Simple, clear websites.
I’m a designer, writer, and photographer — though most clients come to me for web development. I create simple, clear sites that help organisations connect with their audiences.
If you’d like to discuss a project, get in touch at [email protected].
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Featured
Recent sites for campaigns, theatre companies and transport groups — plus a running stream of photographs.
Web designGet Glasgow Moving
Helping a grassroots public transport campaign to build their membership.
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Web designPrivatisation Departures Board
Counts down to rail renationalisation for Bring Back British Rail.
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Web designPositive Stories for Negative Times
Collaboration with Orlando Lloyd to bring Wonder Fools theatre online.
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Web designWonder Fools
Website for the award-winning Scottish theatre company.
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Web designBetter Buses for Strathclyde
Campaign site for improved bus services across Strathclyde.
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PhotographyPictures, mostly of Glasgow
Street, weather and the odd pigeon — posted as I go.
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The Crop
A newsletter about photography: what makes a picture, who took it, and what happens when you look a little longer.
2026
Buying the Story
Highlights from the Art Car Boot Sale
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You Can Just Do Things
... especially if your name is Sam. Photo essay from 36 hours in Dublin.
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Local Wiki to Walkipedia
What happened when my remix of Local Wikipedia went mega viral
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Through the looking-glass
Ten favourites from Magnum’s Fact/Fiction Square Print Sale
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Alone, Together
Pie Aerts on Coirón, his book about the puesteros of Patagonia
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Opening the Crisp Packet
Or, why I go to so many cultural events and what I do when I get there
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What will happen to your photos when you die?
An interview with photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert about archives and mortality
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The Age of Abundance
September 2026 in Photos and Links
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Urban Coincidence
Is it an advert dreaming it is art or art dreaming it is an advert?
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Activism beyond the Art World
Photographs from ten years of Get Glasgow Moving, plus an interview with Ellie Harrison from the archives
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After the wildfires
It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism
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Stopping the rot
Watching myself on Instagram
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Niddrie Woman
A visit to the Extraction exhibition at Jupiter Artland via the Broxburn bings
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A Life Lived Forwards
Jillian Edelstein on portraits, masks and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
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The Sitemap
An index of everything I have published here
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All is Vanity
George Orwell, FaceApp and the perils of post-processing photos
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From the archive
Older projects, kept on the shelf.
All experiments
146 sketches, type specimens and layouts — this page is one of them.
- html
Photographs of British Algae
Anna Atkins' cyanotype book of seaweeds, 1843–53, as three volumes you can turn the pages of: all 424 pages of the Natural History Museum copy, with each plate enlarged from the museum's own scans
152 - html
The Pencil of Nature
Talbot's 1844 book of photographs as a book you can turn the pages of: all 24 plates from the Met's scans, the full text set at the original page breaks, and the woodcut initials from the first edition
151 - html
Noble Savage
Recent web design work pulled from the CV into a standalone site under the old Noble Savage name, with a woodcut green man on field green
150 - html
Daydream Flight
After a vintage Aeroflot label: fly the plane through the stars to ring them, switch on the city's lights and take the sun down behind the hills
149 - html
A Dictionary of Moving Words
Fourteen verbs, each set so the word does what it means, covering the common ways to animate text. Type your own word to see how it behaves
148 - html
Scamp
A low-fi mockup generator. Type an outline, get clickable wireframe screens, adjust them by hand, then export a prototype that works with no JavaScript
147 - html
Fix This Poster
A bad concert poster corrected by six lessons from Swiss design as you scroll, then a studio on Gerstner's 58-unit grid for making your own and downloading it
147 - html
Glasgow
A guide to Glasgow from saved bookmarks, arranged as stops on the Subway circle: places, history, architecture, art, food and pubs, and a directory of design and web studios
