@media 2008

Thursday and Friday last week was @media 2008, held at Southbank Centre. The venue was certainly one of the better choices for the event, especially due to its proximity to Waterloo Station.

I've attended all of the @media conferences and have enjoyed them all. I was a little concerned this year as the schedule seemed to remain quite gappy close to the event date, but I needn't have been concerned as I didn't feel short-changed. Although I didn't come away with any major revelations, I did enjoyed it and felt, as ever, it raised debate and refreshed inspiration!

SO common themes that seemed to emerge for me this year:

• Making use of established APIs to enhance data and save on development


• The stronger emergence of a role to cover 'front end engineering/development'

Anyway, here's my take on the sessions I attended...

Designing our way through data
Jeffrey Veen
I enjoyed this keynote. Jeffrey Veen, among many other things, worked on Google's Analytics front end and this session focused on the presentation of data. He drew upon examples from history and from other disciplines to show how data can tell stories. He talked about how the graphical interpretation of data can enhance the message by allowing the story to be told at a glance. He also warned against 'chart junk' - using graphical devices that woolly the message and just provide a surface gloss rather than making the data easier to interpret. Examples of creative design included Beck's London Underground map, John Snow's map of cholera outbreaks and the art of Chris Jordan.

For example: BBC Home page + Clear Left
Tom Cartright & Claire Roberts, and James Box
Two case studies here, one describing the development of the BBC home page which had communicated the strong requirement to optimise the site in order to deal with the many requests it receives, and Clear Left's role in the Edenbee website. A couple of interesting points James Box made, was that Clear Left 'don't do deliverables'. They may work with wireframes etc for the development of a site, but they don't present these to the client. He also offered the advice that when approaching social/community websites, design FOR a community, don't try and design A community. The case study also covered the use of API's.

Getting your hands dirty with HTML 5
James Graham & Lachlan Hunt
Some showcasing of some features of HTML 5, including specific tags that would reduce the need for divs with classnames; contextual h1 tags; a legend tag that would allow for captioning of images, objects etc; the opportunity to display video from the browser without the need for plugins.

Underpants over my trousers
Andy Clarke
An interesting session looking at how a comic book communicates a story and how these techniques can be adopted by the web designer. Andy told of how he struggled to make a newspaper site look 'different' and how he used comics as his inspiration for breaking away from the predictable approach. He provided examples of how comic book writers/artists use scale, grids, proportion to create a sense of drama and tension. How they provide non-specific cues to the reader to guide them round a page. He then showed how he used these techniques for his design and how he built the css to realise it. It was also interesting to note that aspects of the design may have been tricky to implement in reality when images and content would be created on the fly. However, its always a trade off building something that appears unique and 'un content-managed', requiring a high degree of control over individual elements, and something that is practical and easy to maintain by non-designers.

Designing user interfaces: details make the difference
Dan Rubin
Dan talked about the level of detail he puts into his designs in order to give them that extra edge. He discussed grids and using increments of units to create spatial relationships (vertical and horizontal padding) to create a harmony/pattern/rhythm to the page. Even if it uses just units of ten, it helps to give the design a sense of consistency and also aids the designer as this enables the designer to make many design decisions up front. He mentioned letter spacing to tighten headings and a very good tip - using a non-breaking space to prevent the occurence of widows. Dan continued with some photoshop tips to give texture and depth to what could otherwise be a flat and 'shiney' medium. Tips included using layer blends, taking sections from photographs and adding noise to create textures, overlaying colour layers to make colour changes quick and easy. He showed how very small changes could be made to improve a site, using an example that took just a couple of hours. I came away with the overall message from him that as designers, we shouldn't submit a design unless we're happy with it, even if it means tinkering with the details until it works just right.

Hot Topics Panel
Jeffrey Veen, Andy Clarke, Dan Rubin, Bronwyn Jones
An interesting debate including topics covering developer/designer working processes and the provision (or lack) of content from clients - am sure there was plenty more but its escaped me for the time being!!