#181 - Year in review
Seasons greetings!
I hope you’ve been able to take some time off and enjoy the festive period.
With client work winding down for the holidays, I finally managed to get a new project in motion – a course about building websites with Hugo. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while, but it took several conversations with friends to convince me to do it.
Daily updates also became a thing. The plan is to use these to record my progress and stay accountable, but it hasn’t been easy with so much going on over the holidays.
Perhaps this isn’t the best time of year to start a new project. But it is a great time to slow down, reflect on where you’re at and commit to what’s important.
On that note, I’d like to kick things off with my 2021 year in review.
Thought provoking #
“Slow down, find a quiet place and create time for solitude so you can hear yourself. It’s so noisy out there.” Frank Chimero on causing ‘good trouble’.
“Good thinkers stick with one problem or question long enough. They dig into the problem, draw connections, and make a deep analysis of the potential options.” Budi Tanrim on Poor thinkers vs. good thinkers.
“Accept what is, stay in the present moment, and appreciate the simple, transient stages of life.” Omar Itani in 5 Teachings From The Japanese Wabi Sabi Philosophy.
Design and Code #
The results are in for The State of CSS 2021.
The brilliant Web History by Jay Hoffman now has an audio version, narrated by Jeremy Keith.
No surprises that Figma wins most categories in the 2021 design tools survey. It’s a real Swiss army knife which, these days, I find myself using for all sorts of things.
For all those at the back; “A well-composed link text usually makes sense out of context.” Designing Better Links For Websites And Emails: A Guideline from Slava Shestopalov.
Stefan Judis makes some interesting observations about the 2021 Web Almanac Report.
Typography #
Fonts Knowledge. A new project the Google Fonts team is producing in collaboration with typographic experts from around the world with the aim to help designs and developers choose and use type with purpose.
Adrian Bece launched a really cool Modern fluid typography editor that spits out Clamp values based on your preferred settings. Very cool, very helpful.
Dan Hollick shared a fantastic thread about APCA (Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm) , the new and improved color contrast method from WCAG 3.
The ideal line length & line height in web design from Oliver Schöndorfer.
Web sustainability #
Digital declutter from Wholegrain Digital. A toolkit to help measure and reduce the digital carbon emissions of your business.
nachhaltiges-webdesign.jetzt (‘Sustainable’ webdesign, in English) is a collection of methods for designing sustainable websites.
In Building a Greener Web, Michelle Barker explains why individual action is just as important as systematic change.
Something to watch #
A sustainable web for everyone. Tom Greenwood talks about how approaching web projects through the lens of sustainability can have benefits not just for the environment, but also in terms of improved SEO, accessibility, user experience and even cost savings.
Thank you for reading #
That completes another year of newsletters. As always, thanks for tuning in.
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Wishing you a very happy new year and look forward to seeing you again in 2022.
Harry