It’s up, it’s live, it’ll make you sweat your ass off. Sweat Roulette is a healthy project by Charlotte and myself which will get you moving and keep you fit.
The rules are simple. We give you an exercise for 20-60 seconds, then it’ll change. You keep doing them as hard as you can for as long as you can. If you need a rest, skip one exercise.
Timer, Exercise Instructions, Rest Intervals and Music are being development for future release. If you want to be part of this project, feel free to leave feedback or submit a pull request on GitHub.
The past couple of days I’ve been building a new portfolio website for myself. The hardest part was getting started so I did some really quick sketches, settled on a layout, then started coding.
I took this photo for Instagram, but it encapsulates the whole creation process so well I thought I’d blog it too.
Code Lab, formerly called Code Club, Coders Collective, Munch ‘n’ Crunch, etc… is something that I’ve wanted to set up for a while to get people coding and sharing ideas together in real life. There are things like this going on, but this is going to be for a smaller number of people and more regular. Pizza, beer, computers, coding / programming, sharing ideas, hanging out, chatting about whatever – it’ll be good.
Check out the Code Lab site that’ll show who’s attending the next session, when and where it’s happening and what grub will be for the picking.
Interested in attending? Email me or drop me a tweet @marcusmichaels
Interested in hosting one of the sessions? Email me or drop me a tweet @marcusmichaels
Above are the current (but soon to be outdated) Modest Innovation home page and Projects section. A redesign has been a long time coming. Originally I got them up as quick as possible, I had a vague idea for the design theme being thin borders and grids – it worked on the home page, but that got lost in the projects section.
After finally getting round to making a pure CSS version of the Modest Innovation logo, it sparked a new round of inspiration for me to get the redesign and new web build together. I had to sort my act out, and so, after three days of hard graft, it’s almost there.
The simplicity, the thin accent lines and the 1:1 ratio and grid spacing all came together beautifully. Everything needed is on a single page (I love one page websites); projects and project summary, social links, thumbnails – everything. One page.
Shiny new Modest Innovation! (still working on the body copy)l
As for the actual content, that’s all hosted on the relevant site for that type of content (videos on Vimeo, photos on Flickr, PDFs on Dropbox, etc).
It’s likely that the site will be live by Monday, if not sooner.
As for its future – I’m working on giving each project its own site, similar to how I’ve showcased my fonts on their own site and User Manual, I’ll continue to do the same with the other projects. I’m also looking to update the blog to inkeep with the new style.
I’ve been wanting to make the Modest Innovation logo a single div element made purely out of CSS (actual CSS version below), instead of an image. This was for a few reasons.
Firstly, I wanted to learn how make CSS icons by calling a single element. My logo is simple so I thought it would be a good starting point. Secondly, once it’s done it’ll save the headache of optimising it for retina display devices.
Lastly, it’s super fast and fucking awesome.
Inspired by one-div I set out to learn about the :before and :after pseudo elements (with the help of Smashing Magazine) and how it all works.
Feel free to use the code and manipulate it over on GitHub.
The other night I quickly threw together this website showcasing my new fonts with download links for personal use. I posted it on Reddit before I went to sleep thinking nothing of it (as my posts don’t usually fare too well).
The next morning I was shocked! My post was getting popular, so much so that it not only reached the front page of /r/graphic_design, but it was actually the top link for a while.
This morning, I wasted no time (apart from taking a picture of a leaking radiator valve for my landlord) in checking the stats for yesterday’s visitor count on Google Analytics. Two thousand visitors!
That put a smile on my face.
That, and this:
The street was silent, then suddenly I hear a child say to his father, "MORE LIKE MORDOR! Hahahaha". That made me smile.
Check out the awesome font I made tonight. It’s so awesome that I’m giving it away FREE for personal use right here! Download MarcusFont and watch all life’s troubles melt away.
Before I was even out of the door at my last agency, I was getting phone calls from people offering me freelance work. I was planning to take the next month off to relax and build the Modest Innovation identity, but one more week wouldn’t hurt – so I accepted work for that week only and turned down the jobs fell outside of that week.
Done. Bring on the weekend!
Monday rolls around with nothing out of the ordinary planned, aside from meeting up with a couple of old friends for coffee and a ‘chat’. Whilst out for coffee, we started talking and within the hour I was thrown into an impromptu interview. Long story short, I start a new full-time job in January.
I wasn’t looking for a job and wasn’t particularly interested at first – I was starting my own company after all, it was going to be amazing! However, the offer was perfect; small team, big growth and I’ve enjoyed working with the people at previous agencies, so I know exactly what I’m going in to.
I’m excited.
This isn’t to say that Modest Innovation is dead. I made it clear that this will still be something I’m giving attention to. I’m still going to get everything up and running as planned – I just won’t be actively going after new business as I was planning to.
