Blog of website & interface designer, Darran Morris.

I wanted something a bit cooler for my iPhone wallpaper so ran this up this morning. I love dark backgrounds on the phone with just minimal little details. I also have this thing for skulls. Look, I don’t know why, they just look cool.

So here you go, might as well share this with you lot. 3G and Retina display sizes included.  Enjoy :)

Just started using Modx Revolution on a project and it is awesome. Incredible work, and it looks like 2.08 is just out too so I’ll have to get my greasy paws on that.

I had a few issues moving Modx to a new server today. There’s an excellent article on the Modx help site that tells you almost everything you need to know.

If you’re just zipping up your Modx site or copying it and can’t maintain permissions for one reason or another, this can lead to weird problems such as the manager login page not displaying.

So make sure you make the following directories writable by the webserver:

assets/components/
assets/images/
core/cache
core/components/
core/export/
core/packages/

This is just from my experience, so if all these are not necessary, or if I’m missing something, just let me know and I’ll update this post.

Got some squeaky clean new design work up on app-bits.com, go over there and take a look. Been about time I did some updates around here. Each one was a really interesting project, here’s a little more info on some of them.

Pocket Wine has a really clever way of introducing new wines by categorising them in terms of style, then bringing you down a road of discovery. I worked closely with Mike from Wine Paradigm (I designed the site too incidentally!), to design a user interface that represented the information hierarchy in an intuitive way. The colour coding and icon system, keep you in touch with where you are consistently throughout the app.

Mobimaths is an initiative between the NDRC, Trinity College Dublin and GoKnow Inc. It is a series of mobile apps that help school kids get to grips with basic mathematical concepts in an interactive way. Each app was designed to look like a funky and new device which the students use to complete small projects such as measuring angles, distance, working with fractions and more.

Daily Word Search is a cool little word search game that has new word searches every day. Great little app and put together really well.

Got a whole bunch of new stuff up on Poly.ie. Been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to post an update in months.

Included are:

The cool new Irish startup United We Save with some cute illustrations.
The Whiskeymarch (wish I could have been there) organised by the awesome Echolibre.
Wine Paradigm for the incredible Pocket Wine, (app which I also designed).
A logo for Skylight, a new online project management tool.
And finally Olive Academy, a brand new training web app from Olive Media.

Update: With a bit of Google’s help, I found the guy’s email. He says he just commissioned the site, and he got screwed by an outsourcing company. He removed the sites in minutes.

Update 2: Out of consideration I have removed links to their site and their name from this article. Benefit of the doubt and all that.

Well, I suppose its inevitable. And hilarious really.

My mobile app icon and interface design site app-bits.com just got completely and utterly plagarised. Not only did they completely rob the entire look of the site, they also completely ripped off the copy. The only thing changed was to add their logo, change app-bits to their name. The cherry on top? They had the where with all to update the Copyright message to have their name!

The email address on the site doesn’t work, the Whois doesn’t contain any information for me, (except for the name Name Removed) to get in touch with them, so I just have to call them out.

Dude, if you are reading this blog post and own this site, take it down. What a RIP.

I have been a bit busy lately. So I sneaked one site up without even letting you know.

Origin Technologies are a programming company in Dublin. They hired me to do a rebrand and create a slick new site for them. Take a look, its over at origintech.ie.

Next up: Science Picture Company. These guys create amazing quality 3D scientific stock imagery. I did branding, web design and HTML/css for their new website. Check it out - Science Picture Company.

Here’s a new site from Poly, it’s called VLAB.

VLAB is an immersive 3-D environment created by projecting onto four screens, everything given that extra dimension through the use of a trendy pair of spectacles.

The homepage takes those awesome red-green cardboard glasses we probably all used to varying effect back in the day. The textures give a tech feel to the site and of course plenty of whitespace to give that airy feeling.

As usual, the site uses the latest and greatest Modx CMS which allows @fredherrera in IADT to keep everything up to date.

So head over and take a gander. I’m pleased with this one!

Sometimes you just have to spend your long weekend working on something because there is no other time to do it! Hence was begotten the new, rather slight, Poly website. Awesome.

Its been difficult these days to find time to put up my new work. I realised that one of the problems was that I had to write three paragraphs on the job I had just done, and I just couldn’t find the time!

Hope you like the new site. Let me know if any creases still need ironing.

Oh and more new work coming real soon.

Finished this insane but awesome site for a bunch of mad people early this year. If ever a country needed to take a lighter look at life, its Ireland at the moment and these guys definitely have their finger on the pulse, creating new hilarious satire every week.

It was an incredibly interesting site to work on. I had never worked on a magazine or newspaper type site before and they have a unique set of challenges for the designer. I will write a bit more on how we worked to produce the site later on. Right now have the head stuck in several other big projects!

Just before Christmas we finished the Affordable Home Solicitors website for Lawplus.

The site is clean, clear and presents the information in an easy to digest manner. Photography and imagery give a friendly approachable feel to the site.

Read more in our work section or visit the website. Enjoy!