Author: pixel surgeon

Web nerd, music lover, art lover, hill lover and all round digital fantasist. Dabbler in the Political Sciences, Counterculture and Semiotics. Passionate about the local area, doing things better and doing better things.

Textploitation Part III: The Digital Exchange Mechanism

I started this series of articles by looking at how Slate columnist, Farhad Manjoo tackled an increasingly thorny issue: users of websites were scrolling no further than halfway down the page and often ‘re-tweeting’ posts with barely a glance at their content. On the face of things, Manjoo just wasn’t willing to tolerate the user…

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Textploitation Part II: Let it flow

Journalists and content providers can learn a lot from Social Media. Information is designed to flow; this was as true in the 1600s as it is now. Publishing has always been about interaction. When a person writes something they are seeking to elicit a response from the reader, and although we may be able to…

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Mobile Friendly Web Design For Inverness and Beyond

If the River Ness can flow into the Moray Firth in such a smooth and easy fashion, it seems only right that the Pixel Surgery should extend a friendly surgical glove (and a sterile tray of bright and shiny web design services) to Inverness: one of the fastest growing economic areas, not just in the…

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Eclipsis

Well the full solar eclipse came and went without really exciting the children, the birds or inspiration. On a hill above Craigellachie we watched for a full half-minute as the scruffy veil of clouds drew back to reveal a brief glimpse of the moon thrusting a thin, blurry sickle across the face of the sun….

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Edinburgh Arts Festival 2015: Come and Join the Dennis and Dennis Club

Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) is set to announce its typically ambitious programme of events. The festival is the largest and perhaps most innovative visual arts festival in Britain today, bagging in excess of a quarter of a million visitors every year. This year you’ll get roughly 40 exhibitions and a teasing, impromptu selection of pop-up…

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Mobile Friendly Web Design For Moray: Latest Google Annoucement

Latest announcement from Google confirms that mobile-friendly websites will be given preferential treatment in Google web results from April 2015. Be responsible – get ‘responsive’. Well, we have been speculating about this for a while now, but it seems that ‘mobile-friendliness’ is going to be an increasingly major factor in how websites are going to…

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Tips For Better Web Design: It’s Not About The Bling

Design for the entire user experience. Good web design is the difference between sharing something precious & just showing off your bling. A good designer will build from the ground up. Identify the building lines, set up a clear floor plan and then proceed with the plaster and the bricks. Only then should you even…

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Completing the cycle: Facebook Marketing Part III

Facebook likes and shares are pretty satisfying but there’s continuing doubt in the industry about their accuracy and their worth. Are they truly capable of quantifying product interest? I always find the majority of business users are like someone who stands behind their shop window and gets a kick out of every passer-by that gives…

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Not all design is art and not all art is achieved by design

My daughter has discovered Pixlr, a cloud-based photo-editing tool and photo-sharing device designed for non-professional users. I suppose this is another example of the democratizing nature of the web. It levels the playing field for storytellers everywhere. It used to be the case that ‘art’ was a studied discipline that attempted to capture the spontaneity…

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