Alan Charlesworth

This site is now built with Laravel

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For the last couple of years, my site had been built on WordPress, using the block editor. I enjoyed using those tools as a designer, and, most importantly, it was low maintenance. As someone who spends all day designing and building websites & apps, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of my free time maintaining a personal site - I wanted something that just works, and WordPress is great for that.

But then, late last year, there was some unpleasantness in the WordPress community, specifically around leadership, which turned me off using it going forward. I’m not going to dredge all that up now, but because of that I resolved to build a new version of my site and launch it by the start of 2025 using a different stack.

Well… that didn’t happen 🤣. I’ve been way too busy this year to give any kind of focus to replacing my website. That’s not to say I didn’t work on it at all. In fact, I’d built most of what it is now months ago. It just wasn’t where I wanted it to be. Honestly, it’s not where I want it to be now, but I didn’t want to put it off any longer.

Switching to something more custom has given me the opportunity to build out a section dedicated to my favourite hobby, gaming. In fairness, I could have managed this on WordPress, but I’m a designer/developer and had been getting the itch to write the code myself anyway, and this way I get to tweak it to my liking more so than if I’d have stuck with WordPress’ full site editing.

I work in .NET/C# all day, which I enjoy and am productive in, but for a personal site, hosting .NET Blazor apps felt like a lot of hassle in comparison to abundant LAMP stack hosting. I’ve always liked Laravel, and hosting it can be very simple. I considered the likes of Astro, and having this as a static site, but I wanted to give myself the upgrade path should I change my mind later. (Yes, I’m aware Astro can SSR, but I don’t particularly like the hosting options for that ecosystem). Working in .NET, I have the full power of the server available to me, and that’s what I get with Laravel, with the benefit of easier hosting.

I also chose to go with Statamic as a CMS. I’m using it locally only and opted for full static caching. It gives a number of benefits, like image optimisation, and a nicer way of interacting and managing my content on my machine.

There’s a lot more I want to do to this site, and I’m going to start making more of an effort. The first step was publishing the damn thing, even though it’s not as polished as I’d like. Getting it out there gives me more motivation to improve it.

2024 Year in Review

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This year has been one where I’ve flourished professionally. I officially began more of a design leadership role at the start of the year, and since then I’ve gone on to lead, and gain recognition for some high profile projects. My position affords both a good level of autonomy and interesting challenges - with the next one already lined up to begin in January! Professionally, I’m pretty happy and comfortable.

On a personal level, this year has had many challenges, and I feel like in some ways, I’m ending this year in a worse position than last. That being said, there have been a number of highlights throughout the year worth mentioning.

Personal Highlights

For our big wedding anniversary this year, we enjoyed a long weekend in Edinburgh, which was my first time visiting Scotland. The tour of Edinburgh Castle was a particular highlight.

I started a weekly gaming night with a couple of mates who are geographically spread out from me, which has been a lot of fun. The three of us are on the same wavelength and share a sense of humour so we get to mess about playing games and making stupid jokes each week now.

We went to see Rhod Gilbert live, which aside from the challenging subject matter of his show (about his cancer battle), he was very entertaining as always.

We managed to tick off a few home improvements this year, including landscaping the front garden and building a media wall in the living room. We’re very time poor generally, between work and raising a family, so getting these done wasn’t easy.

I started to learn the piano a little this year after my wife bought one. I haven’t made a consistent habit of it yet, but maybe next year…

Professional Achievements

I defined the experience, led the project and did the technical implementation for a new WhatsApp customer service channel at work, which launched recently and has been well received internally and by customers.

In the first quarter of 2024, I designed, built and released a proof of concept headless e-commerce application, which is being built out into a full product next year.

Travel

I got around more this year than usual.

Barmouth for a short family getaway at the beach
Crete for our family summer holiday
Edinburgh, for our wedding anniversary (and my first time in Scotland)
Disneyland Paris just before Christmas with the kids - it was magical

Personal Projects

I’d wanted to do more writing, art and coding projects this year. I just couldn’t make that happen this year due to various personal challenges, and I’m disappointed by that. I did manage some earlier in the year, but it fizzled out by half way through.

I attempted to build my gaming blog three times and am still not happy with it. I did a couple of versions using Astro, which I wasn’t pleased with because it feels too limiting for what I wanted to do, so switched to Laravel and got something pretty close. I didn’t keep a handle on the scope with that one, so it got too unwieldy to release. I’ve just made a start on the fourth version, still in Laravel, which has a simpler scope and hopefully I’ll launch it early in the New Year as a fun side project.

I started dipping my toes into game development, using Godot, this year and have built a couple of tutorial projects. Next year I want to take it further.

Books

I tend to read non-fiction more than anything, and usually books related to professional or personal development. I get my fiction from gaming; although I had intended to read some fiction books this year, I just ended up not having the time.

I’ve recently begun collecting art books from video games, which give insight into the creative processes behind them. This might be the start of an obsession…

Finished

Design That Scales: Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice by Dan Mall
Story Mode: The Creative Writer’s Guide to Narrative Video Game Design by Julialicia Case, Eric Freeze , Salvatore Pane
Creative Abstract Watercolor: The beginner’s guide to expressive and imaginative painting by Kate Rebecca Leach

In Progress

Success At Scale by Addy Osmani
Top Tasks: A How To Guide by Gerry McGovern (E-book)
Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry (Audio Book)
Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers

Gaming

I played 45 games this year, 46 if you count Tomb of the Mask+, but as someone who identifies as a serious gamer, I don’t count mobile games. This year, I got back into gaming in a big way - probably too much, as a way of de-stressing.

According to Xbox Year in Review, I spent 210 hours gaming on the Xbox platform, racking up 219 achievements. My most-played game on Xbox was Alan Wake 2, rolling over from last year as I replayed the main story again and then the DLC that released this year.

My stats from PlayStation (which doesn’t seem to update as often so not entirely accurate!) show that I spent 149 hours gaming on the PlayStation platform, earning 128 trophies. My most-played game on PS5 was Helldivers 2, which I play pretty regularly with a couple of mates, basking in the ridiculously over-the-top firepower! 🤣

That’s a rough total of 359 hours gaming this year (at time of publishing).

Although not my usual type of game, I gave The Quarry a go on GamePass earlier this year and really enjoyed it. So much so, that I went on to play most other Supermassive Games titles this year too! Starting with the original Until Dawn, then The Dark Pictures Season One (House of Ashes was my favourite of the series) and most recently, The Casting of Frank Stone. I’m looking forward to their next game, Directive 8020.

I’m currently playing Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered on PS5 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Xbox.

My aim for the coming year is to be more selective about the games I buy. I tend to pick up games on sale because I’m loosely interested in them, but all that does is add to an already massive backlog with things I’m not really too fussed about playing anyway. I’m going to buy less next year and try to clear some of the backlog, maybe even replay some favourites that I never seem to get back around to playing again.

