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For some, the brief summer sun means escaping to the beach or investing in a new pair of short shorts, but for me the summer means graduate degree shows. Every year since I left university I’ve made a point of going along to as many as possible, not just to make myself feel jealous about all the talented young designers out there, but to remind myself just what true creative freedom is, unfettered by time constraints or client demands.
PHP pages on 1&1 without the file extension (friendly URLs)
28.06.2010 By: ronansprake Under: Technical Comments: 1
I recently stumbled across an odd problem with 1&1′s mod_rewrite, while enabling friendly URLs for PHP files. Searching for solutions made it apparent this is a very common problem specifically with this host’s packages.
The 2010 Budget and what it means for the design and digital industries
25.06.2010 By: alanofford Under: Industry News Comments: none
The recent emergency budget announced by the UK’s new coalition government has been given a good dissecting on the facebook discussion board of the Design Council, with particular focus on the public sector, predictable given the heavy cuts this area faces.
HTML5 apps for mobile (iphone, android, and the rest)
17.06.2010 By: ronansprake Under: Uncategorized Comments: none
As demand for iphone and Android apps grows, the Soak team have been getting aquainted with the tools necessary for building mobile applications that run on multiple platforms. Rather than building separate apps for each mobile platform, we can write a single HTML5 application which can take advantage of the latest iphone hardware capabilities, without being limited to the Apple App Store.
Anticipating the digital Olympics
02.06.2010 By: alanofford Under: Creative, Industry News Comments: none
Ever since the 2012 Olympics logo was revealed in 2007, the graphic identity for the London games has been dogged by controversy. When Wolf Olins first unveiled the much criticised and in my opinion highly underrated brand, the public feeling was largely negative (although the reaction from the design community was much more thoughtful), and the video that accompanied the launch was even blamed for causing seizures.
Google Font Directory: An alternative to Typekit
21.05.2010 By: ronansprake Under: Industry News, Technical Comments: none
During Google I/O 2010, Google have made some very cool announcements, including WebM (a license-free codec for audio and video) and a new hosted Font API.
Spoofing the Digital Election
06.05.2010 By: alanofford Under: Just for fun Comments: none
The current General Election campaign in the UK has been billed as a Digital Election, a moment in history when the online community make a real impact on the results. There has been reams and reams of data collected, instant polls and so on to the extent that just trying to make sense of it must be like fighting your way through the Matrix populated entirely by bluff old ladies from Lancashire.
Refreshing Soak
15.04.2010 By: alanofford Under: Creative, Soak Related Comments: none
Soak is one year old, and what a year it’s been! We’ve grown from a core team of six to eleven full-time employees, plus a network of freelancers that we work with. Our client base has also grown dramatically and it was decided that it was time to refresh the Soak brand and website, in order to reflect how far we’ve come in such a short time.
Adobe CS5 Launch
14.04.2010 By: alanofford Under: Creative, Industry News Comments: none
As the dust settles after Monday’s much anticipated online launch of Adobe’s latest version of it’s creative suite, CS5, it’s left us here wondering just what all the fuss has been about. The live webcast itself was a pretty bizarre event, which thanks in part to leaks like this YouTube video, created quite a buzz on Twitter. The actual presentation however was more teasing than illuminating, with 5 minutes segments being given by a series of increasingly off the wall Adobe ‘evangelists’, who were nearly in a frenzy over CS5′s “wicked-cool capabilities”.
New tool: regular expressions generator
08.04.2010 By: ronansprake Under: Technical, Tools Comments: none
Regular expressions are brilliantly powerful but tend to cause a dull pain between the ears. We can’t offer you a free head massage, so here’s the next best thing: a really handy tool for generating regular expressions, in a load of different languages. Check it out:
