Unfinished Business

I’m your host, Andy Clarke, and I’m writing a Hardboiled Web Design book about Art Directing for the Web. You can find out more about that at stuffandnonsense.co.uk/books. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be discussing art directing for web with my guests, some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today.

In this episode, Rachel Andrew and I discuss Art Directing the Web and CSS Grid.

Sponsor: This season of Unfinished Business is proudly sponsored by CoffeeCup Software, and in particular their new CSS Grid Builder. CSS Grid Builder is currently free while CoffeeCup develops it and if you like what they’re doing, you can throw a few dollars their way to help fund its development. Find out more and download CSS Grid Builder at https://cssgrid.cc

I’m your host, Andy Clarke, and I’m writing a Hardboiled Web Design book about Art Directing for the Web. You can find out more about that at stuffandnonsense.co.uk/books. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be discussing art directing for web with my guests, some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today.

In this episode, Dan Mall and I discuss Art Directing the Web.

Sponsor: This season of Unfinished Business is proudly sponsored by CoffeeCup Software, and in particular their new CSS Grid Builder. CSS Grid Builder is currently free while CoffeeCup develops it and if you like what they’re doing, you can throw a few dollars their way to help fund its development. Find out more and download CSS Grid Builder at https://cssgrid.cc

I’m your host, Andy Clarke, and I’m writing a Hardboiled Web Design book about Art Directing for the Web. You can find out more about that at stuffandnonsense.co.uk/books. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be discussing art directing for web with my guests, some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today.

In this episode, Mark Porter and I discuss Art Directing the Web.

Sponsor: This season of Unfinished Business is proudly sponsored by CoffeeCup Software, and in particular their new CSS Grid Builder. CSS Grid Builder is currently free while CoffeeCup develops it and if you like what they’re doing, you can throw a few dollars their way to help fund its development. Find out more and download CSS Grid Builder at https://cssgrid.cc

Welcome to this new season of the Unfinished Business podcast. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be discussing art directing for web with my guests, some of the most experienced art directors and designers working on the web today.

I’m your host, Andy Clarke, and I’m writing a Hardboiled Web Design book about Art Directing for the Web. You can find out more about that at stuffandnonsense.co.uk/books.

To warm things up, and get the some silliness out of the way first, this season starts with a special, one-off episode where Paul Boag, Jon Hicks, and I talk about Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi’s final series and legacy, the show’s new logo, and of course, the new Doctor.

I’m warning you now, it’s a very different kind of episode of Unfinished Business this week as Rachel Andrew and I talk about our feelings on the referendum result for the UK to leave the EU. We talk about the issues that will affect us, you and our businesses in the coming months and years and what we’re already doing to help mitigate them.

Look, if you’re outside the UK, you might find our points of view interesting and different from what you’ve heard before. If you’re as angry and saddened by the result as we are, you might find some solace and if you voted Leave, I hope you’ll learn something about the effect the vote you cast will have.

In the second part of this Unfinished Business Bank Holiday double, I’m joined by owner of UX studio Simple As Milk and lead UX engineer at UnrollMe, James Seymore-Lock to ask and answer the important question. “Am I the country’s biggest Homes Under The Hammer super-fan?” (Spoiler: He has no clue, not one.)

Then things get more serious as I find out about how James has run his business while living in a different country every month for the past couple of years. We talk about why there’s a distinct lack of design talks at web conferences and whether Dribbble is a negative influence on current design trends.

This week isn’t just something that I like, I absolutely love it. It’a a brand new book called “Pretty Much Everything” by my absolute favourite graphic designer Aaron Draplin. Aaron’s been on the show before and last time he talked about how much making this book was stressing him out. But by God this book is worth it. It’s not just a great book, it’s an absolute friggin’ masterpiece. Aaron’s poured literally everything into this book. It’s not just about design, it’s his whole career, his life story.

Buy Pretty Much Everything on Amazon

In this, the first part of the Unfinished Business Bank Holiday double, I’m joined by Espen Brunborg, designer and co-founder of Primate, plus Strategic Commander of User Experience and author of ‘Psychology for Designers’ Joe Leech. It’s more of a work related episode and we talk about; developing content for clients, why you should do your own research and not believe that everything you read on the internet, and whether you should get involved in competitive pitching and tendering?

You might remember that I’m not taking paid sponsor spots on the show anymore. I’m going to briefly talk about something that I use and really like instead. And this week, it’s Concrete, the comic book character by Paul Chadwick. Concrete is amazing with beautiful, subtle, touching stories and the most incredible artwork by Paul Chadwick. I love it. It’s probably my favourite comic character and stories. I think that you’d love it too. Start with these two collections:

I know. I know! It’s been far too long since episode 117. But fret no more, Unfinished Business fans, we’re back and back for good, every two weeks with some brilliant guests and some good old fashioned conversations. This week, I’m joined by Sean Johnson and Drew McLellan to talk fat and fitness, cruises and coach trips.

You might remember that I’m not taking paid sponsor spots on the show anymore. I’m going to briefly talk about something that I use and really like instead. And this week, it’s my Rotring 800 .5mm mechanical pencil.

The Unfinished Business schedule’s been a little, shall we say, up in the air, for the past few episodes. while I’ve been busy writing something. I do aim to get back to our routine and I’m sorry for the disruption.

A few weeks ago I recorded a hilarious episode with artist, illustrator and rapper Mr. Bingo. We talk about artist—and former Spitting Image puppet maker—Wilfrid Wood, Banksy’s Dismaland and why IKEA in Croydon is like a real-life bemusement park.

We discuss Mr. Bingo’s Hate Mail series, his boundaries and how Hate Mail in real life would just be people paying to be shouted at. We also talk about his highly successful Kickstarter for his new Hate Mail book and the hilarious incentives he devised.

Content warning: As you might imagine when the two of us get together, it’s a very funny conversation. But we do swear. A lot. If you’re easily offended by four letter words, this may not be the episode for you.

You might remember that I’m not taking paid sponsor spots on the show anymore. I’m going to briefly talk about something that I use and really like instead. And this week, it’s Jolie Originals’ iPhone and laptop sleeves.

Jolie Originals are a two-person team based in Amsterdam and they make Macbook sleeves, iPad sleeves, iPhone sleeves and even a nice little wallet thing for notes and credit cards. And other nice things. I like their products a lot and I think you should buy something from them.

On Unfinished Business this week there’s no talk about mugs but Rachel Andrew is back. We’re joined by first timer Richard Rutter to discuss his upcoming book on Web Typography, why he chose to self-publish and fund the project on Kickstarter and the role of a publisher in today’s market. Of course Rachel loves to talk about VAT (irony) so we do that and she explains why she doesn’t actually owe a million Euros to Ireland.