Clearleft News

dConstruct archive now available

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:35:37 GMT

We’re very happy to announce that the entire dConstruct archive is now available online. And what an incredible collection it is! In the last 7 years, dConstruct has presented 2175 minutes of insightful thinking from the brightest minds in the digital industry… inspirational talks which you can now delve into any time. Also, our very own Jeremy Keith wrote this blog post about creating the archive site.

And there’s more dConstruct news. This year’s holding page is now live - and rather lovely it is too (design courtesy of our super intern, Alex Jones). The 2012 event will take place on Friday, September 7th, at Brighton Dome - be sure to mark the date in your diary. With last year’s tickets selling out in a gobsmacking 6 hours, you’ll want to make a note of when tickets go on sale, too… follow @dConstruct on Twitter, so you don’t miss any announcements!

On the subject of fast-selling tickets, have you snagged your place at UX London? There are less than 40 discounted Standard rate tickets left, so be sure to get yours while you can!

Win a Kindle!

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:40:59 GMT

We’re always keen to know whose wisdom is exciting folk in the UX community, so we’ve joined forces with our friends at Rosenfeld Media for a competition where we’re looking for your suggestions… Tell us who you’d like to see speak at a future UX London event, or write a book for Rosenfeld Media - just tweet your ideas to @UXLondon and @RosenfeldMedia. Not only will we take your tips on board, but you could bag yourself a Kindle loaded with eight great UX books!

More lovely UX London sponsors!

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:19:18 GMT

Goodness, we’ve more super sponsors for UX London! Welcome aboard, Premier sponsors, Red Gate Software, and Associate sponsors, Super User Studio and UX Jobs Board.

The gang at Redgate Software make ingeniously simple tools for SQL Server, .NET, and Oracle. They work hard to create a great user experience for their customers, because getting it right is what makes good tools stand out. The digital product designers at Super User Studio are well-known for delivering exceptionally high quality work with a smile. They offer UX research, strategy, design and evaluation services, and are particularly passionate about producing cross platform solutions for websites, applications and software. UX Jobs Board is the first and only user experience jobs website that’s UK focused. Launched by a collective of user experience professionals, their aim is to unite companies, agencies and recruiters with the best UX and creative talent in the UK.

We look forward to welcoming them to London in April. And if you haven’t already bought a ticket, snap yours up now. The Early Bird places are sold out, but bag a discounted Standard ticket while you can!

UX London Sponsors

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:29:33 GMT

We’re thrilled to have some fantastic sponsors on board for next year’s UX London: Executive sponsors Balsamiq, and Associate sponsors Axure and Optimal Workshop. The folk at Balsamiq are the creators of Mockups and myBalsamiq, the brilliant, rapid wireframing tools that reproduce the experience of sketching. Axure RP is one of the best known prototyping tools, used by UX professionals all over the world. The recently released Mac version of Axure RP has some big fans in the Clearleft office. And Optimal Workshop have taken their years of experience in usability and consulting to create a suite of usability study tools that we love - we regularly run Tree Tests and Card Sorts on our client projects.

Also, UX London tickets are still selling fast - there are only a handful of Early Bird places left, so be sure to nab yours quickly!

.Net Awards Agency of the Year - again!

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:34:46 GMT

We’ve had to make space on the bookshelf this week as, very excitingly, we’ve won Net Magazine’s Agency of the Year Award - for the second time! We were entirely thrilled to win again, so thank you very much to the gang at .Net, and everyone who voted for us.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to attend the awards ceremony (though some of our former colleagues kindly accepted on our behalf), as we were all squirreled away in the Herefordshire countryside on what we’ve taken to referring to as Hack Farm. Here we spent a week developing a spontaneous, one-off project. We had a brilliant time, and came away with a new site which we’re pretty proud of: Map Tales, where you can easily create and share map-based stories. Take a look - and add your own tale, why don’t you?

The Week iPad App - now available!

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:23:47 GMT

Here at Clearleft we love The Week magazine, so were really happy when they approached us to create their iPad App. Excitingly, the app launched last week and has been getting a fantastic response.

The Week magazine is a brilliantly entertaining, condensed serving of the week’s news and events - basically all that’s fit to print in one handy package! It was started back in the mid ‘90s as a antidote to the deluge of information that readers got from the unwieldy, dense broadsheets. Since then, of course many folk have switched to getting their news online, sending many print publications into a downward spiral… but The Week has managed to buck this trend, actually growing in popularity each consecutive year since its launch.

As our super UX Designer, Harry says: “Dennis Publishing knew they had a winning formula for The Week magazine and they wanted to be certain that none of the magic was lost in translation when they created the iPad edition. This is where Clearleft came in – kicking off a project with numerous research and design iterations; and testing lots of high fidelity prototypes before settling on the best-performing design. We’re amazingly proud and excited about this product, and we can’t wait to see how it fares in the App Store.”

Ampersand 2012

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:30:03 GMT

We’re very excited to announce that Ampersand, our web typography conference, will return next year - back by public demand! We had a splendid time at this year’s inaugural event, which featured some fantastic speakers and a great crowd of font fans. We’ll be making further announcements, including details of our speakers, soon, but in the meantime mark Friday, June 15th in your diary!

Also, don’t forget to snap up your place at UX London 2012. Early Bird tickets are still available, so grab ‘em while you can!

A lovely lunch with the Gorilla Fund

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:29:07 GMT

We’re very happy to be donating 10% of profits from our Silverback app to The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. We love receiving updates about the Fund’s incredible work, and last month were thrilled to be invited to the annual Dian Fossey Circle Lunch, which took place at the Yale club in New York. It was great to meet CEO Clare Richardson and legendary Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver, and also to hear more about what the charity achieves in the field, protecting gorillas in the wild. If you’d like to find out more about their work, or to make a donation, we’re sure the gorillas would thank you!

Bill Buxton to speak at UX London 2012!

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:32:25 GMT

We couldn’t be more thrilled to announce our final UX London speaker: Bill Buxton. A true pioneer, Bill is Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences. Not only is Bill a trailblazing UX authority, he’s also one of the best speakers we’ve ever seen, which makes us even more excited that he’ll be joining our stellar line up.

Be sure to nab your place as swiftly as you can - our Super Early Bird places may have sold out in a few hours, but Early Bird tickets are still available. You can register through the UX London site, where you’ll find our full list of fantastic speakers.

ITV Food site - live!

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:58:01 GMT

It’s always super to see our projects go live, and we were very happy to see the ITV Food site unveiled. Packed with recipes and the full dish on ITV’s chefs and food programmes, it certainly gets our taste buds going! And amongst the many treats are lots of delectable Autumn recipes which we’re looking forward to trying - mm!