Link tags: clearleft

Midweight Design Engineer | Clearleft

Want to work with me? If so, come and be a design engineer at Clearleft!

What’s a design engineer? A front-end developer at the front of the front end who values accessibility, performance, and progressive enhancement.

We’re looking for a design-friendly front-end developer with demonstrable skills in pattern-based prototyping and production to join our friendly and supportive team in the heart of Brighton.

Even if this isn’t for you, please spread the word …especially to potential candidates who aren’t mediocre middle-aged white dudes (I’ve already got that demographic covered).

Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine

An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:

Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.

Design Engineering - Snook.ca

Here’s a seven-year old post by Snook—this design engineer thing is not new.

Static sites, slack and scrollytelling. | Clearleft

Cassie’s enthusiasm for fun and interesting SVG animation shines through in her writing!

Presentable #96: The Employee-Owned Design Agency - Relay FM

If you want to know more about Clearleft’s new employee-ownserhip model, Andy tells Jeff all about it in this huffduffable hour of audio.

Some Industry Podcasts | CSS-Tricks

Chris has some kind words to say about the Clearleft podcast:

It’s really well-edited, pulling in clips from relevant talks and such. A cut above the hit-record-hit-stop ‘n’ polish podcasts that I typically do.

Uniting the team with Jamstack | Trys Mudford

This is a superb twenty minute presentation by Trys! It’s got everything: a great narrative, technical know-how, and a slick presentation style.

Conference organisers: you should get Trys to speak at your event!

Exploring the future of… Design teams | Clearleft

I’ll be moderating this online panel next week with Emma Boulton, Holly Habstritt Gaal, Jean Laleuf, and Lola Oyelayo-Pearson.

There are still some spots available—it’s free to register. The discussion won’t be made public; the Chatham House Rule applies.

I’m looking forward to it! Come along if you’re interested in the future of design teams.

What will the near-future look like for design teams? Join us as we explore how processes, team structures and culture might change as our industry matures and grows.

Clearleft turns fifteen | Clearleft

Fifteen years ago…

15 years of Clearleft

Ah, look at this beautiful timeline that Cassie designed and built—so many beautiful little touches! It covers the fifteen years(!) of Clearleft so far.

But you can also contribute to it …by looking ahead to the next fifteen years:

Let’s imagine it’s 2035…

How do you hope the practice of design will have changed for the better?

Fill out an online postcard with your hopes for the future.

The Clearleft podcast and the decline of design · Paul Robert Lloyd

Now this is the kind of response I was hoping to stir up with the first season of the Clearleft podcast!

With echos of design’s subjugation reverberating across all six episodes, this first season inadvertently told the story of how my profession has been captured by a desire to serve business interests above all others, while being disarmed by its tendency for introspection and need to be recognised.

Can digital design redeem itself? I hope so. Maybe in the next season of the Clearleft podcast, we’ll find out how.

Recreating Wildlife Photographer of the Year online – part 1 – Introduction and technical approach – Blogs from the Natural History Museum

You’ve seen the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year project from Clearleft’s viewpoint …and you’ve listened to the podcast episode, right?

Now here’s the story from the team that made the website. It’s a great walkthrough of thoughtfully evaluating technologies to figure out the best approach.

Always at Your Service · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

Thoughts on user experience design and service design, prompted by the Clearleft podcast:

I especially enjoyed the latest episode about a topic that has become a bit of a hyped buzzword over the last few years: Service design.

Rich with anecdotes and stories, the episode started with an investigation: What is service design, anyway?

S01E04: Cassie Evans - Behind the Source

This is a lovely little interview with Cassie—it really is an honour and a privilege to work with her!

SofaConf 2020 - a technical write-up | Trys Mudford

Trys describes the backend architecture of the excellent Sofa Conf website. In short, it’s a Jamstack dream: all of the convenience and familiarity of using a database-driven CMS (Craft), combined with all the speed and resilience of using a static site generator (Eleventy).

I love the fact that anyone on the Clearleft events team can push to production with a Slack message.

I also love that the site is Lighthousetastically fast.

Home | SofaConf 2020

You don’t want to miss this! A five-day online conference with a different theme each day:

1. Monday: Product Strategy
2. Tuesday: Research
3. Wednesday: Service Design
4. Thursday: Content Strategy
5. Friday: Interaction Design

Speakers include Amy Hupe, Kelly Goto, Kristina Halvorson, Lou Downe, Leisa Reichelt and many more still to be announce, all for ludicrously cheap ticket prices.

I know it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet because this is a Clearleft event, but I had nothing to do with it. The trumpets of my talented co-workers should be blasting in harmonious chorus.

(It’s a truly lovely website too!)

It’s OK.

This is for everyone at Clearleft, but I’m sharing it here for you too.

Visual Design Inspiration from Agency Websites–And Other Tangential Observations | Jim Nielsen’s Weblog

Tyring to do make screenshots of agency websites is tricky if the website is empty HTML with everything injected via JavaScript.

Granted, agencies are usually the ones pushing the boundaries. “Pop” and “pizazz” are what sell for many of them (i.e. “look what we can do!”) Many of these sites pushed the boundaries of what you can do in the browser, and that’s cool. I like seeing that kind of stuff.

But if you asked me what agency websites inspired both parts me, I’d point to something like Clearleft or Paravel. To me, they strike a great balance of visual design with the craft of building for an accessible, universal web.

Prioritising Requirements | Trys Mudford

Over the past few years, I’ve given quite a few workshops and talks on evaluating technology. This methodical approach to evaluation and prioritisation from Trys is right up my alley!

In any development project, there is a point at which one must decide on the tech stack. For some, that may feel like a foregone conclusion, dictated by team appetite and experience.

Even if the decision seems obvious, it’s always worth sense-checking your thought process. Along with experience and gut-feelings, we also have blind-spots and biases.

I feel like there’s a connection here to having good design principles—the kind that explicitly value one facet over another.

Workshop Countdown Clock

Here’s a nifty little progressive web app that Trys whipped up so that Clearlefties running workshops remotely still get to have their beloved countdown clock.