If you have an unhealthy interest in design, detail and delivery we’d like to hear from you as we’re currently looking to hire a full-time front-end developer. You must have previous experience working on websites for both corporate and consumer clients.

Core Responsibilities:

• Developing and maintaining websites, blogs, HTML emails, and other assorted front-end web projects
• Assisting team in ensuring web projects are delivered on time and within budget
• Working closely and collaboratively with the creative team

The following skills are absolutely required. Do not apply if you are not confident in your skills in each of these areas.

• The ability to write semantic XHTML and CSS
• Knowledge of Javascript and AJAX libraries/frameworks, especially jQuery
• Ability to translate a design into semantic code that works cross browser
• A portfolio with a range of examples that demonstrate all of the above
• Familiarity with popular CMSs such as Drupal, WordPress, Contao
• Strong working knowledge of standards compliant code
• Experience with accessibility issues (WCAG/WAI)

What else we are looking for…

• Ability to work under pressure, under tight deadlines with minimal supervision
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Strong communication skills, proactive and motivated
• Dependability, reliability, and attention to detail
• Ability to communicate your implementation process and collaborate with other developers
• Empathy for the end user
• Ability to estimate effort and time required
• Ability to provide alternative strategies when practical or more efficient
• Ability to quickly grasp new concepts, the desire to grow your skill-set and the passion to keep up with latest tools/patterns that can be applied to our process

Bonus points for experience with…

• HTML5 and CSS3
• 3rd party API integration and social web development
• SEO
• Web Analytics (Google Anlytics)
• User Testing techniques
• Flash/Actionscript
• PHP and MySQL
• Basic web server administration, DNS, SSL certificates, and other web server technologies
• Layout and typography

Apply now!

Photo credit: Flickr user Kevin

“Eight ball. Corner pocket.” A statement of confidence (and one or two other more dubious denotations) that sums up pretty well, the past year at Dusted. In these more astute economic times however, one can never quite ignore how easily this can turn to “Stuck behind the eight ball”.

We’re older and wiser now and more used to taking a different view of things; rather fitting given the number 8 is one of the few numbers that looks the same when written upside down. There are more relevant creative comparisons to make here however – eight is a Fibonacci number and therefore synonymous with recurring patterns in nature, geometry and the golden ratios of music and art. Indeed, the geometry of design is the very basis of proportioning and a key component in composition. Anyone who has designed a grid structure will be familiar with this but also understand it is something you ‘feel’ more than apply pure logic to.

Speaking of which, there are eight pints in a gallon, which is a point to bear in mind this evening when the celebrations move beyond any means of logic. Happy birthday. Dusted.

Photo credit: Flickr user Heather Clemons

Work background:

• Three years+ experience in respected UK design/ communication agencies
• Worked within a high performance technical artwork team
• Ability to implement design identities via guidelines, as directed
• Integrated changes and amends to existing InDesign artwork files
• Prepare and flightcheck artwork including large annual reports
• Committed to a career in artwork and artwork management

Core competencies:

• Adobe Creative Suite 4/ 5: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Bridge (essential)
• Microsoft Office: Word, PowerPoint (for templating purposes – but not essential)
• Other software (e.g. Final Cut Pro or 3D/ CGI packages) an advantage (but not essential)

Studio responsibilities:

• Maintain the server and pre-determined file system
• Manage freelance artworkers, process and studio artwork standards
• Oversee external printers ensuring quality standards through to delivery
• Archive, store and back-up studio work correctly
• Report to the creative director at production and board level

Personal qualities:

• Have a high standard of rigour, attention to detail and process
• Progressive interest in all brand channels, media and print
• Able to self-manage work-flow flexibly and proactively
• Approach each project with enthusiasm and energy
• Demonstrate a thirst for learning and industry innovations
• Keep Dusted ahead of studio technology and best practice systems
• Share and inform best practice within Dusted
• Become a key part of the team as we grow
• Be an expert ‘safe pair of hands’ in the studio for the client service team
• Have a good sense of humour

Salary based on experience. Immediate start (with three month probationary period).

Apply now!

Whilst the entire Dusted Christmas Doo was as fun as ever, the main event took place in the office that morning—the Dusted Bake Off.

In what seemed like the next logical step forward from 2009’s Mince Pie Audit, 2011 saw us baking our own mince pies, bringing them in and taste-testing them. We used similar judging criteria too, critiquing the baked goods on;

• Packaging
• Appearance
• Pie Access
• Pastry
• Filling
• Mince-meat to volume ratio
• Xmas Factor

Each of these categories were scored out of 5 giving a possible total of 35 points. We all tasted each others pies and we also employed the services of an impartial judge, Ryan Wood—a regular freelancer at Dusted.

So without further ado, the results.

So in summary, Lucy came out on top, Caroline in second and Matt in third. And I think I speak for every one of us—if I never see another mince pie it will be too soon (well, until next Christmas at least).

Kenneth Grange is a bit of an unsung hero, which is probably why you haven’t heard about him until now. I can however assure you that at some point in your life you have sat in, used or walked past one of his designs. 

Kenneth Grange is an industrial designer known for designing in a friendly manner – Grange has said that he wants his products to be a ‘pleasure to use’. He sort to eliminate ‘contradictions’ in design that failed to make the products easy to use. In this respect, he reminds me of today’s digital UX designers, striving to make the web a better place.

Kenneth Grange has never had a particular style – he’s moved with the times, but what stands out for me is his repeated use of rounded corners, making his products seem refreshingly different yet still maintaining a familiar status. He makes use of the rounded corner on some of his more impressive portfolio subjects – iconic everyday British objects like London’s black cab, the InterCity 125 train, Kenwood food mixers, Thermos tea flasks and Kodak cameras.

Today, web designers use rounded corners in a huge array of their work – the introduction of CSS3 has made it easy for rounded corners to be implemented (in decent browsers) and the technique has been hugely popular amongst web designers, but there is a fundamental difference towards the use of them in their work compared to Kenneth Grange’s legacy.

Grange developed rounded corners to make his products fresh. Whilst it is true that web designers using rounded corners in their work are differentiating web designs from the straight edge of the days before CSS3, the rounded corner alone cannot make a website seem refreshingly different. As more and more websites take on a rounded corner effect, the less effective it becomes in seeming refreshing.

Take the black cab for example, the design is so distinctive and different that you can pick out a black cab with ease in busy London traffic. I know that the black cab has a lot more to it than rounded corners, but the curvature of the design plays a big role in giving the cab it’s persona, it is unusual but still inviting – something that is incredibly important to a taxi. If every car in London had that same curvature, it wouldn’t be as easy to thumb down a taxi.

It’s not just online that our everyday lives are getting rounder and rounder. Just by looking around my room I can demonstrate this. Jony Ive and Apple’s design team have put rounded corners on everything, and in some cases have made new models even rounder than before (the new Macbook for example). PlayStation and Xbox models are rounder than ever before (remember those old straight cut models). Rounded corners are modern.

To conclude, the use of the rounded corner in web design does make devices seem more inviting and friendly, but rounded corners should not be used as the main concept to make a design look fresh.

Photo credit: Jonathan Burr

Radio 4’s “Book of the Week” is Simon Garfield’s “Just My Type”. A fascinating read detailing the qualities we associate with a myriad of fonts. It might make an interesting stocking filler for any hard to please designer types out there!

On my day off I decided to reproduce the Dusted logo through CSS. CSS3 properties have allowed us to reproduce some images and icons purely with code — whilst it is pretty cool, it also has some disadvantages.

From left to right: The original JPG, CSS and CSS — but without border-radius. As you can see, the creation has been pretty successful, I used two key CSS3 properties to help achieve this. Setting border radiuses and gradients of several elements.

The finished product

Technically it wasn’t that hard to produce — a couple of CSS3 properties and we can achieve the below. The tricky bit is getting the shapes and curvature to match the image. It needs a fair bit of trial and error and you could spend hours perfecting it. Matching the typeface took longest — luckily we don’t use a font with serifs.

If you look closely, you will see a small imperfection with the highlighted layer — it should be straighter, but that was the best I could get it. Anyone got any ideas how I can make this line look more accurate? Perhaps by rotating the element slightly?

Whilst this is quite cool, is it the right thing to do?

Semantically I don’t agree with inserting empty HTML elements like divs, although I’ve inserted nbsp in some tags for this example, we really shouldn’t be inserting blank content into these elements — they exist to hold objects like text, not to be styled to look like text. HTML5 Canvas is the current web tool that we should be using or starting to use when drawing 2d elements and graphics. This is just an experiment.

Canvas however, is not supported by ‘less distinguished’ web browsers and that is a problem for developers who need to produce these 2d objects and make them appear consistent across each and every browser. CSS3 tools like border-radius and gradients are also not supported by these browsers — meaning our developments will look like the far right icon above. Here our D appears as an pixelated O — quite cool as it happens, but suicide for the brand. I’m hoping I don’t get shot for that.

For now we can just use images right?

Yes, at the moment images are just fine. If you’re really desperate to produce something with pure code, have a crack at Raphael.js — something which is accessible for all browsers. You can also do a lot more than just draw with it.

The Dusted “D.” device are registered trademarks of Dusted Design Partners Limited.

This article originally appeared on My Blog.

Photo credit: Flickr user sATEK

Students completing degrees in creative subjects could be forgiven for feeling pessimistic about their chances of getting a job straight away, particularly as most are expected to undertake work placements for very little or no money, just to obtain the experience they need to get an actual job.

