Thursday, January 27th 2011 | Short URL
reecovid, the stylish, eco-friendly stationery company, first came to my attention when our friend Katie at Ethical Weddings wrote about them. I'd been looking for exactly this sort of thing for ages.
When I learned that their products are made entirely from post consumer waste, and being a bit of a stationery geek, I had to find out more. You can read full details of their green credentials on their website but I was impressed to hear that no virgin fibre is added to the stationery at all. That’s why they have the slogan ‘Waste, not Chaste’. Clever eh?
The reecovid line which includes refillable notepads, personal organisers and address books (coming soon) is designed especially for women. They have really pretty covers that feel tough and durable enough to withstand getting thrown into my bag and carried around everywhere. I treated myself to the 'Daryl' notepad pictured here. Usually I like to do things digitally but you can’t beat a good notebook can you?
Wednesday, January 26th 2011 | Short URL
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust have started an exciting new project to help people in Nottingham discover and explore wildlife in the city's green spaces.
We've launched the new holding page for Wildlife in the City which will be in place until the full website is ready.
Visit www.wildlifeinthecity.org to sign up to the newsletter, follow them on Facebook & Twitter and find out more.
Monday, January 24th 2011 | Short URL
On 20th January 2011 at the Albert Hall the plans of Mr Simon Collison’s New Adventures in Web Design were realised here in Nottingham.
This conference (‘naconf’) had come to our attention last summer and we pounced upon the tickets as soon as they were available. We knew from the line-up of speakers (web industry leaders we had followed for years) and topics that this was going to be a high quality event. We were certainly not disappointed.
‘Experimental’ was one of the words Simon used to describe the conference and its themes. We would add ‘exciting’ and ‘inspiring’ to that. With each of the presentations it felt as though you were being led into another level of thinking about the craft of web design and the industry as a whole. There was not one stitch of code placed up on the screens but there were plenty of ideas guaranteed to stimulate discussion and apply to our practice. We particularly enjoyed the abstract nature of some of the subjects.
Dan Rubin’s ‘New Language of Web Design’ was a brilliant choice for the first talk. He encouraged us to think about the power of language and the need for our now grown up industry to develop its own lexicon, rather than continue to borrow misleading vocabulary from elsewhere. This set the tone of intelligent, thought provoking talks for the day. Other highlights were Jon Tan’s insight into our lizard brain, looking at how we might better appeal to those instinctive judgements when making design decisions, Andy Clarke’s examples of movies and comics to invoke storytelling, pace and rhythm and how that may be used in our designs and Brendan Dawes’ amusing and captivating look at what it takes to be a better maker. I swear I could listen to that guy all day!
There were ten talks in total, about 30-40 minutes each and the time just flew by! They all provided something thought provoking and useful to take away. They left our brains fizzing with ideas and so much to talk about.
It wasn’t just the talks that made the day really special, it was the obvious care that had been taken for the whole thing. For example, the exhibitions and book stalls at the hall, the competitions and the pre & post conference social events; One of which was organised by our 2nd Wednesday chums. The conference packs included lots of goodies, the biggie being a New Adventures newspaper full of commentary and articles, written especially for this event, nowhere else. If you weren’t lucky enough to go along you can treat yourself to a pdf or hard copy of the naconf paper.
All that’s left to say is a thank you to Simon Collison, a proper gent, for working so hard in putting on this great conference and for making it affordable and accessible to folks like us.
Oh and if it’s on, we’ll definitely be there next time!
See what people are saying about #naconf on Twitter
Take a look at the New Adventures Flickr group
Wednesday, January 19th 2011 | Short URL
Happy New Year! Welcome to our brand new website. As you will see we have freshened our look up, with an updated logo and pretty new colours.
We are still the same Make Hay, an ethical web design team, creating beautiful websites for positive organisations. We still run Green Hosting too! Aside from our new brand we have lots of exciting plans in place this year, starting with the New Adventures in Web Design conference this week. More on that soon.
In the meantime, please take a look at our work portfolio and do get in touch if you would like to know more.
©2011 Make Hay Ethical E-Media Ltd. Company Number: 5223822