How a Hangover Saved My Great-Grandfather's Life

100 years ago, my great grandfather George Bailey had just been told that he had a new job. He'd been out of work for a while, in and out of work on Southampton Docks. The night before he was due to start work he decided that he would go out and celebrate with a few beers. He would be working hard on a ship as an engine stoker and would be away from home for quite a while. He wouldn't have much time for fun either, and an engine stoker was a really tough job.

The next morning my grandmother was not very pleased with him when she realised that he hadn't got up in time to catch the ship. She berated him for throwing away the chance to earn a good amount of money.

However, my grandfather had the last laugh when the ship - the Titanic - hit an iceberg.

After that he stayed on dry land working as a stevedor.

Family Tree:
Charles Bailey b 1846 -> George Bailey b 1877 -> Thomas FC Bailey b 1903 -> Thomas EG Bailey b 1933 -> Susan Bailey (me, now Smart)
Soo Smart

Does your business need illustrations to answer your brief

Do you ever get fed up seeing the same old stock images over and over again?

Have you ever spent hours trying to find an image that matches your clients description?

Or have you found a series of icons or illustrations that answer your client's brief, but they are all different in style and colour?

I have spent many hours searching for images or icons that fit with my clients needs, but rarely find a set of icons that completely covers their requirements, or a range of images that they want to pay for. I end up creating my own icons for websites and documents and have had many projects where I have created a range of illustrations in a consistent style for businesses and youth projects.

Businesses often need a strong bespoke image to communicate to their clients and using Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Ideas on iPad has been great for answering this perennial problem.  Creating vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator means that the images can be scaled for large format printing and reduced for the web and still look crisp. Mastering the Pen in Illustrator will be the best tool you'll ever use, once you get used to it in one programme, you will be able to transfer those skills into others such as Photoshop and InDesign.

The key to creating great illustrations is understanding the Pen tool:

From the left we have The Pen, Add Anchor Point, Delete Anchor Point and Convert Anchor Point.
Start by clicking some dots on a page with the Pen Tool and use the Convert Anchor Point tool to smooth the corners:

Click and drag each anchor point to smooth the corners and use the Direct Selection tool:  this white arrow to move the anchor points into your desired position.

Experiment with borders and fills, thicknesses of border to explore how different this makes your illustration look:

You can look at more finished examples of illustrations created for businesses and youth projects here: click

How to achieve great website design - do you want to stand out?

More and more web design companies are being set up in the present climate, creating a larger pool of design styles and technical knowlege for clients to choose from. So how do you stand out above the competition? What is going to make a client choose you over somebody else? If your own website is poorly designed, lacks good search engine optimisation or has missing links, your potential clients will drift away. We have 12 years experience in creating great websites for our clients and have created here, a list of simple strategies to help you.


1 - Web design is a meeting of technology with beautiful graphic design, make sure you study both if you want to succeed
Why? You may come from a tehcnical background and have excellent skills in this area, but do you have the graphic design skills to help you create a truly great website? You may come from a graphics background and are finding the technical side of web design a little bit daunting.
It takes time to develop these skills. Research is key to combining both technical and graphic design skills necessary for web design. There are many books available to get you thinking about how great graphic design makes for great usability, I found "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug well worth the money, everything in it is so obvious, you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself.


2 - Use Photoshop as an aid to layout and plan your website, work at 72ppi and put the rulers on pixels. Use guidelines.
Why? Because web design like all other kinds of design take planning. If you use a themed website approach from one of the many web building aides around, like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, you may think the design is already done for you. It isn't complete, you will need to plan out new graphics and areas that will fit the style of the theme provided. If you look closely at some of the less successful theme designed sites you will see inconsistencies in colour, graphic styles and form. Example.


3 - Don't slice up the whole of your a photoshop design for the web, leave text alone to be input as text not a graphic.
Why? Not only is it the height of laziness, it will make your website very slow to load, be un-searchable in search engines and not even figure on Google. Unneccessary blocks of colour with text turned into graphics do nothing for the user either, especially if the font is overly fancy.
Well written copy keyed straight into your html code is quick and lighter to load, search engines love relevant words that relate to the business of the site.


4 - Code the colour for backgrounds, and put images in the background where appropriate, this way your site will load quickly.
Why? Setting a colour for the page background is the lightest way to add 'texture' to your site. You can use jQuery to add gradients or create a small background image that repeats to fill the page. Images with transparency place on top of backgrounds will load quicker than a completely solid image and you can use it on a number of different backgrounds. 
Think about using .gif and .png files for flexible use of images. 


5 - Resize images for the web before you insert them into your code or editing programme, this way your site will load quicker
Why? Have you ever waited while a site slowly loads it images? The images may have been dramatically reduced in html, beware of doing this youself. 


6 - Use 2 CSS files, one for your layout, the other for typesetting, keep as much CSS out of your HTML files as possible.
Why? If you have too much CSS styling in the tag, search engines will struggle to find relevant text to use to display your site high up the rankings. Organise you stylesheets into two kinds - one for layout, the other for typography. It makes finding style items easier. You may need further stylesheets for different layouts of course, and keeping your CSS files in a separate folder can make life easier for you.


7 - Only use Flash to demonstrate your skills, don't create Flash only websites as many mobile devices don't support it.
Why? It is a shame that many large companies have blocked Flash from their staff's workstations, this historically relates to spam that used to be attached to games and other Flash files in the late 1990s. Mobile devices don't all display Flash either, so all your hard work will go un-noticed on mobile devices and people will leave your site immediately.