My top 3 games played this year:

Silent Hill 2 (Remake) - I’ve waited a long time for this, and it’s actually the reason I bought a PS5. It did not disappoint.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Dead Space (Remake)

My full list of games played this year

Alan Wake 2
Aliens: Dark Descent
Back 4 Blood
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Call of Duty MWIII
Call of Duty Black Ops 6
Control Ultimate Edition
Cuphead
Cyberpunk 2077
Dead Space (2023)
Death Stranding: Director’s Cut
Destiny 2
Diablo IV
Fallout 4
God of War (2018)
Helldivers 2
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hot Wheels Unleashed 2
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Limbo
Little Nightmares
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Minecraft
Resident Evil 3 (Remake)
Resident Evil: Directors Cut
Silent Hill 2 (Remake)
Silent Hill - The Short Message
Sonic Superstars
Star Wars Demolition
Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Super Mario: Wonder
The Callisto Protocol
The Casting of Frank Stone
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me
The Quarry
Titanfall 2
Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered
Until Dawn

2025 Goals

I didn’t really achieve most of the goals I set for myself this time last year. This year, I’m going a bit broader in the hopes that will make things achievable.

Fit for 40!

I’m disappointed that after making a good start on my fitness last year and losing quite a bit of weight, it all went back to the start over the course of this year. I turn 40 next year and would like to set myself up for a decade (and beyond) of good health. I’m referring to this as “fit for 40” and almost thinking of it like a project that needs to be completed before my next birthday. The target being to reach my ideal weight and be physically fit and healthy, as well as looking after my mental health better. I heard somewhere that the state of your health in your 30s has a massive impact on your 40s.

Make a video game

I’ve always been fascinated with video games; not just playing them, but with how they’re made. I’ve already started delving into the subject this year, and next year, I’d like to actually build a game of my own. I don’t really have an idea of what it’ll be yet, and I know I need to manage the scope appropriately for what I can achieve in my free time. I like that this is an opportunity to indulge several creative interests all in service of a single output. Feels like that’s more achievable than trying to pursue all the separate interests individually. I’m already expecting that this will give me a reason to dabble in 3D modelling, digital art and various other subjects.

Improve my web presence

For a web professional, I don’t do much on my own platforms.

I wanted to write more this year, and while I do write daily privately, the aim was to actually be publishing publicly, which I haven’t really done much of this year. I want that to change in 2025; not that I want to be churning stuff out for the sake of it, but I certainly want to be sharing more on my blog that I find interesting.

A related project will be releasing my gaming blog, which is going to be somewhere I can share my gaming stats, as well as tinker with code.

And finally, I’ve not been active on social media for several years at this point - I don’t get much personal value out of it, but I appreciate that there might be some professional value to curating some of my profiles. Who knows, maybe I’ll find some more social value in it again too.

That’s a wrap!

See you in 2025!

Sometimes, one word is all it takes to make your code work

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I just spent two days debugging a feature in an application I’m building. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. After rewriting the code a couple of times and still getting nowhere, I took a break until the next day (today) and came back to it with fresh eyes.

It was actually pretty simple in the end and obvious when I stepped back. I was missing one little word in the code… and that word was await. That’s all it was! The rest of the code carried on running before the method in question had finished running. Really obvious, and totally not at the same time. Two days of debugging and rewriting!

So the lesson to myself here, is always make sure to await. And take breaks.

AI as Spicy Autocomplete

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

This was a good read by Andy on Piccalilli about how he and his studio use AI.

Do I think though, that “AI” is a pretty good spicy autocomplete? Yeh for sure, I’ll give it that.

Andy Bell

This lines up with how I use tools like GitHub Copilot and JetBrains AI Assistant; it helps me to spot errors and debug code, explains unfamiliar syntax and autocompletes repetitive boiler plate methods. That’s a real time saver and something I do find valuable.

What I don’t find any value in whatsoever, is AI generated “art”, “music” or other creative output. These are an expression of humanity. They’re interesting because they’re a based on human experiences. AI can’t relate to that. To be clear, I believe there’s a difference between using AI tools to augment an individual’s ability to create something that’s an expression of themselves, and creating a tidal wave of spammy crap.

I don’t like art and culture being diluted into unseasoned slop and I certainly don’t like “AI” being a cause of mass-layoffs and putting people in real danger in a lot of cases.

Andy Bell

Scepticism of the Tech Industry

Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I really feel this one by Cory about the tech industry deserving our scepticism.

Honestly, I can’t think of a single way that social media sites have enriched my life. There are, however, many ways they’ve negatively impacted all of us and society as a whole; data breaches leaking personal data, subversion of truth, deceptive design patterns encouraging addictive behaviour, enabling and promoting hate speech for profit, manipulation (propaganda) on a mass scale funded by advertising, polarising, radicalising, peddling conspiracy theories for engagement, all while using a shockingly high (and ever increasing) use of natural resources to make investors and shareholders happy. Need I go on?

I work tech adjacent, in that I create software for businesses, but I don’t work for a “tech” business. I understand how this stuff works, which is why I opt out of everything (I shouldn’t have to!) I can these days, even though I don’t trust that I still won’t be targeted by big tech for profit, and I give as little information as possible when I have to at all. Long gone are the days when I’d sign up for most new services promising to make my work or life easier, offering success on a stick. I’ve been burned too many times and I have no trust left for big tech.

They take too many liberties. The industry is imbalanced and unsustainable. Surely there’s a better way.

I still believe that the web can be, and is an incredibly powerful force for good. It just needs those of us that make it to make good choices.

Should Designers Code?

Mon, 06 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I spotted Brad’s post on this and have been meaning to put my thoughts down on the subject for a while. This question has been around forever and I particularly liked Brad’s tweet that he quotes from 2011:

Telling web designers they don’t need to worry about code is like telling architects they don’t need to worry about steel, wood or physics.

Brad Frost, Twitter

My opinion; designing in the target medium, i.e. HTML, CSS & JavaScript (especially the first two), is going to yield the best final experience for users.

I’ve also found that designing in the browser is a wonderful experience for the designer too. It closes the feedback loop much faster, allowing you to see what works and what doesn’t in the a real context. Brad touches on this, referencing Atomic Design, pointing out “uniquely digital design considerations” that you only (today) get by designing in the browser; flexibility, motion, scrolling performance, pixel density, browser quirks, and more.

Static design tools just can’t capture all the nuances of a web UI, even if they try to come close. Personally, I find that frustrating, and not a good use of my time creating static designs that then need to be recreated in code. But, I’m a designer who codes, so it’s easier for me to work that way.

For designers who can’t, or don’t want to code, I totally agree with Brad that it’s important for you to understand key concepts like the box model, modern layout algorithms (flex and grid), etc. Knowing how those work will massively improve your designs.

And if you’re a designer who wants to learn code, personally I love it and I think you will too.

AI and Harm

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

It is utterly terrifying how organisations, both commercial and governmental, are rapidly ramming AI into everything without considering the potential damage it can do to real people. Something Brad talks about in his post AI and Harm.

Clearly, Brad, like myself, is no AI sceptic. He uses it as a tool, like I do. But in the applications that we use it for (generally as a tool to assist with coding), the potential for harm is low. Those working in areas with a high potential for harm against living creatures should be making sure that safeguards are in place.

In case after case, the fervor and urgency to adopt AI seems to stomp all over the need to exercise caution, responsibility, and to establish critical safeguards that curtail harm.

Brad Frost, AI and Harm

It’s an AI arms race and no one wants to miss out on the gold rush, no matter the consequences.

