Nathan Hornby

Symphony's strength is its simplicity and adaptability - part of this is its fantastic extension library which carries with it the same philosophy as the CMS itself. Symphony extensions tend to be focussed, and rather than forcing you to use them a certain way instead give you the tools necessary to expand your sites functionality, without getting in your way.

Every now and then debates ensue with regard to the use of 'Lorem Ipsum', or as many of our clients refer to it, 'that latin text where my content should be'. In an ideal world we'd all be working with finalised copy that adds context to our work, but more often than not there's a compromise involved whereby the design aids in harnessing and housing that content.

For any UX designer wireframes are a key tool of the trade; they're the canvas on which we communicate our ideas, turning research into something visual and establishing the foundations of the final product. They're also a key point in the client sign-off process; as most of the important decisions about functionality and content distribution are solidified at this stage, and dependencies are created that make certain changes more difficult later in the project. For such a key part of the design process traditional PDF wireframes have some pretty serious drawbacks.

Symphony is easily one of the best CMS's we've used - it's lightweight, extendable and even easy on the eye. It enables us to provide a CMS that feels bespoke and is genuinely fit-for-purpose; not just warped into something that works. This may not sound particularly groundbreaking, but it's a welcome find after years of 'making do' with pretty much every other option out there.

Social shot is a simple, single purpose social media aggregator. It grabs a mosaic of Instagram photos and overlays them with a single tweet, all based on a hashtag of your choosing.

The text editor you'll fall in love with. Sublime Text's words, not mine; but I'm in no hurry to correct them.

There's been a lot of talk recently about responsive design, specifically its merits/downfalls when compared to a dedicated mobile approach. You've likely read at least 7 articles about this now, so I'll keep it as brief as possible. Let's recap the argument. Generally speaking it's a simple, but flawed one. It goes something like this: "Dedicated mobile sites are much better than responsive sites because they're tailor made experiences". Sounds pretty reasonable, until you think about it for a few seconds.

Nobody likes spam, I think we can all agree on that. But what about your users? You probably like them, or at least you should; so why is the most pervasive anti-spam mechanism fundamentally anti-user?

There’s been a lot written recently about creative pitching, most notably in Design Week and Creative Review; so we thought we’d add our own input as we have some opinions on the topic ourselves. We’d like to start by defining what we believe are the 3 primary forms of pitches, the ones that don’t fall into these categories generally fall between them.

I’m going to start this article by noting that it is intended for both clients and creatives. This isn’t a client-bashing tirade, or an up-turned nose at the sensitivities of designers; but a genuine and balanced exploration into what causes this most unexpected, frequent, logical and potentially destructive request.