Apple’s logo.

Craig Mod

After the break Craig Mod presented about the future of books and publishing – a subject I’ve little knowledge of. However it was marvelously well-presented and offered numerous insights into the future of publishing formats.

In doing so, Craig informed us of the role we should take with formats such as ePub3 which utilizes HTML5 and CSS3.

Wilson Miner

The next talk, by Wilson Miner, is difficult to describe by any one superlative. Wilson’s message was about how the work we are producing is often more significant than credit given. We should take pride in our achievements, because they’re truly helping the world.

The presentation was perfect. Slow-paced, masterful story-telling, and accompanying visuals for additional impact.

The captivating atmosphere in the room throughout the talk was almost tangible, like some sort of turning point in our minds. Truly moving.

Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria had the unenviable task of following Wilson’s talk, and also lunch. ’On Web Typography’ was a memorable, well-delivered presentation packed with clear and concise advice about web typography.

He discussed considerations we should employ whilst choosing type – something that I often struggle with. Profoundly Jason added that type should be considered in every step as ’if the type is bad, the design fails’.

Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith, in the penultimate talk, discussed the problem of data loss on the web in great detail – as well as proposing solutions to take control back.

In what was a highly-passionate address, Jeremy explained how we’re losing valuable information all the time by trusting third-party solutions – with Geocities being a notable example – and how we are the ones who can do something to avert this situation. He floated ideas about self-hosting all of our information in order to safeguard their existence.

Simon Collison

Simon Collison closed the day out with his thoughts on our craft – often with subtle references to the previous talks on the day. Although he didn’t necessarily agree with the Standardistas favoured model, they spoke of earlier, of defining goals – he suggested we should focus on the doing.

Essentially, working on the web, it’s our duty to continue learning and producing high-quality work.

About

Bringing the products to the fore was the main idea behind this minimal e-commerce design for a local sportswear retailer.

This clean and functional design has produced immediate results.

About

This was an initial homepage concept design for an e-commerce store for Derry’s – an internationally recognised manufacturer and supplier of high quality, durable contract furniture.

I designed an elegant and vintage feel that, I felt, suited their unique furniture.

Ultimately they used part of this concept for their finalised website design, however colour schemes and functionality were altered.

About

I was able to design the UI for a mobile app that collects field data helping sales marketing, inspections and logistics etc.

The app had to be great looking and most importantly intuitive for users.

About

Redesigning Ireland’s Good Food Ambassador and celebrity chef Jenny Bristow’s site was a tall order however a great project to be involved with.

We improved upon the structure and layout of the previous website by defining a clear content strategy and information architecture.

The design is explicitly clean helping the user focus on the content.

About

This was a simple site for a local architect practice that needed to showcase their recent projects.

Each project focused on photography and the plans accompanied by short summaries.

About

This is the second website design I’ve completed for the official website of Loughgall Football Club – the Northern Irish club I support who play in the Ladbrokes.com Championship 1.

This website, built upon WordPress, needed to be much more extensive than previous versions of the website whilst remaining easy to use.

All analytic metrics from the website has improved considerably on the basis of this design.

About

As part of my University course, I crafted Anti-Football all the way from an idea in my notebook to a fully functional e-commerce store.

This project allowed me to demonstrate my complete skill-set as well as taking my first foray into uncharted territory such as t-shirt design.

The best thing for me about Anti-Football is being able to design something tangible, in this case t-shirts, something often forgotten for web designers.