We’ve probably all heard about banks, and other institutions, incorporating automated & AI powered decision into credit applications. This has a high risk of harm to the quality of people’s lives on a large scale, particularly with biases embedded in the training data.

Even worse, as Brad points out, is when AI is used in a military context to determine targets.

I haven’t been able to shake the extraordinarily disturbing news that the Israel’s Lavender AI system was (is?) used to determine bombing targets — with little more than a “rubber stamp” from human intelligence officers — that resulted in many civilians being killed.

Brad Frost, AI and Harm

The assumption by these organisations seems to be that they don’t have time to put these guardrails in place without falling behind the competition. That’s bullshit in my opinion. Safeguarding, ethics and privacy concerns should be part of every project by default - therefore, not adding much time to do the right thing. Sadly, like web accessibility, it’s normally left until the end, when there’s no time to consider it.

Why Don’t Streaming Services Allow Downloads On More Devices?

Sat, 04 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

In our house, everything we watch is via streaming services. And we’ve got a couple of young kids who like to watch the same shows again, and again (and again!) - luckily we all enjoy Bluey 😅

We use my Xbox as our primary streaming device, with the native apps for each service we subscribe, but this applies to any streaming box:

Why can’t we download content for “offline” viewing on streaming devices like we can on our mobile devices?

It’s a waste of bandwidth and energy if you want to stream the same content multiple times. For us as users, it would be more convenient and reduce our energy usage. I’ve got to believe that this would also be of benefit to the services themselves, reducing their operating costs because they don’t need to pay to stream 4K video to us unnecessarily when I want to watch Across The Spider-Verse a couple more times.

The streaming device, my Xbox in this case, is always connected to the internet, so DRM isn’t really and issue. I can understand (to a degree) not allowing offline viewing with web browsers, but in their native apps on a streaming device, why is it different to the mobile experience?

Most streaming devices have a reasonable amount of internal storage, so that shouldn’t be a barrier either. Maybe no-one’s ever asked for the capability?

I wonder how many other people are in a similar situation to us. Our percentage of re-watching things is much higher than first-time views. We like what we like. It would be nice to do it in a more sustainable way.

Adding Internal Borders To CSS Grid

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

I was recently building out a grid of products and wanted to add internal borders to separate the items within. I’d tried adding a border to the individual grid items, but that results in a double border where they meet - not what I was going for in the design.

My requirements were to have a 1px border in between each of the grid items and that the borders respond appropriately when the grid rows and columns change - when the grid goes from three to two to one column based on the viewport width.

My first thought was “isn’t this something we can do with CSS grid already?” After a lot of searching, it seems not, at least based on the searches I did. My second thought was, “it shouldn’t be hard to achieve something like this in 2024” - and thankfully it’s not.

I found various overcomplicated solutions while searching, some using crazy :nth-child selectors and another making use of pseudo :before and :after elements. And then I found one on Codepen that was so simple, that it’s beautiful and ingenius.

Rather than try to over-engineer something, this solution leans into the gap property. Put a background colour on the grid container, create your borders by applying gap. It works every time no matter what viewport size or grid configuration because it’s simple and uses what the browser and CSS provide.

Want to get even fancier? You can apply different border widths to rows and columns by using the row and column gap properties individually.

My Music Replay March 2024

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

These are my Apple Music stats for March. It’s probably pretty obvious that my whole family enjoy listening to Taylor Swift! 😁

I listened to 1,743 minutes of music this month.

Top Artists of the Month

Taylor Swift (130 minutes)
Alan Wake (105 minutes)
Busted (60 minutes)
My Chemical Romance (32 minutes)
Fall Out Boy (29 minutes)

Top Songs of the Month

Superhero - Alan Wake & Mougleta (5 plays)
No One Left To Love - Alan Wake & ROOS + BERG (5 plays)
Follow You Into The Dark (feat. Rakel - Alan Wake (5 plays)
Wide Awake - Alan Wake & Jamie’s (5 plays)
Dark, Twisted and Cruel (feat. Paleface Swiss) - Alan Wake (5 plays)

Top Albums of the Month

Alan Wake II - Chapter Songs - Alan Wake (105 minutes)
Greatest Hits 2.0 (Guest Features Edition) - Busted (60 minutes)
KIDZ BOP 2024 - KIDZ BOP Kids (24 minutes)
Control (Original Soundtrack) - Petri Alanko & Martin Stig Andersen (18 minutes)
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard (Original Soundtrack) - Capcom (6 minutes)

Music Milestones

Other stats for this year.

5,000 minute listened - 27/03/2024

Design Engineering at Vercel

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

An in-depth and interesting insight into the role of Design Engineer at Vercel.

The same job title can differ greatly between organisations and I want to share a few thoughts on my role in contrast to this. I’m part of a small team (of two for now), where I’m the only designer. I’m responsible for the whole product design process, our design system, UX, frontend development, and digital strategy & leadership within the business. It’s a big role, one that I enjoy a lot for its variety.

While the team dynamics and scale differ from my personal experience, the core of the role at Vercel and my own are the same.

Something I think Designers, Design Engineers and Frontend Developers alike have to put up with everywhere is the notion that we just make things look pretty. But as the Vercel team rightly state:

There is a lot of work behind the pretty pixels. Design Engineers must go beyond visual appeal and ensure the other pieces that make an exceptional user experience are taken care of.

In my approach to product and web design, I’ve never seen much value in creating every aspect of a design in software like Figma / XD / Sketch, to only have to recreate it in the final medium. It seems like an inefficient use of time and resources - something the folks at Vercel seem to agree with.

Prototyping design explorations that are easier to do outside of Figma—for example, animations, keyboard controls, and touch are better implemented in code to save the time and effort of reimplementing them from a different medium to the web.

(Emphasis mine). I tend to move from static mock-ups of interfaces to production code in the browser as quickly as possible - an approach that serves us well and enables us to deliver value faster.

The post on the Vercel blog is one of the most detailed and clear explanations of Design Engineering I’ve seen and well worth a read.

The Case for Design Engineers, Pt. III - Jim Nielsen

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Not only do I identify with this series of posts by Jim, but the latest one reflects the hot potato process of designing / making that I’ve used on a project this week.

I’ve been working on a new ecommerce site design (which I’m building at the same time). I created a static mock to explore the styling of product cards, but when I started building the HTML & CSS, I found there were improvements that could be made to the layout and spacing in the production medium compared to my static design. I made those changes, and those in turn will be rolled back into future static mocks. Design is an iterative, non-linear process. As Jim points out:

But the creative process is not an assembly line. Complications and in-process revisions are something to be embraced, not feared, because they are an inherent part of making.

Jim Nielsen, The Case For Design Engineers, Pt. III

In my opinion, the iterative approach to design applies to any size and scope of site - whether it’s a simple landing page, or a full blown web application. If you lock yourself in to a production line methodology, where a design is signed off and can’t be changed during production, you’re not going to be able to adapt when you find opportunities during the production.

Conversely, you can see the incredible risk of narrowly-defined roles in the creation process. If what was planned on paper doesn’t work in reality, you’re stuck. Or if a new, unforeseen meaning arises, you can’t take advantage of it because you’re locked in to an assembly line process which cannot be halted or improvised.

Jim Nielsen, The Case For Design Engineers, Pt. III

Week Links #3

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Links I found interesting or useful this week.

