ScrunchUp

Today, the holding page for scrunchup.com was launched.  Everyone involved in the project has been stunned by the overwhelming response it has had.  An hour after it was published, we’d had 100 subscribers to the mailing list.
So what’s this all about?
It’s not easy for young people starting out in the web design/development industry.  There seems […]

User Generated Quilt

My Graphics lessons at school were combined with Textiles to save money.  During one of the last lessons of the year, I got bored of sitting by myself drawing lightbulb boxes and went to see what the Textiles lot were doing.  They were learning how to make quilts, so for the first time in about […]

Review of CushyCMS

A few days ago, I came upon the CushyCMS website www.cushycms.com
I’ve tried using Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla! and Mambo, and I’m not going to pretend this is better than them all.  It’s not, it just meets a different need.  Whereas CMSs such as Wordpress are great if you want to make a site with a blog, […]

‘Positive Discrimination’

On Thursday, Harriet Harman the Equalities Minister in the UK put forward plans to allow organisations to discriminate in favour of candidates who are female or of ethnic minority.
You can watch her speech here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7475470.stm
As a woman, I would not want to be given a job with the knowledge that the reason I got it […]

Exams!

I will have to be brief because I feel riddled with guilt whenever I spend time doing anything other than revision.
So this is the second week of exams. Last week I did my Module 4 ICT exam, which was… well… the questions were quite reasonable, apart from the one asking me to describe the […]

User Experience on the web, fast food style

In this year’s Future of Web Design conference, Andy Budd gave a fantastic talk comparing User Experience on websites with the hotel industry. He described the need for a good first impression, and the importance of going the extra mile to make the customer feel comfortable and ultimately leave with a good impression.
I worked […]

Revision Woes

It’s tough this time of the year when everyone seems to have gone in hibernation for exams. It feels like the times I am in school, I only see my friends briefly, and I’ve been spending way too much time cooped up at home with a stack of revision notes and a grumpy moulting cat […]

A 7-year-old’s picture of me

There’s a really sweet girl I babysit, and last night, she drew a picture of me. It took her about 15 minutes, and I was so happy with the result that I thought I’d post it up here.

Raiesa’s Secret Garden

Today my friend Raiesa took me to see a little garden she had found. She’d been telling me about it for a while, and I hadn’t had a chance to see it with all the coursework I was working on. Today I met her in the library and we walked along a scenic […]

Highlights of FOWD

Future of web design is a conference hosted by Carsonified. The speakers are all influential designers, specialising in fields such as User Experience and Branding. This year’s event took place from the 16th to the 18th of April.
As much as I’d like to, I’m not going to write a minute-by-minute account of the […]

Why I think the Internet is the best invention

I hope the following doesn’t sound *too* cheesy, but it’s something I feel very passionately about. I think the negativities of the Internet are all too often over publicised, whilst the positives are rarely highlighted. When we look back on past events, the apartheid, gay discrimination, the holocaust… it makes us wonder how […]

I can haz a Mac!

Yesterday, after months and months and months of saving, I finally bought a Mac. I think I’ve been saving for over a year now, so it’s hard to describe how I felt when I was able to take my baby home! Excited mostly, but also a little nervous about making such a financial […]

How Can Technology Improve Literacy Skills?

I spend most of my lunchtime in my school library with my friends. It’s a lovely place to be, warm, cosy and it doesn’t smell bad like the common room. The other day was a bit weird because most of my friends had gone home, all except for my friend Mishka. We were […]

Biscuits!!!

Today I’m going to talk about something vitally important and close to my heart… biscuits! The following is a constructive analysis of my 5 favourite biscuits, weighing out their pros and cons.
Isn’t it obvious that I’m putting off doing something more important?

Lemongrass - Thai Takeaway Design

Had a nice surprise this week. A friend who had asked me to look/play about with a menu she’d made for her dad’s Thai takeaway contacted me to say the logo I’d done for it was being used as their shop sign! I’ve designed so much stuff that’s only seen on computers that when […]

Breaking the Mould - Women in Leadership

A few weeks ago, a group of sixth-formers including myself were asked to sing at a conference in London. We were given few details, (except that 250 headteachers, and Madonna might be there) and very little time to rehearse for it. We didn’t even know where it was or whether there would be […]

The Making of maban.co.uk

This website has been up and running for over a year. However, I was so ashamed of the last design that I didn’t tell anyone about it. And what’s the point in having a website that you don’t want anyone to see?