What in many ways is a lifetime ago, 15 years as it happens, I wrote (or more accurately A List Apart published) A Dao of Web Design. The anniversary would have come and gone had not Val Head email me to remind me (after the original person who had the vision to publish the article, […]
Certainly in Australia and in my experience in other English speaking countries, and I’d hazard a guess in many countries of European tradition, we tend to socialise with alcohol. Whether it’s purely social, or a professional event after work hours, alcohol is expected, and of course by most, if consumed, then consumed responsibly. But not […]
I always hated image replacement techniques. Not that I didn’t appreciate the cleverness of FIR, SiFR and the myriad other hacks folks developed to deliver text as images in an accessible way, so that we could use any fonts and typographical effects on our Web pages (at least sparingly). But it always smelled wrong. So […]
I wrote this back in April 2012, when Google Glass was first announced. I wasn’t convinced at all, and the short film they released at that time to explain the Glass experience was a big part of why. I found this piece again by accident recently, and realised it’s probably worth publishing. Not quite sure […]
The links This week we’ll take a break from our traditional structure of separating out links for designer sand developers, and we’ll focus on a single theme. And there’s a quiz at the end that we’ll have a prize for. Pattern Matching In 1977 Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein published A Pattern Language, […]
In the first of what will be a new ongoing feature, we’re excited to have Genevieve Bell’s Keynote from Web Directions 2014, fully subtitled (with the transcript below as well.) Each week we plan to feature one or maybe even more past videos, subtitled and with transcripts, from our back catalogue of nearly 150 hours […]
Something new. We’ll now post our weekend reading newsletters the week after they go out via email as a post. So if you want them fresh, with the chance at giveaways, quizzes and more, why not signup now? It’s just once a week, and very high signal-to-noise. Big ideas Art predates humans An incredible prospect, […]
Web Directions more or less started as a software company. Well, it was a different company, but the first thing Maxine and I worked on together was software. Some of it (sort of) still works on today’s Mac OS and Windows. But the first software I wrote, Palimpsest, a hypertext knowledge management system, never got […]
Last year, in a whirlwind, we pulled together our first Respond conference, focussing on the broad challenges of contemporary Web design. It brought together one of our most diverse crowds, including many Art and Creative Directors, and many more strategic types than we expected. We designed the day as something of a symposium, with a […]
Karen Mcgrane’s recent Beyond Tellerand presentation, Content in a Zombie Apocalpypse talks about the impact of laser printing on the rise (and nature) of the Web. She observes Arguably, the laser printer is the most important component of the entire personal computing revolution. Demand for laser printers, demand for desktop publishing, is what drove people […]
Next week is the week of the 10th Web Directions (as the more astute may have noticed, we’ve dropped the ‘South’ part of the name, it’s just Web Directions now). Traditionally, lots of events for Web folks happen that week, some organised by us, many by others. So much so, a while back we created […]
Diversity, and the place and role of under represented people in our industry has, sadly, yet again been front and centre in online conversations recently. At Web Directions, having completely messed this issue up with our very first conference 10 years ago (yep, no women speakers), we’ve since worked hard to help increase the diversity […]
Web Directions 2014, our 10th anniversary edition, is less than a month away. With the best lineup ever, a brand new venue, along with some amazing partners– bringing you the World’s Best Conference Coffee (courtesy of Sample Coffee Company, our coffee of choice here at Web Directions), a fantastic free Juice bar, not to mention […]
Late last week we took the wraps off our 10th Anniversary conference, Web Directions South, taking place October 30 and 31, at the brand new location of the Seymour Centre, located in the heart of one of Sydney’s most vibrant, creative, and definitely up and coming areas, Chippendale (only a kilometre from the CBD for […]
The Web, and what we can do with it has come a long way since the first conference we were involved with back in 2004. Each event we do represents a sort of milestone, and hopefully reflects the sorts of challenges, opportunities and concerns we face as we design and develop for the Web. That’s […]
Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development
Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney
