Tabla de contenidos para November 2017 en net

50 years is a long time in anyone’s book. But that’s how long an average adult in the UK can expect to work before retirement knocks on the door. Work will equate to around 35 per cent of your waking hours during that time, and you’ll clock up more than 90,000 hours at your desk. You get the point. It’s time to invest some love and effort into building the perfect web design career. This issue we’ve produced a bumper careerbuilding special to give you all the advice you need. Whether you’re a graduate looking for your first job, a frustrated developer looking to go freelance, or you run your own agency, this issue is packed with practical advice and eye-opening insight. Our main feature, Build your Perfect Career, asks…

SIDE PROJECT OF THE MONTH INFO AGA NAPLOCHA job: Designer and front-end coder w: aganaplocha.com t: @aganaplocha MARTA SZTYBOR job: Software developer w: martasztybor.pl Could you tell us a bit about how The Awwwesomes started… One day we met each other and decided to do something together. Although, it was quite a spontaneous decision we knew from the very beginning that we would like to create a community and share our passion for front-end development and web design. What was the inspiration behind the idea? We’ve been observing a lot of initiatives focussed on different programming languages happening all over the world and felt that this is the moment for HTML and CSS in Warsaw. It’s kind of our niche. Apart from encouraging people to start learning how to code, our mission…

WORKSPACE Based on Hayling Island on the south coast, our studio documents how we’ve grown from three friends working out of a parent’s conservatory into an award-winning digital agency. Island life has a strong bearing on our ethos; it provides headspace to focus and a fresh perspective on things. The option to go for a pre-work surf or beach BBQ afterwards is something we don’t take for granted. It’s not all flipflops and salty hair though... We’re in London a couple of times a week, only an hour away by train, meaning we’re simultaneously off the grid but remain on the pulse. In the meeting room is our skateboard table [1] which is built using our old decks. Skateboarding was a big cultural influence on our lives growing up, and…

INFO job: Writer, designer and educator w: http://christophermurphy.org t: @fehler It’s become somewhat of a conference cliché: “I hope you enjoyed my talk, now buy my book”. Designer, educator and speaker Christopher Murphy, though, didn’t want to become ‘that guy’. So once Start! Stop Procrastinating and Pursue Your Passion, the first in his Tiny Books imprint (http://tinybooks.org), had broken even, he decided to give it away for free. Just use the code TITAN and you can get it for nothing at https://gumroad.com/l/navigator. It’s not that he hasn’t put a lot of work into the book, which also comes with screencasts, slidedecks and worksheets for enhanced learning opportunities; it’s just that he’s less interested in making profits than getting his words widely read. “I’m not that interested in making shittonnes of money”…

AUTHOR TOM MAY Tom is a journalist with more than 20 years’ experience. He's been writing for net since 2008, and is also a regular contributor to Computer Arts, 3D World and ImagineFX. @tom_may In some professions, the shape and structure of your whole career is mapped out in fine detail from the start. You start by taking an accredited course, gaining specific qualifications and then moving up the ladder of clearly defined job titles and standard salary increments. Web design, though, offers none of that rigid structure, regularity or certainty. In an industry where the entire nature of what you do can change in a matter of months, there’s nothing predictable about where you’ll be in five years’ time. It’s no surprise, then, that when I asked on Twitter,…

CLIENTS FROM HELL I did a rush job for a client, redesigning some logos. Client: How would you like payment? Me: I’d prefer a cheque, if that’s okay with you. Client: No problem. I’ll send it ASAP. I waited three days, and it hadn’t arrived. I emailed to confirm that it had been sent. Client: I asked you to resend the invoice. They hadn’t asked me to, but whatever. Two days go by. Nothing. I check in again. Client: Sorry, I’ll send it as soon as I get home. They don’t. I get in contact again. Client: I’m sorry about the miscommunication. Me: I’m not sure what you mean by miscommunication, but if sending a cheque is a problem, PayPal will be fine. Another day goes by. I send a…

INFO Job: Writer, designer and educator t: @fehler w: tinybooks.org In the eleventh article in my ongoing series exploring the design of business, I’ll explore the role that touchpoints play in building both brand awareness and creating connections with your customers. Put simply, touchpoints are all the points at which your brand comes into contact with your customers. Touchpoints can come in many shapes and sizes, and they can encompass both digital and physical media, too. Online these might be your site, your newsletter or even the way you communicate using social channels. Offline these might be stickers, badges or other forms of printed ephemera. Regardless of the medium, your touchpoints should be a distillation of your brand and encapsulate the story you are telling. As Alina Wheeler puts it, in…