So why aren’t universities teaching the skills that students need to get a job straight away? Most people who have worked for several years in the design industry will say that they didn’t really learn anything at university and that the education really began when they were thrown in at the industry deep-end. I don’t think this is strictly true.

At university you will be taught how to approach problems and how to think as a designer. You will then be given three years of creative freedom to create all manner of things, using a variety of mediums. During this time you’ll likely be given opportunities to learn various software, but mostly you will muddle through and get yourself to a workable stage in the relevant programmes.

When you start working, you realise that what you knew might not be particularly relevant or efficient in the ‘real world’ and you quickly learn on the job (and from your new colleagues who hopefully have the time to impart their advice), thus creating the foundations of your skillset. What you have to remember is that this skillset will back up the creativity and thinking that you learned at university, and it simply isn’t possible to have one without the other.

The death of Steve Jobs last month naturally prompted a huge amount of media coverage and surprisingly an outpouring of emotion online as devotees came to terms with the passing of the Apple visionary. You could forgive the twitterati for generalising on the cause of death but many official news reports continued to refer to his diagnosis as pancreatic cancer.

In fact, Jobs had been suffering from pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET), a slow growing and rare cancer that is often confused with the more aggressive pancreatic cancer. This misinformation underlines the need for better awareness and understanding of NET cancers and is exactly what our client, NET Cancer Day, aims to do via a newly designed website and social media strategy which launches today.

Now in its second year, Worldwide NET Cancer Awareness Day (WNCAD – an informal partnership between NET organisations from around the world) aims to raise awareness about cancers called neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and the need for timely detection, diagnosis and treatment; bring hope to patients, their caregivers and families; and drive action. More than 50% of NET patients are incorrectly diagnosed and initially treated for the wrong disease, for three to seven years on average.

Why the zebra?

The zebra mascot is derived from the campaign’s zebra-striped ribbon logo. It stems from the fact, medical students in some countries are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” to encourage them to think about the most likely and common cause of symptoms.  However, this approach risks that rarer diseases like NET cancers (“zebras”) will be overlooked because the symptoms are similar to those of more common diseases such as Crohn’s, IBS, asthma or rosacea (“horses”).

Building on the first year’s success

Dusted were briefed on the redevelopment of the Worldwide NET Cancer Day website after being appointed in August and following the successful redesign of the NET Patient Foundation website (which represents patients and carers in the UK). In its first year, WNCAD received more than 5,000 signatures to their online proclamation and this year the target is for site visitors to show their support via a global map featuring the zebra mascot and a virtual journey around the world. Sharing this message via Facebook, Twitter and email is naturally a key part of support strategy.

Continuing with the global community theme (and social media aspect), another map element of the site aims to join people together from across the world in a global video event brought ‘live’ on the day itself – November 10. As the day moves west, video clips (pulled from YouTube) will become available to watch – from Singapore to Sweden, from the UK to the USA – visitors will see how the World NET Community is working together to raise awareness of NET cancers around the globe.

Photo credit: Flickr user wwarby

The Google Maps API is something I hold dear to my heart, I produced my final year project using the service and received a first for my efforts. It is one of Google’s most popular and powerful tools that until now has been free to use and implement across corporate and personal sites on the Web.

Google recently announced plans to charge for high usage but insist policies have been in place for some time now. Site owners are now worried Google are about to start charging for what has been seen as free to developers for six years.

Should you be worried?

If you own a small blog? No. The charges will only apply to you if your site exceeds 25,000 map loads per day per API or up to 2,500 map loads for ‘styled maps’. If you exceed these limits your app will have to be cut to make fewer API calls, or you will have to purchase a Maps API Premier License. The price of this license will cost about 4 dollars per 1,000 page views. A web service like Twitter for example will be paying huge amounts, where their service makes a massive amount of API calls and ‘map loads’ to Google every day.

Is 25,000 map loads a lot?

This entirely depends on how popular your website is. At Dusted, one the busiest sites we manage gets about 15,000 page views a day, but crucially we hold maps for individual business locations that are located on their own sub-pages. If your website includes multiple maps then your ‘map loads’ will quite quickly reach 25,000.

If you are worried, speak to the people who manage your website, or check out your Google Analytics data. This should give you a rough idea of how many page views you are getting per day and you can then estimate a guess at how many times your map is being loaded. It is also worth bearing in mind the fact that page views are usually quite substantial when a website first goes live, it some cases it might be worth buying the premier license to cover this process.

Why are Google doing this?

This is quite simple really, Google has been trying to monetize maps silently through sponsored map markers. These work in a very similar fashion to sponsored search results, where a company pays to have their business identified at the top of a hierarchy of search results. Monetizing maps in this way is clearly unsuccessful and Google are looking for a real return on their popular mapping feature. Google have put real value and engineering into Google Maps, the quality of geocoding and data availability is second to none – so maybe we should just be grateful that the tool has been freely available for this long.

Photo credit: Flickr user akeg.