8 - Nicely designed graphics speak volumes, don't use clipper art, clients do not want to pay for something they can do themselves
Why? Consistency is key to great design, you may think that it doesn't matter if you use a variety of icons and graphics so long as they illustrate the point you want to make. But the design will be compromised and start to look messy. Examples.


9 - Keep words to a minimum on your homepage, you need to get your message across in a short, snappy manner.
Why? People won't read beyond the first couple of paragraphs unless they are reading an article, you can save thos for other pages on your website. A small piece of text that sums up your business will draw people in and encourage them to return.


10 - Integrate your social media sites to your website, this way you increase traffic to your site and show brand awareness.
Why? Show people that you mean business, by using social media you can offer advice and learn from others as well. Links to and from social media increases your presence on search engines, so long as you use it and keep your site refreshed with new content.


11 - Use keywords - write your introduction with your keywords in mind. But don't over do it, Google doesn't like it.
Why? A well written introduction that makes sense and uses just a couple of choice keywords will help improve your search results. Peppering your text with random, meaningless keywords may cause search engines to demote your site. This guy Bruce Clay's site is well worth a read.


12 - Verify your site on Google and create a sitemap. This will improve your page rankings.
Why? Professionalism 


13 - Create a Blog and news feeds and send these to your site to help improve your search results.
Why? As point 10, show that you understand your business and are committed to it. 


14 - Get to know the difference between good and bad design, research pays, and listen to your client, they are all different.
Why? A tricky one this, there are as many design styles as there are people. One man's meat is another man's poison - however, great design should be easy on the eye. It takes time to get really confident with your area of expertise, there are things I liked years ago that I don't now. Art and design are subjective, so you will need to avoid taking criticism too much to heart, but take notice of feedback and act on what makes sense. 




15 - Build a website that suits your clients needs, nobody wants to pay for work that looks like everyone else's website.
Why? Your clients pay you to create a great website for them that will gain them business, they each have their own needs, listen to them and act upon their brief. You may not always agree, but you can find a common path and reach a good solution.
Your clients will want to feel that you are doing your best for them, thoughtful design solutions for each client will give you a varied portfolio.

Fifteen Top Tips for Great Website Design

Tweeting now at 11:47am each day over two more weeks - 15 Top Tips to get you on the right track for designing great websites. Just follow @Bloohair on Twitter.

1 - Web design is a meeting of technology with beautiful graphic design, make sure you study both if you want to succeed

2 - Use Photoshop as an aid to layout and plan your website, work at 72ppi and put the rulers on pixels. Use guidelines.

3 - don't slice up the whole of your a photoshop design for the web, leave text alone to be input as text not a graphic.

4 - Code the colour for backgrounds, and put images in the background where appropriate, this way your site will load quickly.

5 - Resize images for the web before you insert them into your code or editing programme, this way your site will load quicker

6 - Use 2 CSS files, one for your layout, the other for typesetting, keep as much CSS out of your HTML files as possible.

7 - Only use Flash to demonstrate your skills, don't create Flash only websites as many mobile devices don't support it.

8 - Nicely designed graphics speak volumes, don't use clipper art, clients do not want to pay for something they can do themselves

9 - Keep words to a minimum on your homepage, you need to get your message across in a short, snappy manner

10 - integrate your social media sites to your website, this way you increase traffic to your site and show brand awareness

11 - Use keywords - write your introduction with your keywords in mind. But don't over do it, Google doesn't like it.

12 - verify your site on Google and create a sitemap. This will improve your page rankings.

13 - Create a Blog and news feeds and send these to your site to help improve your search results.

14 - Get to know the difference between good and bad design, research pays, and listen to your client, they are all different.

15 - Build a website that suits your clients needs, nobody wants to pay for work that looks like everyone else's website.

Ten Top Tips for Best Practices in Mobile Website Design

No1: 
Design for a variety of platforms, iPhone/Pad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone


No2:
Keep it Simple - quick to access with short, snappy text and small images. It should be simplet than your standard site


No3:
Link to your standard site, and then link that one back to the mobile site


No4: 
Create a Separate mobile theme. Your main website won't scale down for mobile without a separate CSS and simplified 


No5: 
Only scroll in one direction - same as for your main site, double scrolling is no good, make sure your design fits 


No6: 
No need for pop up windows - mobile technologies is designed to make switching from page to page easy 


No7: 
Make buttons big enough for fingers - on small screens the proportions are different to standard web design 


No8: 
Make text bigger and images smaller - to comfortably read your content, example: http://www.doublesdesign.com/ 


No9: 
No Flash - many mobile devices do not support Flash, so your hard work will go un-noticed 


No10: 
Include as much content as possible but keep simple, compare this site on mobile and desktop: http://www.millriver.co.uk/

Oral bacteria linked to pneumonia risk

Our client - Rushmere DentalCare has highlighted an article on the Dentistry.co.uk website which introduces another reason to keep our teeth clean. "Thousands of vulnerable people are being reminded they should look after their oral health this winter after scientists further linked oral bacteria to an increased risk of pneumonia." Read the whole article here: http://www.dentistry.co.uk/news/4739--Oral-health-Oral-bacteria-linked-to-pneumonia-risk

Your local BACD registered dental practice and licenced cosmetic dentistry http://www.rushmeredentalcare.co.uk