As a recent graduate I have learned a great deal about the importance of building my own career and the steps that successfully took me there. The foundation of any career in my opinion is to start as early as possible. You need to be strong minded for this and know exactly who you want to become as well as how serious you are about your future career. Being in your final year of studies is the crucial time as most graduate positions are available as soon as September comes and the application process will be longer than you initially imagined – trust me! Complete your research, keep an open mind and stay up to date with recent design trends, useful methodologies and emerging technologies. I couldn’t emphasise enough how…

The number of freelancers, or ‘independent workers, ’ is growing rapidly in Europe. Research from EFIP (http://www.efip.org) shows that more people are taking the plunge and launching new businesses in almost every EU member state. The largest number of new freelancers are found in western Europe, the UK, France and the Netherlands. Contrary to what one might think, it’s not just younger males who are starting their own businesses anymore. A significant number of the new business owners are women and older workers, reflecting a change of attitude among those who may not historically have been drawn to independent working. So, what is it that’s drawing more and more people into freelancing, and what are the pitfalls to avoid? AUTHOR ANTON STEN Anton (@antonsten) is a designer and smallbusiness owner…

As a web development community, we tend to focus on a small set of web browsers; usually Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE/Edge and Opera. In the last decade, the web landscape has undergone a major shift towards mobile, which is now the dominant platform. Our ideas about major browsers tend to have lagged behind though, being overly focused on desktop and missing some of the new, mobile players. According to StatCounter, the third most popular mobile browser in Europe – with a ten per cent share – is one that has a very unassuming label: ‘Internet’. It goes by the full name of Samsung Internet and it is the default browser on Samsung Galaxy devices. When you consider that there are a lot of Samsung devices out there, it might not…

2.17% Beat the competition by offering low prices 4.35% Prefer fixed-price retainers 45.65% Try to work out what the work is worth to the client, and charge that 47.83% Hourly billing From our timeline How do you go about undertaking a self-branding project? Overthink it, redo it over and over, come up with something I actually don’t mind, go to bed, hate everything I did previously, start over. @soully Procrastinate FOREVER @simonminter After creating comps, get outside contextual feedback from demographics that match your target market. Otherwise you’re missing the point. @Candorem Turn our own exploration workshops back on ourselves but ask junior team members to deliver the workshop to everyone else in the agency. @Makermet Take your fav artist designs and merge it into a behemoth of an idea…

INFO Job: Senior interactive designer for Aardman by day, designer and director of JamFactory by night, speaker, author, idiot on CBBC’s Art Ninja, co-founder of @strangebristol w: jam-factory.com t: @jamfactory net: You’ve been at Aardman Digital since the start. How have things changed over the last nine years? GS: The department was originally born out of a need to create websites for our characters. That grew into making games and has since evolved into interactive experiences, apps and most recently, VR. We’ve even changed our name to reflect it, we’re Aardman Interactive now. My role is as a senior interactive designer, but I get to use my graphic design, illustration and filmmaking skills on a regular basis too, so no two days are ever the same. Getting to know different…

BRIEF With an existing site that was hard to navigate, Gemfields needed a more logically structured and intuitive site that used cutting-edge design and immersive technology to position itself as a world leader in marketing precious gemstones. CLOSE UP (1) The redesigned gemfields.com is a rich, immersive web experience all about Gemfields, its projects and the gemstones it produces. (2) The site features a comprehensive encyclopaedia of rubies, amethysts and emeralds. (3) The site is video heavy with a lot of the visual design relying on looping background footage. This meant that the films were heavily optimised and compressed. (4) Intuitive and logical navigation was a big priority. (5) A complete history of the company is displayed as an interactive timeline, featuring key moments and images from 2005 until the…

Children’s BBC creates and publishes awardwinning content that informs, educates, entertains and inspires millions of children. We publish at least one new type of game experience every week, from quizzes to picture making to endless runner platform games. The fundamental goal at CBBC and CBeebies is to ensure everyone is welcome. We do this not only by constantly reviewing our games accessibility guidelines and prioritising accessibility features at the start of each project, but also by truly understanding the audience’s needs, innovating with technology, and collaborating with the wider children’s media industry to ensure every member of the collective audience is considered. We have witnessed first hand the value of accessible gameplay to our audience, and previous product launches have included key features, such as adaptive difficulty, colour-blind modes, keyboard…