I’ve been catching up on my feed reader, which is why a couple of these are from Jim Nielsen’s blog. Jim always writes interesting takes of things where design and code overlap.

More Files Please

Here Jim is referencing an article by Scott Jenson, which is worth a read too, which discusses the importance of files to an AI driven future. Jim’s post doesn’t go too much into that, instead focusing on files as a medium of exchange and ownership, almost like currency, which I found interesting. Like Jim, I’m a files guy too - I appreciate the value of a file as a container for information, one that I own. And like Jim says:

Do we want to trust our data to the success or failure of a single company?

John Romero doesn’t believe in prototypes

This one from Dave Rupert happens to be about two subjects I love; gaming and prototyping. I want to revisit the links in this post later to learn more about the history and context.

I have to admit though, a quote like this does ring true with me on a few levels:

No prototypes. Just make the game. Polish as you go. Don’t depend on polish happening later.

To reconcile the fact that I think prototyping is crucial, and the fact that I kinda agree with John Romero there, depends on how you define prototyping. If your idea of prototyping is to create something that ultimately does not become the end product, then yes, I can see why someone would not value prototyping. But, if like me, you believe that prototypes should ideally be real working software that you could ship, it makes sense.

This is how I’ve been approaching projects in recent years. I’m prototyping by building the real thing. It might be a crappy version at the beginning, but it gets worked on iteratively, and gets tested for real in the medium it’s intended for. There’s a lot of value in working that way, especially in fast moving teams.

The Case For Design Engineers, Pt.II

The term “Design Engineer” is something I’ve heard on occasion and thought, well yeah, why wouldn’t you work in the medium you’re designing for? Jim’s put together a fantastic explanation of why it’s not only a specialist role, but crucial in the development of digital products.

You need someone who can do design work with code.

It’s a term I identify with and I see a lot of myself and how I work in Jim’s article. I am a Design Engineer. I’m not sure if it’s a commonly used enough term to start using it all the time - most people are more familiar with Web Designer, but I like that it communicates the essence of the role.

Pixels of an interface from a GUI tool are a static representations of a dynamic form. It’s the difference between a picture of me and the living, breathing, moving me.

Design engineers don’t just push pixels around in a GUI tool, they do it in a web browser — the medium of delivery — designing not just the visuals but the interactions that make sense for a living, breathing, moving interface.

That right there is the key takeaway. Doing a ”pixel perfect” visual design of an interface is still just a static picture of a dynamic medium. The experience that a user will have isn’t a snapshot in time, something flat and unmoving; it’s alive and dynamic. Being able to create that, in the browser is design work.

Boost, the Frontend Masters blog posted an article commenting on this with a few additional links, which are might be worth a read too.

Week Links #2

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Links I found interesting this week… maybe you will too…

Links Worth Sharing

[[Week Links #1|Last week]], I was remiss in not sharing this link, since it’s the one that prompted me to actually start sharing links! I mentioned a few others that I follow who do this too, but it was reading this post by Matthias that inspired me to do this. It’s a great read!

Modern Font Stacks

A really useful and cool resource for choosing modern system font stacks. Stacks are organised by style and it highlights the fonts that are in use, available and not in your current browser.

Web Sustainability with Michelle Barker

This week’s episode of the Shop Talk Show podcast was great. Michelle’s someone I’ve followed for a while on her blog, CSS-IRL. They discuss some interesting topics on the show, like paying to support bloggers and the environmental impact of web design.

You don’t have to be a “content creator” to have a website.

Ana’s post is a good reminder that a personal website can be as simple as a single page with information on how to contact you.

In recent years, people have felt the pressure to monetise their hobbies, so there’s a constant state of hustle.

Ana Rodrigues

This “hustle culture” pressure is one of the reasons I didn’t have my own website for a number of years. I had analysis paralysis trying to decide what my “content machine” should be to bring me opportunities, so I never did anything with it. Letting go of that is much more fun and no pressure.

Piccalilli Links

Not the first time I’ve read this post by Andy, but re-read this week while thinking about the format I want to share links in. I do like it when a single post is about a single link, but that would slightly add to the upkeep for me I imagine… the nice thing about doing this on my own site is that I can change the format later to suit me at the time.

Tailwind marketing and misinformation engine

I don’t really have anything against Tailwind, but having tried it, it’s not really for me (in most cases anyway). There are things I liked about using it, and I can see the usefulness for rapidly prototyping or building a one-off interface, but it can feel like an unnecessary abstraction, and I normally prefer to keep tooling to what’s absolutely necessary to avoid headaches later.

Andy bell, who’s a Tailwind critic, has previously written about that when used appropriately, Tailwind can be a really useful tool – the idea is to just not use it for everything. I can see me using Tailwind for prototyping or one-offs, but for anything other than that, particularly long-term projects, I prefer sticking with CSS – where the best practices do work and is infinitely scalable… 😉

ECSS – an interesting CSS methodology

Another one surfaced by Andy Bell, an interesting CSS methodology. I haven’t had time to delve fully into the docs yet but I’m definitely going to. There’s some refreshing, eye-catching ideas straight off the bat, like this one:

CSS Selectors are vehicles for intention

This aligns very much so with my approach to design tokens, so I feel like some of this methodology might translate into my work well.

Building on that idea of semantic naming, Andy highlights a particular quote that also aligns with my mental model on design tokens.

“thumbnail as-circle with-border” is instantly understandable while “h-10 w-10 bdr-50 br-1 overh” is not. Code should communicate information. The clearer the information, the easier it is to understand the system. Mistaken semantics should give way to expressiveness. Expressive best practices work.

Again, not bashing Tailwind, but it’s difficult to argue against the idea that “code should communicate information”.

Week Links #1

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Inspired by the likes of Andy Bell, Dave Rupert, and Stéphanie Walter, I figured I’d start sharing links to useful, interesting and inspiring things that I’ve read / watched / listened to / seen in a particular week.

And yes, I’m ripping off Dave’s name for this because I thought it was ingeniously funny and made me think of Anne Robinson’s “The Weakest Link” 😉

It’s OK to abandon your side-project. (Post)
Where I’m at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing (Post)
Is Making Websites Hard, Or Do We Make It Hard? Or Is It Some of Both? (Post)
Let the Text Be the Star of the Show (Post)
What is Utility-First CSS? (Post)
The Stories We Tell Ourselves (Podcast)
Dead Simple Sites (Inspiration)
Graphika Manila (Inspiration)

Thoughts on a Global Design System

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, Brad Frost published a post on the idea of a global design system. It clearly captured some hearts and minds, sparking conversations and blog posts in reply.

I love the idea of a global design system. It was only a few months ago that I was thinking along the same lines. With that being said, I think there are many challenges to it and I’m not sure if it’s ultimately unachievable. Chris Coyier’s post on this highlights a lot of valid points that I agree with and won’t repeat here (he puts it very eloquently himself).

My primary thought on this is that getting a majority of web professionals globally to agree on how the system and components should be structured would likely be impossible. It’s difficult enough getting consensus within a single organisation!

We all want to make our own mark on our work and the World. We all have our own opinions and preferences on how to build for the web. Just look at the amount of libraries, frameworks, methodologies and technologies in use! In trying to achieve adoption of a system at global scale, do you make it too generic in an attempt to appease the masses? And in trying to appeal to everyone, do you ultimately end up not being right for anyone?

