Happy New Year 2018

It’s 2018, life’s accelerating it seems. 2017 was good on the whole. Lot’s of client work done and lot’s of travelling. This year i’m hoping to finally get that marathon under my belt and launch one or two big personal projects, one being the successor to Tink Tank. I’m also hoping to help organise WordCamp Belfast. Happy new year beautiful humans! Let’s be kind to one another and our fellow…

Closing tinktank.in

*** Update: Jan 4, 2017 I’m currently in the process of uploading all the theme to Github. It’s taking a little time to add documentation but eventually they’ll be available at https://github.com/neilorangepeel/. Feel free to contribute. Back to original post. *** Aw it’s time to say goodbye to tinktank.in 👋 I opened up Tink Tank way back in July 2013 and published a total of 16 themes. With over 100,000 downloads,…

Deploying private repos

Ugh I’ve done this before last year sometime. But for some reason couldn’t even begin to understand the concept of what I was doing nevermind actually doing it. So this is mainly for me in the future when I need to set up a SSH key between my server and GitHub. This video helped me last year and I stumbled across it again late last night after a few frustrating…

More Dribbble invites

Finally more invites to give away. Is there anyone not on Dribbble? Do people still need invites? Why don’t they just open it up? I guess the invite only thing must be working for them. All. Interesting. Thoughts. But to the point in hand I have two invites that they have entrusted me with (I get drunk on the slightest bit of power). If you would like an invite please…

Go Deo, Go Deo

Earlier this year I was involved in filming of a music video for Irish band IMLÉ. Filmed on Murlough Beach, Northern Ireland. If you’d like me to be the cute male lead on your bands music video, contact my agent ???? Filming on Murlough Beach. #nofilter #slievedonard #reflection #beach #sky A post shared by Neil Hainsworth (@neilhainsworth) on Feb 25, 2017 at 12:46pm PST

Contributing to open source

For the longest time I was annoyed by a small design bug when using the Jetpack plugin for WordPress. It really wasn’t much and probably speaks to my OCD more than anything but here it is… It’s probably too small to notice but the visual stats graph that’s displayed in the admin bar didn’t sit flush like the rest of it’s sibling links it was 4px too short, once or twice…

A curated RSS feed

I never really messed with RSS feeds much, it hasn’t cropped up with sites I’ve made and I’ve never had a personal use for them. Who still uses them? Are they still relevant? What services are out there? Saying this lately I have felt an urge for some reading—specifically blog posts. So decided to create a little curated RSS feed that you can find over at rss.neilorangepeel.com. It wasn’t too hard…

Happy New Year 2017

It’s 2017!! Can you believe it? 2016 was a whirlwind, celebrities dying, Brexit, Trump, we got the facepalm emoji 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♂️ and I turned 30! All of these things I did not expect to happen. It’s tradition on my blog to design a wee banner so here it is and I want to leave you with an inspirational quote The internet’s gonna be massive, I keep telling you. Jeremy Osborne – Peep…

Doubling down on design

Probably like a lot of web designers I came to design from another industry, performing arts. I never studied design at college or university. You can’t help but learn when you continually work and produce stuff but I always have that feeling “I’m not a trained designer” because I studied dance not design. So I’m gonna go back to the beginning and learn the fundamentals: Form Function Scale Colour Size Space Contrast etc Hopefully…

Lenticular Cat Animation

Lenticular animation is typically created using clever lenses and printing techniques, I wanted to recreate the effect on the web using the same principles. How it works Take an animation and split it into frames. The cat I used for example, this one works particularly well as it’s a silhouette and a pretty recognisable shape that happens to loop well. Then I painstakingly split each frame into 1px slices (I first tried 5px slices…

WordCamp Belfast

I’m currently at WordCamp Belfast writing a blog post on the WordPress iOS app. I’m so meta.

