Erskine Labs' latest articles

Surviving a social media storm

Iain Harper — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:50:22 +0000

Here at Erskine we’re finding that our clients are taking more active control of their social media channels and integrating them directly with their website strategy. In the space of two years, mainly due to convergence around Twitter and Facebook, social media has gone from being a reasonably niche activity to an essential marketing and customer service tool for almost all organisations. One of the reasons I’ve joined Erskine is to help clients understand and make the most of the potential these channels offer.

Introducing Gridpak

Sam Quayle — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:49:44 +0000

This week we quietly launched Gridpak, a tool that we hope will dramatically speed up the process of creating with Responsive Web Design layouts.

Planning and documenting front-end components

Garrett Winder — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0100

At Erskine it’s more than just accepted, but it’s encouraged to question the way things are done. If something isn’t working, figure out another way and test it out with the team. We’re always experimenting and our processes are constantly questioned. The way we’re working now is ten times better than it was six months ago, and the same thing will happen in another six months. It’s inevitable.

Bibliomania

Sam Quayle — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:11:28 +0100

There’s seldom an afternoon goes by in the Erskine office that a solitary brown Amazon box fails to arrive, let alone numerous boxes. Our personal and office collections have become something of an obsession, and so, before bibliomania completely sets in, I thought this would be a great opportunity to ask around the team and share with you the books that we have been reading over the last few weeks.

Personal task management with Things.app

Garrett Winder — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:53:04 +0100

Here at Erskine we use all the usual suspects to keep the day in order: The 37signals Suite (mostly Basecamp and Campfire), Beanstalk, Harvest, Redmine, the list goes on. All of these are great for a team or client overviews, but in my opinion are not enough to personally stay truly organized.

How's your social capital?

Jamie Pittock — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:10:22 +0100

Here at Erskine Design we’re a relatively small team of eleven awesome individuals. In actual fact though, this small team is made up of a number of micro-teams. We’re mostly designers and developers but that can be broken down into visual and interaction designers, front- and back-end engineers and technical architects. On top of that we have responsibilities for client and team management, project and product management, marketing, sales, accounting, and personnel. The list goes on and should include customers, suppliers, external client teams and stakeholders. What all these people rely on and need from one another is trust.

What should they know of PHP who only PHP know?

Wil Linssen — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:06:22 +0100

Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro —
And what should they know of England who only England know? —
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag!
— Rudyard Kipling – The English Flag

I like that stanza a lot, and (taken out of context) it rather suits an opinion I hold on the merits of learning of several programming languages. Most programmers have a core language, the one they are most able and comfortable with; I think we should expand the list of peripherals.

Fireworks tips: convert to alpha

Phil Swan — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:55:54 +0100

I’m a big fan of Adobe Fireworks. It’s by no means perfect; but an arsenal of vector tools, bitmap editing capabilities, symbols (like Photoshop Smart Objects, but better) and layer filters make it a great piece of image manipulation software for the screen.

One of my favourite features (and one that I use all the time) is the ‘Convert to Alpha’ filter. This converts the colour of whatever is on that layer to the alpha equivalent; the lighter the colour, the more transparent it becomes. It’s a simple and very useful concept.

Business tips: spend wisely

Simon Campbell — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:21:58 +0100

Many people consider me to be a Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to spending company money. This is my short bit of advice to all you business owners out there!

Business is booming. You’re booked up until January 2012, everyone’s occupied and happy. Why not celebrate and go out for a beer with the guys, or better still book an all expenses paid weekend away for everyone? Lavish some love on your team.

When it comes to the tools you (or your team) use every day, go mad and buy the best available. When we get a new starter, they are asked what machine they’d like (people usually go for a high spec MacBook pro and cinema display). This isn’t cheap, but if you’re hiring, business must be good and you shouldn’t be short of cash!

Buy great coffee, comfy chairs, whatever books are necessary and copious amounts of fine tea. Encourage them to go on training courses and attend conferences. Never forget, your team is the company’s most precious asset and making them feel loved and appreciated is the best money you can ever spend.