You could look at the HTML, CSS and JavaScript specs as a global design system. Maybe that’s enough? It’s the base layer that all other systems are built on now. And it’s the open source frameworks and tools built on those standards that people rally around already. Maybe we just need a few more native HTML elements and to use the platform?

I don’t want to come across as being a naysayer on this. The idea makes a lot of sense and would be great for accessibility and productivity, I just can’t picture how it could come together right now.

But I guess that’s the point of Brad’s rallying call. To get us all thinking and talking about it. To figure out collectively what this thing could be. It’s certainly interesting to ponder…

2023 Year in Review

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

For me, 2023 was probably one of the hardest and best I’ve ever been through, and happily, it ended well with me in a pretty good place to start 2024.

Achievements

I’ve lost somewhere in the region of 5-10kg in weight this year, I’m in the best physical shape I’ve been in years and I generally feel good
I was instrumental in relaunching the web shop at work under a new brand
I’ve created, implemented and continually improved a design system at work, enabling the rapid creation of several apps with more to come

Challenges

My mental health took a beating this year - and having seen a couple of posts from others, it seems a common theme. Looking back though, I’ve had issues with anxiety all my life, but between work stress, parenting challenges and a backdrop of wars and climate disasters, I reached breaking point half way through the year. The anxiety led to some pretty unpleasant physical symptoms, like retinal migraines and put a massive strain on relationships, both professional and personal.

I’m happy to say that at reaching my lowest point, I began to understand and deal with these issues and got myself to a really good place in the latter half of the year. That’s not to say I don’t still experience anxiety or stress, but I’m better equipped to deal with it and it doesn’t take over anymore.

2023 Goals

This year, I set myself too many, very specific goals to be realistically achievable. That doesn’t really help with motivation or anxiety levels! For 2024, the list will be shorter, a bit broader in terms of what success looks like and more achievable so that I can focus on the mental and physical health of me and my family.

2023 Highlights

There was a lot of good stuff during 2023.

Two brilliant family holidays in the UK, making great memories with the kids
Some wonderful weekends away with my wife soaking up some culture and enjoying great food and drink
My birthday gift to myself this year was an art workshop which my wife and I attended together, it was a lot of fun being able to focus on being creative without the distractions of kids and home life!
My wife and I went to see Busted live in concert, supported by Hanson, which was really fun
We enjoyed a fantastic family Christmas which has been a good break and a great end to the year - my wife’s gift to the family was a Nintendo Switch, so we’ve spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart with the kids over the last week

Books

Sustainable Web Design (read)
The Ethical Design Handbook (read)
World Wide Waste (read)
Laying the Foundations (re-read)
Design That Scales (currently reading)
Understanding Privacy (started)
PHP & MySQL (started – I’ve read all the sections on the PHP language and am on the MySQL sections and project, but I’m probably not going to read all that, instead using the book as a reference going forward)
Wonders of the Solar System (not started)
Wonders of the Universe (not started)

Gaming

At the start of the year, I was fortunate enough to be able to treat myself to a PS5, so I could enjoy the PlayStation exclusives. The tipping point of the decision to buy was that the Silent Hill 2 remake was supposed to be released this year, but that didn’t happen in the end. Even so, I don’t regret the decision at all; I’ve really enjoyed playing PlayStation games like Spider-Man and The Last of Us Part II.

For Christmas this year, my wife bought a surprise gift for the family – a Nintendo Switch. It’s been really nice the last few days getting to play Mario Kart with the kids and gaming as a family. I’ve been looking forward to having that shared experience for a few years and this year it finally happened.

My favourite game of the year was Alan Wake 2 (39 hours played so far, making it my third most played game of 2023 on Xbox – and it was only released at the end of October!). I love Remedy games and the original Alan Wake, so I’ve been waiting 13 years for a sequel and it didn’t disappoint. The game was amazing in every way!

Gaming Stats

Xbox: 233 hrs
PS: 88 hrs
Nintendo: 13 hrs
Total Gaming Time: 334 hrs

Games Played in 2023

Alan Wake 2
Astro’s Playroom
Batman Return to Arkham: Arkham City
BroForce
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022)
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
Control Ultimate Edition
Cuphead
Dead Space Remake
God of War (PS4)
Goldeneye 007 (2023)
Hi-Fi Rush
Horizon Zero Dawn
Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Resident Evil 4 HD
Resident Evil Village
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
Star Wars: Podracer (2022)
Starfield
Super Mario Wonder
The Last of Us Part II
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition
TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

A few weeks ago, I built version one of a side project site to showcase my game collection and stats using Astro. It’s a pretty good start, but didn’t really scratch my programming itch. So I’ve started working on a new version using Laravel, which I hope to launch soon.

2024 Goals

Im keeping things simple and achievable for 2024.

Focus on the well-being and health of my family and myself
Do more personal creative projects
Write more

This year I started improving my physical fitness through yoga, HIIT and strength training with Apple Fitness+. Aside from losing weight and being in the best physical shape I’ve been in years, it’s also done wonders for my mental health. I’ve built a decent foundation in the last few months, and I intend to continue building on it in 2024.

On the theme of well-being, doing more personal creative projects has been a good support for my mental health. So, more art projects and coding projects with no pressure is the aim for the coming year.

I haven’t posted on my blog here for about half a year. I want to change that in 2024. Writing is also a good creative outlet and helps to solidify my thinking. I’m not setting any specific goals for posting, but if I get to the end of 2024 and have been posting fairly regularly, I’ll consider it a win.

Wrap Up

This year was really tough, but it ended on a high note, with my mental and physical well-being in a really good place to start 2024. The main lesson I learned this year was that a bad day does not equal a bad life. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the crap that we all have to deal with and miss the wonderful parts of life. I’m grateful that I’ve gotten back to a point where I can truly appreciate the great parts of life again.

Useful applications for AI right now that I’ve heard of

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

For the purposes of this, “AI” generally refers to LLMs / ChatGPT.

Moderating form submissions - WSForms apparently integrates with an OpenAI endpoint for content moderation and can reject submissions that contain harmful content (imagine if social networks employed this!)
Knowledge base chatbots - Seth Godin and Laracasts now have chatbots trained on their own content that can respond to questions. The Seth Godin one displays relevant articles from the site while it summarises a response and retains the reference links afterwards
Training an LLM on your digital journal so you can ask it questions - imagine if your children or grandchildren could ask your journal a question to know you or the events of your life better… what would be the optimal way of writing journal entries be to paint a true picture of yourself?
Transcribing fictional conversations between historic or figures of note - suggested by Matt Mullenweg in an interview I watched. He suggested you could take AI trained on several individual’s bodies of work, their blogs for example, and then prompt an AI to script out the conversation between those people if they were asked a question on a specific topic. It could then answer almost as an avatar for each individual based on their own writing

What I’d really like to see is the major social networks making use of AI to seriously tackle moderation and disinformation.

AI tools will be able at scale to filter hate speech, harmful images and propaganda content in a way that human moderators can’t. I think ideally you’d use the AI tools to ring fence things it flags as potentially harmful immediately so that it can’t be seen by anyone else. Your options as the poster would be to either delete said content or appeal the AI decision which would then flag it up for human moderation. This kind of thing is never simple so I imagine I’m missing a few things here, but this could be a start.

