Hollidazed

Well Christmas has long since passed and so has the opportunity for a proper yearly review of 2006 (well, it is nearly February after all!).

The start of the year has been pretty busy so far and in a way it’s felt like I’ve still been finishing off 2006 with the recent official launch of a new site I’ve been working on since well before Christmas.

2006 was definitely the year of the web design/developers book for me in which I read all of the following:

• DOM Scripting - Jeremy keith
• Bulletproof Web Design - Dan Cederholm
• CSS Mastery - Andy Budd
• HTML Mastery - Paul Haine (just finished this, so it just sneaks in!)
• Head Rush Ajax - Brett McLaughlin
• Designing with Web Standards (Second Edition) - Jeffrey Zeldman

These books have really helped me in my understanding of building websites the right way using web standards with accessibility in mind and I feel like I’ve been on a massive learning curve up until now.

After spending so much time last year learning about the technical side of my job I think if I was going to have one resolution for 2007 it would be to actually focus on being a better designer this year, concentrating on really developing and applying graphic design principles into my work.

I now really want to focus on producing some great designs where web standards and good practice are embedded in my work while I also really want to make time to re-design this site.

For anyone else thinking they want to develop their graphic design skills I can definitely recommend the one book I will no doubt be reading this year, the upcoming Five Simple Steps: Designing for the web by Mark Boulton.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 7:17 am and is filed under Web Standards, design, books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.