At Mint we spend so much time in the digital space, it's a breath of fresh air to take a step back and embrace the permanence of print.

The end of 2010 represented a suitable opportunity to re-vamp our business cards so I thought I'd share a little about how we set about refreshing the design.

(This is the fourth and final post in a series documenting the making of our Android concepts. Catch up on the first, second and third.)

Instapaper has been one of my favourite apps for the iPhone for quite some time now. On the odd day I use public transport, catching up with my 'read later' list is both time efficient and a great way to relieve boredom.

Since starting at Mint, I have had the pleasure of living close enough to walk to work, a luxury I'm sure many people don't have. However, this means that I find myself needing to make time to 'read later' opposed to taking advantage of those convenient moments. I thought it would be a novel idea if I could listen to my Instapaper articles on my walk to work and in a way, become the curator of my very own podcast.

(This is the third post in a series documenting the making of our Android concepts. Catch up on the first and second. Look out for the fourth installment tomorrow.)

Having lived in the US for about a year now, it felt about time I started learning a little about the fundamentals of American sport. A New York brainstorm topic, 'Enhancing sporting events through mobile', led Mr. Corrigan to step up to the plate with an exciting germ of an idea named 'batting scope'. A promising concept and an excuse to learn the rules of baseball? How could I not develop this idea?!

(This is the second post in a series documenting the making of our Android concepts. The first is over here. Look out for the third instalment tomorrow.)

Hold That Sound started out from my laziness and frustration with downloading conference talks. My morning commute was the perfect time to catch up on them but the problem was getting the audio from the web onto my phone. It was annoying to have to deal with downloading the files, importing everything to iTunes then searching for the cable to sync the lot. I wanted to make this process as seamless as bookmarking a page.

This led my to my first sketch of how an app to solve this might work. I wanted to bypass any need for downloading to my desktop and simply pass the http:// link for the audio file from the website to the phone in one step.

(This is the first post in a series documenting the making of our Android concepts. Look out for the second instalment tomorrow morning.)

As a designer and visual creative, I always wanted a way of checking my image based feeds on my mobile phone. Surprisingly, until very recently, there was no app specifically designed for that task.

In one of our Friday brainstorms on mobile, I shared my frustration. That's how the idea started: as my desire to address that problem.

If there was such an app, what would it be like?

Following the recent launch of IT'S MY TIME for Benetton, I wanted to give a little insight into our UX process with snippets from our approach and how we've tried to apply this thinking to IT'S MY TIME. I'll start with the obvious...

There are two very distinct phases to UX design:

A few months back, I read Visual Decision Making. It's all about the role of visual aesthetics in web design. The author, Patrick Lynch, talks about how "classical aesthetics stress orderliness and clarity in design", and "expressive aesthetics emphasise originality, creativity, and visual richness".

I'm a huge advocate of the classical aesthetic. In fact, I believe it's the best aesthetic model to adopt when designing a social website. Here are four reasons why.

Unlike the world economy, Mint's design team has increased in size over the past few months. This has allowed us to spend some quality time focusing on refining the Mint 'brand'. Clearly, the first step in this process was to ask everyone at Mint their favourite anagram of MINT DIGITAL. Some highlights include:

It a Mild Ting
Man Id Gilt It
Tim Gitin' Laid
Giant Tim Lid
Militant Dig
Tidal Timing
Dig Latin Tim

Aside from some great anagrams, this may appear like a bit of a waste of time. However, it was useful in helping set the tone in how we approached standardising and unifying exposure to the Mint brand.

After learning that this year's New York Future of Web Design Conference would land on election day and be situated right next to Times Square, I expected a rather exciting and inspirational atmosphere.

My personal highlights were...

Yesterday Utku and I popped down to the Future of Web Design conference in West London to learn things, meet people and set off fire extinguishers.

Yet again, Carsonified put together a strong line-up of speakers covering a wide range of topics themed around where design on the web is currently heading. After the pre-conference party the night before we made a slightly slow start to the conference but soon got to hear some great talks.