AI Should Be Doing The Boring Stuff

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Andy’s got a point here. There’s been something nagging at me about all the AI stuff coming around at the moment. I don’t think I’d quite articulated it in my own head, but it’s this.

As cool and interesting the things being created with AI right now are, why would we want to give all the fun stuff that makes us human to the AI to do?!

I want to create my own images, write my own articles, write my own code… these are creative expressions that are part of the human experience. I’m not saying that they can’t be a helpful in some ways, like giving you a creative start point, or making suggestions to improve what you’re working on, but surely we still want to feel some creative ownership over things?

And like Andy says:

If they came forward with “you’ll never have to process an expense again” or “our ‘AI’ will manage your inbox for you”, I’d sign right up for that shit.

Andy Bell

The other thing that’s bugging me about all the hype around these things at the moment is the sustainability aspect of it. Think about all the useless crap that’s being generated using these AI tools. Now think about the energy that’s using, the data centres, the hardware, the water for cooling, the CO2… just so people can generate funny images that they’ll never look at again but will be stored forever.

Obviously I don’t think we shouldn’t try new technologies. That would be ridiculous. These things have tremendous potential to benefit humanity and the Planet. But like everything else, we humans have difficulties with self control and generating waste.

This post was brought to you by my own hand, not AI 😜

Buying Software Does Not Make Up For Lack of Strategy

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I just read a great post by Paul Boag - one of his signature rants that I enjoy so much 😁

In it, he discusses how, quite often, purchasing new software can be seen as a magic bullet by business leaders that will somehow fix all issues they face without the effort of creating a strategy.

Of course, this is bullshit. As Paul rightly points out:

The truth is, no amount of off-the-shelf software can make up for a lack of effort or a lack of strategy.

Paul Boag, The Hard Truth: Software Cannot Replace Effort or Strategy

In my experience, it can be worse in certain disciplines or departments. Marketing tends to be a common offender in this respect. There’s so much marketing automation software out there that promises to do the job for you while giving you a ton of privacy disrespecting data on your visitors - that you’ll never actually use but it makes you look good to discuss the data you don’t understand in front of the business leaders…

So we end up with a lot of software, with a lot of data that no one who bought it understands, costing the business a lot of money to run, that doesn’t actually improve the bottom line for the business or understanding of your users. But hey, it does mean that people can pat themselves on the back about the new “solution” they implemented!

I should say at this point that I’m lucky enough to work in a team that understands that buying software is not a substitute for strategy or planning - because we design and build software for the business and customers. I have worked with plenty of teams in the past that are guilty of this and have seen it first hand many times.

Bottom line, the software is a tool, not the strategy.

UX vs DX

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I just finished reading this article on developer experience (DX) and how it usually comes at the expense of user experience. It articulates the exhaustion that many of us have felt in the last few years of having to constantly re-learn the fundamentals of the tools we use.

This is pretty much the reason that I’ve gravitated back towards PHP, WordPress and, of course, web fundamentals. Each of these things prioritises the end user experience over the developer experience… but here’s the thing; the developer experience with these tools is actually really enjoyable anyway!

It’s not that I don’t like some of the JS frameworks, I just got sick of constantly having to re-learn them when they have their yearly change. I’d rather put that energy into creating more value for users.

The cynic in me would say that the constant focus of JS frameworks on reinventing themselves every year is partially to fuel the learning industry that pops up around it – creating celebrity developers that make money from teaching you how to use said tech and by extension end up marketing it too…

These days I find more joy in using less tools and I find the results are usually better.

Where I’m At With Climate Change

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I came across this this article by Dave Rupert today about his feelings on climate change. Ironically it’s from about the time last year where I started to feel really stressed and powerless about climate change and it sums up pretty well how I was and am feeling about it.

I went into a panic trying to learn things I could do to help the situation on a personal level. And although I will keep trying to do my part, I agree that we desperately need government and corporate led change on a massive scale to beat this thing.

Lately I’ve been pondering how I could make some impact on sustainability through my work. I’ve got some ideas for how I could contribute to bigger things, but for the most part I’m trying to be more considerate and keep sustainability in mind through day-to-day design decisions.

Learning To Seek Joy and Taking Time

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I just read an article by Jack McDade that got me thinking about finding joy in what you do / are, ignoring FOMO and not giving up on things too soon if you don’t see results quickly. This is something I’ve been pondering more over the last year or so, and I think I’ve made some progress with it – and equally have a long way to go.

On a side note, I love that Jack’s posts almost always make their point through storytelling. I hope to be able to write that effectively one day.

The world we live in is built on pushing the next big, shiny thing that will make your life better in some way… that’s out of date in 6 months time, replaced by something “even better” that makes the other thing you just learnt to use / bought pointless… there a whole industries built on this premise.

I’ve found that when I do slow down and appreciate what I’m doing, or doing something in a simpler way, it’s much more fulfilling than chasing the hype train of new technologies / tools / processes / items. And what’s more, the results are often as good or even better than what would have been created using the “next big thing”.

Jack reminds us that “Things take time” in his post and really gets you thinking about this with a few questions like this one:

What would it look like if you decided to give your product/project/channel/blog/newsletter a full year of attention and planning before you made any judgments about its success? What about 3 years? 5?

Jack McDade

Its kind of why I started posting on my own site more last year. Rather than waiting until I had time to research and write a 2000 word, search engine optimised essay, I decided to just start writing about things that interest me. They don’t have to be long (like this post), I just have to prioritise putting my thoughts down and hitting publish. The rest will figure itself out over time.

Reeder App is Bloody Marvellous

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Over the last year or so, I’ve been using social media far less. I haven’t used Facebook for several years since it became a complete dumpster fire. Sadly, under Elon’s leadership, Twitter has gone much the same way.

There was a bit of a hole left by a complete lack of social media, but thankfully it led me to (re)discover RSS feeds. Luckily a lot of the people I followed on Twitter had similar thoughts and started publishing on their own blogs again in the backlash against Twitter, so I can get a much more interesting and healthy content feed.

I use Reeder for subscribing to RSS feeds and it’s brilliant. Recent updates enable you to subscribe to Mastadon feeds, so I can also keep up with interesting people’s social posts on my own terms too.

It syncs via iCloud between all my devices, enables me to subscribe to feeds across various services aside from blogs, and has organisation tools like folders and tags.

Planning My Own Website

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I want to redesign this site and take the opportunity to get to know WordPress block theme development a bit better. The tools are in a really good place right now so it seems like a good time to do it.

So I cracked open Affinity Designer to start exploring typography and colour styles with a loose idea of what I wanted. I got about a hour into it before realising why I wasn’t happy with anything I’d put together… I’d skipped all the planning! Strange how you sometimes skip vital steps in the process when it’s for yourself!

So I took a step back and thought about what I want from this site. Originally I thought that this would be my personal blog and I would spin up another site on a different domain with a more professional focus. But with hindsight I don’t really want the overhead of managing two sites for myself, let alone trying to write content for two sites.

I’m not really on social media anymore, having given up on the Facebook cesspool years ago, I recently stopped going on Twitter as well following Elon Musk’s takeover and subsequent shit storm.

With these things in mind, I want somewhere I can publish professional articles about web things as well as personal updates like the sort of stuff I would have posted on social media if I still used any. I’ve partially been inspired by indie web ideals and concepts like OpenPress.

With those goals defined, I started planning out site architecture and content structure in MindNode (one of my favourite apps for planning). It was pretty simple to figure out once I decided on my goals for this site.

I decided to make the most of the WordPress taxonomy system as much as possible, because it’s the simplest way to organise content. I want all of my posts to be available on the /blog/ route, regardless of type.

Then I’m using categories to group posts based on their type.

Updates are shorter posts that could be about anything. These would be similar to something I might post on social media. They could be short or longer and be about anything I’m interested in.
Articles will be longer form content with a professional focus. So they will mostly be about the web, design & development.
Reflections was inspired by Dan Mall’s homepage. He updates his homepage each month with a “letter” reflecting on what the current month will bring. I really like this idea and can replicate it fairly easily by writing it as a post in its own category that can be queried and displayed within page templates.
Featured will be used just for Articles to give me a way to pull out the best ones and display them together.

By using categories like this, I can query the content types easily within a page template. So say I wanted to display the full content of the latest Reflection post and a grid of Featured Articles on the homepage; that’s two query loops with different criteria that can be styled individually.

I may also style the category archive page for Updates as a social media-type feed. Maybe something like Adam Argyle’s site which is styled as a social feed.

Tags will be used to group content across categories by topic. With this structure in place it should hopefully make it easy for any visitors I might get to discover content they’re interested in.

Aside from the posts content, there are a handful of content pages that I’d like to include, like a /uses/ page, which has become popular to include on web professionals’ websites in recent years.

I am going to make a slight change to post URLs. At the time of writing, my permalink settings don’t prefix post URLs with a route. So they’re alancharlesworth.me/{post-slug}. I do like this as it results in a shorter URL, but it also grates on me a little because it’s not very RESTful.

In my mind, URLs should also group like content together (in a RESTful way). So going forward I’m going to change post URLs to live under the /blog/ route, e.g. alancharlesworth.me/blog/{post-slug}. This has the added benefit that if I ever want to rebuild this site using a different platform or framework, all my posts are grouped by URL already and I won’t have to handle as many redirects.

Having gone through this process, I’ve had more ideas about what I want my site design to be because I know what kind of content I want to publish. I also really geek out over site architectures, even simple ones, so this post has kind of been a big mind dump geek session on some of my thought process while planning out my redesign.

I had to go through all of this to really figure out what I want from my own site. I’m pretty excited by the possibilities, now I just need to make it happen!

Algorithmic Music Playlists

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve always avoided playlists like Apple Music’s “my” station. I’d tried it years ago but found them to not be to my taste, playing songs that were ok but not really what I wanted.

Then last weekend, due to Alexa mishearing my wife’s instruction, we ended up listening to my Apple Music station without realising it. And it was absolutely bloody brilliant! A fantastic mix of songs from many genres I enjoy. There were some real blasts from the past in there too!

For the last few months (or maybe even year!), I’ve found myself wanting to listen to music while I work but not really being bothered to think about what I wanted to listen to. So I would just end up listening to the same albums or playlists over and over.

But since last weekend, I’ve been sticking “my” station on in Apple Music and it’s been fantastic.

I guess the point is that this is a reminder that algorithms aren’t inherently bad. Yes, Apple is selling me a service, but it’s a service I find value in rather than algorithmic advertising or doom scrolling social media crap.

It’s been really nice this week to not have to decide what to listen to, but to still have great music on that’s tailored to me.

2022 Year in Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve not had my own website for quite a number of years prior to 2022; primarily down to analysis paralysis – I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with my own site before. Therefore, I’ve never written a year in review post and this is my first stab at one so I’ve decided to keep it simple and relatively short.

This year has been a challenging one in a lot of ways, but there’s also been a lot of great things for me in 2022. So without further ado, here is the good, the bad and my look ahead to next year.

The Good

Some of the standout points (but certainly not an exhaustive list):

We’ve some some wonderful (and challenging) times with the kids this year, and they continue to amaze me with the wonderful little people they are and are becoming
I began drawing again for the first time in nearly 15 years; there’s still a long way to go and I need to be more consistent with the practice but I’ve been pleased with my progress
I launched my own website for the first time in years, and while I didn’t work on it as much as I would have liked, it’s a good start
I achieved some significant milestones in my previous, e-commerce focused role that I am professionally proud of
I started a new role (at the same company) that is more fulfilling, aligns with my career goals and pays better
I have been working on a new design system, learning a new programming language in the process which has enabled me to use my design and development skillset in a much more fulfilling manner
I let go of chasing the “new shiny tech” feeling in web development and reassessed where I would focus my efforts; JavaScript land tends to change their mind on what the best way to build something is every five minutes which just adds to burnout!

The Bad

We lost my father in-law this year, which aside from mourning that loss, brought additional challenges, responsibilities and burdens to our family
I’ve struggled with burnout and mental health somewhat this year; personal, global and climate emergency stress has all contributed to this
We (my wife and I) have not prioritised our own mental and physical health

Looking Ahead To 2023

The key thing for 2023 is balance.

My main aim for next year is to achieve better balance in my personal life. I want to spend more quality time with my family. Right now, I’m so exhausted by the time I reach the weekend that I’m not giving my kids my best attention. This is just wrong and I feel like I’m missing out on more of their formative years than I would like.

My wife and I have tended to put the needs of others ahead of our own in a lot of situations which has contributed to me experiencing burnout, stress and exhaustion for most of this year. My mental and physical health needs to be more of a priority. I’m not saying that this should come at the expense of helping other important people in my life, but I won’t be any good to anyone if I don’t start taking better care of myself. Again, balance.

There’s a lot of other things I hope to achieve or do next year, personally and professionally, but a lot of them are in service of me achieving better balance in my family life and with myself so I don’t feel the need to write about them here – in the interest of not making this post too long. Do I have a plan on how I’m going to achieve this new, better balance? No.

I’ll just keep trying my best, keep my aims in the front of my mind and go from there.

Games I Played in 2022

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Gaming has been a big part of my life since I was a kid. I’ve got a side project planned for next year based on my games library, stats and what I’m playing, but as that’s a little way off, I thought I’d do a short post to list the games I played this year.

Currently Playing

Other Games Played In 2022

Games I’m Looking Forward To In 2023

Edit: Whoops, I forgot to add the game I’m most looking forward to in 2023 to this list. Alan Wake 2 doesn’t have a release date yet so it slipped my mind!

Alan Wake 2
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Resident Evil 4 (2023)
Starfield
Silent Hill 2 Remake (even though I won’t be able to play it at launch thanks to exclusivity deals with PlayStation!)

My New Side Project

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I tend to be an obsessive learner. I love to learn new things and have a long list of them to get through. However, where I tend to struggle is actually using that new knowledge in anything real. There’s a finite amount of things that I’ll need to use in my day job, so the rest of it sits in my brain taking up space, leaving me with frustration about the fact that I learned it because I wanted to use it!