Emoji Domains

This turned out to be a bit of an expensive joke but I recently bought the domain 🍊.ml, It’s a freaking emoji domain name 😱 how cool it that? I wasn’t even aware it was possible but with a bit of research I manage to get it working. How it works You can’t just head over to Godaddy (other domain providers available) and buy ????.com. The problem is URL’s have a limited…

Phats

I know folks like to laugh at people who track their runs on apps like Strava, I’ll admit I’ve lost a run due to some network glitch and had that thought… Ugh! that run was for nothing But I do enjoy tracking my runs,seeing my progress, geeking out over the stats and I get a kick when I find out I’ve ran a personal best. So I made a super simple…

Wheelie Good Friends Tees Arrived

Wheelie Good Friends Tees dropped on my doorstep this morning. Super stoked. Quality is epic.@cottonbureau pic.twitter.com/LmNCnZkxUE — Neil Hainsworth (@_neilorangepeel) July 25, 2016 Read about making the t-shirt → The are here! Really chuffed at how these turned out. Huge thanks to Cotton Bureau, those guys really know how to make nice tees. They are super soft and you can barely feel the ink. Made this goofy stop motion of…

Stage 3 Tanz.io: Budgeting

Read other posts in this series Funding for Tanz.io Stage 1 Tanz.io: Planning Stage 2 Tanz.io: Starting Stage 3 Tanz.io: Budgeting If you haven’t already noticed these posts aren’t in any sort of order—not for the lack of trying but hey. Budgeting! whoop everyone’s favourite subject. I just thought I’d go through my experiences with regards to the money side of this project. How I got some funding, my proposed…

Wheelie Good Friends T-Shirt on Cotton Bureau

BUY: Wheelie Good Friends T-Shirt Last week I submitted my first design to Cotton Bureau, an insanely high quality place to buy and sell t-shirts. I must own 5 different shirts from top designers and the quality of the production: the printing, the inks and the garments are all best you can get. Cotton Bureau is not a labor of love. It’s a business. It also just so happens to…

Future Present Past

I’m a huge fan of The Strokes and they have just announced that they’ll release a new EP called Future Present Past. I was so stoked by that awesome artwork I coded up (on Codepen) a little animation to go with it ????

Stage 2 Tanz.io: Starting

Read other posts in this series Funding for Tanz.io Stage 1 Tanz.io: Planning Stage 2 Tanz.io: Starting Stage 3 Tanz.io: Budgeting And so it begins. Last week we—me, myself, Leonie and Gareth headed into the studio make some art. We had 4 days in DRB to get as much footage as possible. The process I know artists love to talk about their process, well hear me out or humour me…

Stage 1 Tanz.io: Planning

Read other posts in this series Funding for Tanz.io Stage 1 Tanz.io: Planning Stage 2 Tanz.io: Starting Stage 3 Tanz.io: Budgeting In the interest of transparency I’m gonna document my process from idea to completion—being optimistic by using the word completion and pessimistic by feeling the need to point out why I’m using the word completion. I’ll write about all the fears, anxieties and triumphs of leading an artistic project and…

The Dark by Beauty Sleep

At the beginning of the year me and a mate Abbie were asked to do a bit of dancing in a music video for Beauty Sleep. We were sent the track—thankfully it was good because often it’s not, not that I have superior taste in music or anything but I do have superior taste in music, and we rocked up for filming in Belfast. We projected visuals by Aimee Williamson I believe (also…

Happy New Year 2016

I missed last years traditional new years banner image. But I’m back on it with a Paul Rand inspired one this year! Peace and love everyone, here’s to a killer 2016! Cheers ????

