Brian Burns

April 11th, 2010

Twitter redesign on the cards.

Doug Bowman provides some sound advice on Twitter: “Never underestimate the reach of a @dribbble shot.”

Bowman joined Twitter just over a year ago from Google. He has been responsible for the continuous stream of interface/interaction/experience/design improvements that have been made to Twitter’s web interface since then. Continue Reading »

March 15th, 2010

The State of the News Media in the USA

The State of the News Media 2010 is seventh edition of PEJ/Pew’s annual report on the health and status of American journalism.

In his blog post, ‘The Money Graph’, Jeff Jarvis extracts data from the PEJ report that suggests that news organisations, fixated with implementing pay walls, are wasting precious time.

65% of online news consumers do not have a site that is so important to them that it stands out in their minds above all other sites they visit … 82% of those with a favorite site said they would find somewhere else to get the news (if they were asked to pay for the content) … Only 7% of all people who get news online through a favorite source would be willing to pay for the content. This is a sign of just how much initial difficulty the movement toward pay walls could have.

Continue Reading »

March 15th, 2010

NYT and NYU in Hyperlocal Journalism Experiment

The New York Times recently announced a collaborative project that will see the newspaper team up with journalism students and faculty from New York University.

NYTimes.com announced today a collaboration with New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to create a new Local community news and information Web site covering the East Village in New York City.

Continue Reading »

December 4th, 2009

FF Scala

I’ve been an admirer of Martin Majoor’s FF Scala typeface since reading ‘Thinking with Type’ by Ellen Lupton during my second year in college. Continue Reading »

December 1st, 2009

iA: Zeit Online Redesign

iA have recently announced the completion of their seventh Internet Newspaper redesign. Continue Reading »

October 18th, 2009

Electronic Book Burning

Alan Kaufman’s article entitled, ‘The Electronic Book Burning’, in the most recent issue (No. 120) of the Evergreen Review, provides a hard-hitting assessment of digital publishing from the prospective of a Jewish-American novelist, memoirist and poet. Continue Reading »

September 29th, 2009

Standardistas’ invade Refresh Belfast

Refresh Belfast beckoned again last Monday evening. In recent months, ‘designers, developers, coders, geeks and nerds’ attending the event have been treated to inspiring talks by local studios: Design by Front (@designbyfront), Hello Atto (@helloatto) and Ecliptic Labs (@eclipticlabs). Continue Reading »

April 4th, 2009

Nicholas Felt(r)on visits UUB.

On Thursday evening I went along to the Art College (UUB) to hear Nicholas Felton (@feltron) speaking at the Conor Lecture Theatre. The venue was bursting at the seams with creatives from the local industry/student body; all eager to hear what Nicholas had to say. Continue Reading »

March 30th, 2009

Supporting web-standards compliant browsers.

Recently I read a post on the 45Royale RSS feed by Matt Downey entitled: ‘Being nice to Internet Explorer 6, even though we shouldn’t be’. It inspired me to have a good hard think about supporting older versions of the IE browser here on mrbrianburns.com. Continue Reading »

March 27th, 2009

Felt(r)on/BarCamp @ UU Belfast

It truly is an exciting time to be a part of the design community in Belfast. It has recently been announced that graphic designer extraordinaire, Nicholas Felton, is to be gracing the Conor Lecture Theatre with his presence on the 02/04/2009 at 6.30pm. Tickets can be purchased online by clicking here. Continue Reading »

March 26th, 2009

Design by Front Masterclass

On the 12th March I was lucky enough to be invited along to a University of Ulster Masterclass planned and written by a fantastic web–design studio located here in Belfast – Design by Front. The Masterclass was geared towards the current masters students on the MA Multidisciplinary Design course, however some IMD students were invited along so to get a feel for what the MA has to offer. Continue Reading »

March 26th, 2009

FOWA Dublin

I travelled down to Dublin with @chriscolhoun, @itsdavidhughes, @leemunroe, @takete, @dannyturley and @kirstiesb on the 6th March for Carsonified’s Future of Web Apps conference… and a few pints of the oul black stuff. It was great to get the chance to meet some influential people who are currently helping to shape our industry (ie: @eoghanmccabe, @goodonpaper, @davidjrice and many, many more). I enjoyed listening to the guys from Contrast. Their quick-fire presentation entitled ‘Unconventional Web Applications’ was the perfect way to begin the day. Eoghan and Des were followed by some other brilliant speakers but my favourites were Matt Ogle of Last.fm and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals. I walked away from Liberty Hall with a notepad full of interesting points and ideas and as a result cannot wait to head to London for FOWD with an even bigger contingent on April 30th. Continue Reading »