On the flip-side of that is the fact that coming up with a project idea that I actually care about doing is pretty tough. After all, free time when you have a young family isn’t exactly in abundance, so if I’m going to use that time for something tech based, it needs to be something I actually give a toss about.

I recently saw a feature on Dan Hannigan’s website that sparked an idea for a side project that’s piqued my interest. On his homepage, he shows the games that he’s played this year, with flags for what he’s currently playing. At first, I thought it would be fun to add something similar to this site, sharing and recording what games I’ve played in this year and what I’m playing right now.

The original plan was to maybe create it as a custom post type in WordPress for games, with taxonomies for years, and currently playing. I could then query that data or create archive pages and be done with it. There would be a link to the IGDB page for the game, just as Dan has done on his site, as a custom field and the feature image would be the cover.

That would have been fine and would achieve the fun little thing that I wanted to put on my website. But then I started thinking of other fun (to me at least!) pieces of information that I’d like to include, like have I completed the game, how long have I spent playing it, how many achievements unlocked, what platforms and formats do I own it on.

And then I thought about the in-game captures. With some games, I’ve generated a lot of images and videos that I never do anything with, that I thought would be fun to share.

All of this is a very long way of saying that what started as a simple idea of something fun to share on my site, has become an idea for a bigger side project where I’ll get to actually use a lot of the things that I’ve learned and still want to learn.

Right now it’s in the planning stage, but what I’m aiming to build is an online library of my games catalogue to share all the games I own / have owned / have played and a bunch of related stats and captures.

The plan is to build this using a custom database (as I want to learn mysql), using Laravel as the app framework. So I’ll get to learn and practice relational databases, PHP and Laravel with authentication and custom admin pages for adding data.

I haven’t put too much thought yet into what the front-end will look like or the exact features of it, but I’d like it to be accessible, use modern CSS techniques, and be a fun, games inspired design. There’ll be a few interactive features for searching and filtering and maybe a few other things.

The actual design and UI requirements will evolve later. For right now, I’m concentrating on the underlying architecture of the database and app. I’ve been using Mindnode to map out my database tables structure.

This post is mainly a mind dump of the outline that I’ve been carrying around in my head for this project. It gives me something to refer back to and see if the project ends up going in a different direction later on.

It’s nerdy, but I’m excited about having something like this to get my teeth into. It also combines a bunch of my interests in single outlet.

The Component Gallery

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I recently came across a really useful reference site for components. The Component Gallery catalogues components from real design systems with links to the live examples.

According to the creator of the site, he was trying to solve two problems with the project; to avoid reinventing the wheel with components, and because naming things is hard!

Be the browser’s mentor, not its micromanager – Andy Bell

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

This was a great talk at the All Day Hey conference by CSS guru, Andy Bell.

I’ve been looking at a lot of Andy’s stuff on approaches to CSS over the last year or so and it’s really changed how I approach web design. Working with the platform for truly fluid layouts makes a lot more sense than trying to target screen sizes when there are literally thousands!

Space, the final frontier…

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

The images of deep space and distant galaxies captured by the Webb Space Telescope have been wowing people all over the World this week, including me!

Admittedly I hadn’t even heard of the telescope until these images were released, but they’re gorgeous.

It really got me thinking about how I used to watch Star Trek as a kid, and how hopeful it made me for the future. It was a vision of a future where we’d come together and solved most of the problems facing our species together. We looked up and it sparked our imaginations.

It seems like the better our technology gets, the more we go backwards as a species, the further away from those ideals and dreams that Star Trek inspired we get.

I blame Facebook for a lot of it. There have been others obviously, but that’s where it started. That’s when we started looking down at the shiny black mirrors in our hands rather than up to the stars. Where people started being swayed against their own best interests and fascists got a platform that legitimised them.

This last few years, it’s been difficult to keep the faith that the World will swing back away from the fascist path it seems to be on. Seeing the images from the Webb Telescope has reminded me of that hope I had as a kid. Hopefully, there are brighter times not too far around the corner.

Design Token Resources

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been delving deep into design token architecture recently and have found some great articles that I wanted to bookmark here for future reference. As I find more, I’ll keep adding to this post.

The guys at SuperFriendly have put together a very thorough list of design token links that I’m still working my way through, but here are a couple of the highlights:

InVision’s guide to design tokens, as referenced in SuperFriendly’s list, has a useful section on naming design tokens using the category / type / item convention. This is a very scalable way to create a hierarchical naming system for tokens – and, as we all know, naming things is hard! This is the way I’m naming and organising my tokens at the moment.
Adobe’s Spectrum design system organises their tokens into three main groups – Global, Alias and Component. This mental model works very well for me.

I recently bookmarked a UX Collective article that I found via Brad Frost’s website on naming design tokens. It was a very helpful read and outlines a good framework for hierarchically naming your tokens. In particular, the notes on scales and categorisation are useful.

There’s another alternative take on naming and categorising design tokens, that I found again via Brad Frost, which groups them into two camps – options and decisions (or global and alias). This is an interesting mental model, but I mostly agree with Brad’s take, and what I’ve been discussing here, that there should be a third level for component-specific tokens.

Naming Design Tokens – UX Collective

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I came across this very thorough and practical guide to naming design tokens within a design system, by UX Collective, thanks to a post on Brad Frost’s blog.

A lot of this fits with my mental model and how I structure token names in design systems, but has a lot of great ideas that I can use to build on and improve what I’m already doing.

The World Has Changed

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMT

My intention to write regular posts went awry very quickly after I first recreated this site.

With the shocking invasion of Ukraine, it didn’t seem right to carry on as normal with posting online, regardless of the channel. I’ve watched with the rest of the World in horror at the atrocities happening and I’m still processing it all.

I don’t mean to imply that how I feel about all this is in any way important in comparison to what the people of Ukraine are going through. I’m angry, shocked and deeply saddened by what I’ve seen. I never considered that I would see war in Europe in my lifetime.

In the recent weeks, I’ve begun to draw again. Something I’ve not really done since I was at school, but something I’ve always wanted to get back into. I’ve been using it partially as a way to switch off from everything going on in the World right now.

I’ll try to get back on track soon with my intention to post regularly now that I’ve adjusted to the new reality.

Hello World

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I think it’s quite fitting as a web designer and developer that my first post on this site keeps the title “Hello world!”; the synonymous first message that every developer outputs when starting out for those of you don’t know (and also the default post title that comes when starting a new WordPress project).

I’ve never been one for blogging, and although I create websites for others, I haven’t had my own web presence in quite some time. To remedy that, I’ve put aside the need for things to be “perfect” or the “what tech stack should I use” question, which often lead to procrastination, and have instead decided to put this site out into the world quickly.

It’s not a bad start. I’ve chosen WordPress as the platform, as it’s one of the best content management systems out there and the main intention of this site is to get me writing more often. WordPress is the obvious choice for that.

It’s also given me a chance to really try out the new Full Site Editing capabilities that have come about in the recent release of 5.9. This site is designed in the Site Editor, using only the base Twenty-Twenty Two theme, and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s enabled me to be able to put out a good looking website in practically no time and it suits my goals for this perfectly.

This is my personal website, where I will write about the things that interest me and try out things that might not work in the context of professionally focused site. It’s mainly for myself, but if anyone else finds anything of use here that’s great 🙂

Let’s see if I stick to writing as regularly as I would like to!