Sometimes we just need to get stuff out of our heads. While design can be one of the most enjoyable creative processes, creating our own stuff is also an important way of letting off steam. Who needs painkillers when you can let rip on your own creation. There’s something very therapeutic about cutting and shredding your own photos, laying up a collage and then scribbling all over it…

Be it a stylish postcard from a bar, a thoughtful logo on a coffee cup or the walls of a fish and fresh food market adorned in beautiful typography – If something’s nicely done, out comes the camera. I realise to Joe public, I probably look like a bloody idiot, but then again, if I can get even a little bit of pleasure from looking at a wall with some words on, who’s the winner?

I guess the comforting thing is, I know I’m not alone. Designers, architects and photographers worldwide suffer from this malady (to name a few.) and we’ve all got our little books or that folder on the desktop of our shiny macs full of the holiday snaps that include no family, no friends and no landmarks or tourist attractions.

Yes, maybe it is a bit strange, maybe we’re all mad, but then again, I think I speak for many when I say, I’m not looking for a cure!

According to W3Schools, a staggering 99% of visitors to their site are using a screen resolution of 1024×768 or higher. One can’t take this as a definitive percentage of all screen resolutions across the Internet because the W3Schools site targets a particular demographic – namely those interested in web trends and analysis, but the figure is still very high all the same.

Another site which perhaps gives us a more accurate figure is StatCounter, a Visitor Analysis package that webmasters can install to track visitor activity to their website. The package is very similar to the ubiquitous Google Analytics software, but differs in one important detail; StatCounter provide global statistics reports where trends can be tracked over a period of time.  The reports are assembled from over 15 billion global hits to more than 3 million websites covering a multitude of interests, so we can be sure these figures are likely to be closer to the mark.

From the report above we can see that 1024×768 and higher resolutions account for the vast majority of screen sizes. Assuming the dotted line represents some of the smaller sizes, we can determine that the percentage of 1024 and above to be somewhere in the region of 84%. Not as high as 99%, but exceptionally high nonetheless.

If current trends continue the figure is only going to get higher, so what does that mean for us designers and developers? Surprisingly, not a lot! Let us apply those figures to a real world example.

If you code your pages to a fixed width, say 960px which appears to be a very popular size in the developer community, you know for sure that at least 84% of your visitors are going to see the site exactly as you intended. Great! But what about the other 16%? If your site averages over 1000 visitors a month, you are alienating 160 of those people by forcing them to scroll horizontally in order to use your site. Horizontal scrolling is one of the few things guaranteed to annoy visitors of any website, so the width of your site is still as important today as it has always been. With the rise of Internet use on the increase in the developing world, it is likely to remain an issue for a long time to come.

If you’re not already, you should be looking at incorporating responsive design in your websites in order to make your visitor experience a good one for everybody, not just the majority!

Check out Web Designer Wall’s excellent Responsive Design in 3 Steps to get started.

Special editions of our Thames Valley and Hampshire Secretary titles have been sent out in the RG, SL, PO and SO postcode areas. Created in conjunction with Media West in Bristol, these magazines offer company executives and their staff important information on conference and meeting venues in their respective areas.

This work allows us to create adverts for big names in the hospitality industry such as Ramada and Hilton and is a fast expanding part of what we do.

After seeing how Disney had plundered the Joy Division ‘Unknown Pleasures’ album cover  (see links here at creative review, and here at pitchforkmedia), we thought we’d see what might happen if they started on other classic albums… More to follow (when we get round to it)!

Louise Parker joined us at the end of 2011 and has quickly become a valued member of our team. Louise completed a three year graphic design degree at Salford University in 2011 and graduated with first class honours. Having already produced outstanding work on a number of web and graphic design projects for us, we’re sure she’ll continue to bring a fresh perspective and a keen insight to our work. Oh, and without sounding sexist, she makes fabulous cakes that go down very well with everyone in the studio!

We can lend our hand to many things – including setting up an in-house photo shoot. This pic shows Dean lining up a shot of Dave Montana (suitably attired in his Country & Western set-up).