Hopefully, you’re sat there agreeing with me and not thinking I’m a madman, but there is another side to consider.

Cartography with Javascript

James Willock — Mon, 09 May 2011 11:54:17 +0100

I have a nickname in the Erskine office. Well, I have several. One of the less offensive ones is “the maps guy”, largely on account of how many map interfaces I’ve worked on over the past few months. The nickname carries with it little weight of knowledge, just the certainty that if a client asks about map visualisations, Matt will say “hey, aren’t you the maps guy, mate?”

It has, however, led to some interesting and enjoyable discoveries of late, two of which I will detail in this post.

EE2 language switcher extension

Jamie Pittock — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 23:04:07 +0100

We’re in the process of building a multi-lingual online magazine site powered by ExpressionEngine and over last weekend I searched around for an add-on that I could use to implement the language switching part. After a quick search on Devot-ee I found a couple of potential candidates but in the end decided to roll my own. While it may be quite specific to our own needs, I thought I’d stick it up on Github and write it up here.

Business tips: steer 030 magnetic

Simon Campbell — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:09:19 +0100

It may be an age thing, but over the past few years with the advent of instant communication such as email, Basecamp and Skype, people are ceasing to acknowledge their receipt of messages and tasks. This is frustrating and it can lead to all sorts of problems.

Lift Off Derby

James Willock — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:24:59 +0000

As part of our working relationship with Derby City Council, we recently conceptualised, designed and developed an application for a council-led car sharing scheme. The result of this was Lift Off Derby.

Business tips: create a great team

Simon Campbell — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 17:09:59 +0000

This appears to be a ridiculously obvious thing to talk about but surprisingly overlooked by many. A team of people that work effectively together is a very rare thing indeed and the bigger the company, the bigger the issues.

Emphasising the good parts

Matt Smith — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:31:23 +0000

A very cursory introduction to CoffeeScript

I’d forgive you if you told me that you don’t like writing Javascript, after all it has a few bad parts and a few more really, really bad parts, but there are a couple of things you have to acknowledge:

It’s a good language at heart
It’s everywhere

Even if I can’t sell you on 1, 2 is irrefutable. This means, like it or not, you and Javascript are stuck with one another right?

Brand essence

Phil Swan — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:54:35 +0000

One of the things I enjoy is boiling things down: refining and reducing. I’m a minimalist. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that, as designer, I’m constantly trying to turn a sometimes overwhelming list of requirements and constraints into something simple and beautiful. I now find myself attempting to apply this streamlined approach to the rest of my life.

Business tips: don't trust professionals

Simon Campbell — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:30:12 +0000

This is the second and perhaps the most controversial of the my business tips articles: don’t trust professionals.

Create an alternative version of your ExpressionEngine website

Jamie Pittock — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:55:37 +0100

This tutorial was written with EE1.6.x in mind. The concept holds true for EE2 but requires some modified steps. John Morton has detailed these in his own excellent write-up, How to make a mobile version of your site with Expression Engine 2, inspired by this tutorial.

We announced the launch of the iPhone version of the Erskine Design website on Tuesday. This alternative version of the site is located in a subdomain of the main erskinedesign.com domain, but both versions run on the same ExpressionEngine install. I thought there’d be a number of people out there who might be interested how it was done. So here you go.

Business tips: cash is king

Simon Campbell — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:24:30 +0100

Over the years I have created and built up a few businesses. People often ask me what are the must do’s, and I often speak to Universities and business groups about these ideas. This article is the first of hopefully many, and perhaps the most important of them all: cash is king.

Project management is easy

Jamie Pittock — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:11:37 +0100

Hello everyone coming from the 37s product blog. We’re really happy to be featured again and I’m sure you’ll get some value from this post, but bear in mind that it was published in 2009 when Basecamp todo items didn’t have due dates. Just sayin’.

I feel a need to let you know just what a disorganised person I am: I have the worst memory and attention span of anyone I know. Ask my mum, girlfriend or friends and they will tell you of their years of frustration. But it’s not my inability to get things done, it’s my inability to actually remember what it is I’m supposed to be doing!