Cut me and I bleed merch

At the time of writing Pony Panto is a matter of weeks away (few tickets left themaclive.com). We are well on the way of producing a range of high quality unique merchandise, perfect for stocking…bla bla blah. Here’s a little insight into how it’s going. Calendar It’s ponydance tradition to whip up out own Cliff Richard style calendar. We’d collect a bunch of hilarious pictures from that year, send them off to…

Funding for Tanz.io

Read other posts in this series Funding for Tanz.io Stage 1 Tanz.io: Planning Stage 2 Tanz.io: Starting Stage 3 Tanz.io: Budgeting Some good news this morning, I received SIAP (Support for the Individual Artist) Funding for an online dance installation. I submitted my application in late July, it’s the first time I’ve applied for funding in Northern Ireland so I was unsure how it would turn out, needless to say i’m delighted to…

Fancy Redesign

It’s Autumn 2015 and I’ve finally published a new version of neilorangepeel.com. Many experiments later I feel I’ve landed on something that I like. It’s tricky designing for yourself. I found myself aiming to create some crazy unique layout but the sites I enjoy browsing are the ones that look, feel but more importantly work like they’re are supposed to. Hopefully that doesn’t mean boring, there’s always room to surprise and delight…

CSS Colour Names

It’s funny how the internet works. Last year I created this mini resource of all the valid CSS colour names i.e. tomato. Mainly so I could reference them as I get a kick out of using names rather than #FF6347. Anyway the site sat there discreetly for a good 5 months then I guess someone stumbled upon it, tweeted it and suddenly I was get hundreds of tweets referencing the…

Dribbble Invites

Hi all, after only a week on Dribbble, they have entrusted me with not one but two invites!! And I can’t promise I’ll use them wisely.  So send me your work peeps, drop a link to your various portfolios, etc and I’ll pop along and judge you—not judge! just look at it a bit. Follow me on these things (not required I just want someone to talk to) Dribbble Twitter

CSS Artwork

Recently I have been listening to David Kitt’s The Big Romance non stop. I was equally mesmerised by the albums artwork so I re-created it using HTML + CSS. Obviously drawing with CSS isn’t completely relevant but it does help me learn in a fun way. Both pens were featured on the front page of Codepen (a CSS playground of sorts) which was nice.

CSS Design Awards

I’m delighted to announce that ponydance.com is now a award winning website as well as an award winning dance company! I had as much fun creating this website as I do dancing for the “Frisky dance troup”—Leonie will kill me for that! Check us out front page and everything 🙂 http://www.cssdesignawards.com/

Free Social Icons

When working on a new project, I always find myself looking for a social media icon pack. Finding one that matches my design is never an easy job but I almost always just want the most simple icons, no sketchy nonsense, no mad gradients or reflections just the official logo’s. So I took it upon myself to have a go at creating some and now I have a little resource…

Introducing Tink Tank

I recently launched Tink Tank, a WordPress theme hub with free themes designed for writers, bloggers, artists and basically anyone looking for a simple, clean online space to publish! I was spurred on to make Tink Tank after countless conversations with dance artists who needed a way to promote their work online but who also had zero – limited budgets. That and because I found it increasingly difficult to see…

.svg Selfy

Today I messed around with the vector tool in Sketch App. By hand I picked out the highlights of a photo and hand traced using the vector tool. It’s a little tricky to begin with but a great way to learn the vector tool just by using it. I know there is a way to do this automatically in Illustrator but I prefer the by-hand look.

Kicking Ass with em’s and percentages

Don’t you just love those moments when a penny drops? I get those a lot when I’m designing, not because i’m soo smart but because there is so much to learn. When I read a blog post on a new technique—sure it makes sense but it’s not until you work on a real world example you get the ‘Ahhh’ moment. I had this recently when working on a top secret client site….

Happy New Year 2013

Happy New Year Everyone, liven up your desktop with a fancy wallpaper I whipped up. Download it here.

Antisocial

I decided to get rid of all my social media accounts. Apart from Twitter and Facebook. I really didn’t realise how many platforms I had a ‘presence’ on. A lot of these hadn’t been touched in months/years. MySpace – Ha! I didn’t take to it because of the HTML/CSS customisation! I now make websites… goes to show. LinkedIN – Never found it useful. Yahoo – Needed only for Flickr – which is also gone. Flickr –…