I have a few blog posts lined up, but I haven't had a chance to finish them, so I decided to post a few links to websites that I love to visit. I've chosen some of the ones that I find most inspiring. I'll elaborate a bit more below.

• Dribbble Always a great source of inspiration. Long before I was drafted to be a part of Dribbble, I visited it quite regularly to have a look at what people were working on. The latest feature is great- it automatically snatches the colour palette from each image uploaded.
• Todd's Blog - Todd Klein is a comic book letterer and posts logo studies (found here), comic reviews as well as other bits and pieces. His logo studies are always exceptionally thorough and it's always great to read the history of the familiar logos of Batman and Superman.
• FPO (For Print Only) - Like the rest of the websites from Under Consideration, it's really well curated and great at producing consistently good posts about new print projects. Really inspiring to see design taking a printed form.
• Chromeography - You can't really be anything but inspired by a gallery of well-taken, vintage chrome car badges. My proof? Check out this Ford badge- how sweet is that?
• House Industries - I've linked to the blog, as it's the part that gets updated most frequently and the part I enjoy the most. Brilliant behind-the-scenes looks at their stuff being produced as well as their typefaces and products in use. The photography is always great and I always look forward to their latest updates. Their main website is pretty great too, as is their promotional movie.

I'll post some more links when I get a chance. All images above are copyright their respective owners.

Back in October 2010, I launched my new shop, The Bleed Edge, an outlet for printed goods that I designed and produce here in Kildare. As you can read on this blog post, it was originally meant to be part of this site here, hence the similarities in design, dimensions etcetera.

A few months in and I realised that I should’ve just designed the shop separately from the beginning. A shop is different to a blog, which I was aware of, but I didn’t have any extra time or resources to devote to a separate design.

Redesign, again

A few months ago, I started redesigned the shop. I actually did it quite publicly, posting in-progress works to my Dribbble account (and seen scattered around this post). It took me a while to get to the point where I was happy with the overall aesthetic- I wanted something clean, but not sterile, I wanted fun, yet not slapstick and I wanted smooth, not slick- the website is only a vessel for the products, not an end in itself.

Speaking of products, I removed the screenprints that were previously listed. No particular reason; the ones that sold well are down in stock and the others aren’t going to sell without a serious push. Perhaps at some point in the future, I’ll have time to campaign.

Final Result

You can take a look for yourself- I am pleased with the final website. I worked a lot of expansion areas into the design and structure, for a time in the future when further products will be added (the not-too-distant future) and the website now has a news section for posting stuff relating to the shop. Previously news was posted through Twitter but that had a limitation or ten.

The one area which I am most proud of, is the shopping basket page. I spent a lot of time tweaking the different elements so that they all work well together on the page. I think I’ve made the basket very friendly to use and hopefully encourage people to spend their hard-earned cash on our Copybooks. If you have any suggestions, do please let me know.

Looking forward

I have some Pixelcode t-shirts that I’ll be selling soon- they’re printed and ready to go, I just have to organise the promotional images, work out size charts and then I’ll be ready to go. I have some Copybook ideas that I want to work on too- I’m sourcing new colours for the covers and I want to develop a logo for the copybooks to stick on the cover. I’m thinking a crest or shield of some description. To keep informed, you can follow me on Twitter or Dribbble, where I’ll be posting my works-in-progress.

In an effort to form a better archive of important links, I think I'll occasionally publish a link post. First up is a 40-odd minute video from lynda.com about Doyald Young. Although some may consider him a calligrapher, he considered himself a logotype designer. I say 'considered' as Mr. Young, sadly, passed away at the start of this year. Here is a short introductory video:

The full video can be seen on lynda.com at this location.

I have to credit the very talented Plurabelle Calligraphy for posting the video above on her blog.

In last week’s blog post regarding suggestions for A List Apart survey, I suggested that there should be more money-orientated questions, with the end goal being that of 'helping people set the rates for their web business'.

Shortly after I was listening to the Big Web Show (#54) and the topic of rates came up and Mr. Zeldman pointed out that if he and several other large web firms got together and discussed their rates, that this would be considered price fixing, which is the act of businesses keeping prices fixed for the benefit of the business, basically reducing competition in the marketplace, again, for the benefit of businesses.

I am now wondering whether or not compiling this information, in an anonymous survey form, would constitute price fixing, landing an organisation, like A List Apart, in a spot of bother.

I need to do some more research on the topic. I’d like to think this could be done because the data is anonymous and averaged, but I’m not so sure.

I took part in the A List Apart Survey last year (as I do every year) and I read through their excellent report a couple of weeks ago. It gives a great overview of the web industry worldwide and can highlight trends happening in the industry.

I have to admit though, as a member of the Irish web community, I was a bit disappointed to see that the Republic of Ireland didn’t make it into the top 20 respondents. I know we’re a small country (then again, India only made up 1.3% of the respondents, coming 10th) but I thought we might have a bigger impact than that.

I was curious, so I fired up my old spreadsheet app and downloaded the anonymised results provided by A List Apart and had a look at the Irish respondents.

I won’t lie

I was a bit underwhelmed. Actually I was completely underwhelmed. 77 people, living and working in Ireland, did the survey.

Shortly after, I read a blog post from Eric Meyer and I found out that the number of respondents was down by a little under 50% from the previous year, so I checked out previous years and found out that in 2009, 148 people in Ireland did the survey and 206 in 2008.

The drop

The drop in respondents is obvious, both worldwide and in Ireland (and I assume every country the same). On Meyer’s blog post, a few commenters claimed to be ‘tired’ of the survey- I would assume it’s because the results are pretty consistent from year to year and there doesn’t seem to be any return for the participants. I mean, I participated and then read the results, but none of the data, as interesting as it is, will really have any effect on my business.

Added to this, the survey seemed to be ‘less visible’ than previous years- it went by very quietly and if you weren’t subscribed to the A List Apart RSS feed or followed them on Twitter, you would easily miss it.

Tangibility

In my very humble opinion, to increase respondents generally and in individual countries, I think there needs to be a return for the respondents.

The obvious one is to raffle a prize amongst respondents, iPads seems to be the prize for every survey I see. I would assume it would be a good advertising opportunity for any industry-relevant business/organisation to sponsor a prize for the A List Apart survey.

The second carrot I would dangle in front of respondents would be more useful information, specific to the respondent’s country of work and residence.

From my perspective, I’d love to be able to check an online reputable source for things such as-

• The average hourly rate, for freelancers or studios/agencies (the A List Apart survey asks this, I know)
• The average cost for a predefined project, or projects, for freelancers or studios/agencies
• The division in costs in aforementioned projects, by research, design, development, UX, etc.
• The overhead rate, per hour, for freelancers or studios/agencies

I’d love to see this data on a country-specific basis. Rates in the US or even our neighbours in the UK, do not usually correspond to rates in Ireland. This data would be useful and could be compared with worldwide rates.

Looking forward

I think the Irish web industry could be an industry that grows well beyond the borders of the country, if we can compete on a worldwide scale. I don’t think our per-hour rates will ever be as low as, say, India (with their huge population) but I think the fact that English is our native language could be a great selling point for us. The web is an industry where the end product can be exported without the physical logistics issues associated with nearly every other industry.

It may seem fine for me to offer suggestions, but I am also going to offer my assistance, if required, to A List Apart to see if I can help with any aspect of the survey. Even if my help isn’t required, I’m still going to make a better effort, personally, to publicise the survey within Ireland.

I feel that having this data, whether on a broad or very specific level, does help our industry as a whole, and what helps the industry will eventually trickle down and help us on an individual level as well.