146 - html
Drift
Twenty years of Pinboard bookmarks as a survey of subjects and sites, with the bookmarks behind any year, tag or site one selection away
145 - html
Tag Gardener
A working tool for cleaning up Pinboard tags: review suggested merges by keyboard, add renames, and download a script that applies them
144 - html
Years Ago Today
Pick a date and see what Neil bookmarked on it in past years, with links to the Internet Archive in case a page has gone
143 - html
Still There
A working list of Pinboard bookmarks whose link didn't reach the saved page on one check, with a way to try an older copy at the Internet Archive
142 - html
Cognitive Bias Roulette
The Cognitive Bias Codex as a roulette wheel. Spin it, land on a bias and read Wikipedia's introduction, with 85 biases the codex was missing
141 - html
How the World Became an Image
A history of photography to scroll through and play with — where light sits on the electromagnetic spectrum, why the camera image is upside down, what light does to silver, and the earliest surviving photographs
140 - html
Possible Solution Brand
An old layout sketch built in HTML — a yellow PS logo and pale repeating type over grey blocks
139 - html
Web Design Reference
A 2010 mockup built in HTML — a quiet reference page with an eye logo and a blue updated band
138 - html
About Work Blog
A mockup built in HTML — about, work and blog side by side in teal, white and sand with a black name rail
137 - html
Wireless
An old mockup built in HTML — one big portfolio photograph with previous and next blocks under a small header
136 - html
Circles
An old mockup built in HTML — a pixelated portrait with bright coloured circles for navigation
135 - html
Columns
A 2018 mockup built in HTML — five full-height ruled columns for article, portfolio, reading, listening, links and photos
134 - html
Momus
A 2020 mockup built in HTML — a coral Syne headline and a flat pink illustrated face
133 - html
Bonobo
An old mockup built in HTML — a cut-paper collage of a bonobo, a stag and sunburst stripes with a tilted article over it
132 - html
Steve Jobs
An old mockup of an article built in HTML — a giant face and huge headline on navy, with a Who The badge
131 - html
Possible Solution
An old mockup built in HTML — practical ideas to save the world, with the Earth, coloured people and cloud-shaped photos
130 - html
Links
An old mockup of a links page built in HTML — a giant colour wheel logo and LINKS over three columns of months
129 - html
Triangles
An old mockup of a home page built in HTML — big Futura headings in dark and yellow blocks on a grey field of triangles
128 - html
Digital Decay
An old mockup of a home page built in HTML — a big serif headline, a folded-corner bio card and a sidebar of projects
127 - html
Raging Bitch
An old mockup of an article built in HTML — a fat Bodoni italic headline, a colour wheel logo and an orange email button
126 - html
Strathblane
An old mockup of a portfolio page built in HTML — a site screenshot with a dark rainbow-topped panel floating over it
125 - html
Projects
An old mockup built in HTML — twenty past projects as circles on dark, brightening on hover
124 - html
John Moore
An old mockup of a portfolio page built in HTML — a site screenshot on white, a see-also circle and a pale footer
123 - html
Garlic
An old mockup of a lifestream post built in HTML — one white column on dark with faint icons down the margin
122 - html
Lifestream
An old mockup built in HTML — notes, bookmarks and photos on dark, each with its own icon, under a rainbow bar
121 - html
Hierarchy of Design Needs
An old mockup built in HTML — a white article pointing at my name on dark, between rainbow bars
120 - html
Theory and Practice
Two old mockups of the same home page built as one — theory, practice, links and projects above a dark testimonials footer
119 - html
F91W Mindful
An old mockup built in HTML — an experiment in living mindfully on a rainbow of pixels drawn fresh with every load
118 - html
F91W
Two old versions of the F91W agency page built as one — a heavy logo, highlighter yellow and pale cream
117 - html
Neilism Card
Two old mockups of Neilism built as one page — white post cards with a round date stamp, Garamond italic titles and a coloured nav
116 - html
Neilism
Two old mockups of Neilism built as one page — a single column of big photos and essays with a tall tight wordmark
115 - html
Neilism Columns
An old mockup of Neilism built in HTML — a two-column living magazine in grey with an icon for every kind of post
114 - html
Who Do You Think You Are?
An old mockup built in HTML — heavy rules, a script strapline, and journal, portfolio, photos and contact in a tight grid
113 - html
Swirl
Two old mockups of the same blog built in HTML — a grey swirl, my name running up the page, and a sidebar of Flickr and bookmarks
112 - html
Puffy
An old mockup built in HTML — wobbling puffy letters, a pink starburst and black posts on graph paper
111 - html
Neil Stepped
A 2007 mockup built in HTML — heavy black rules, a stepped NEIL logo, and a grey band for portfolio, linklog and reading
110 - html
Neil Bubble
The Design Notebook layout with real posts from 2006 — a stepped NEIL and a thought bubble on black, above reading lists
109 - html
The Design Notebook
An old mockup built in HTML — a black masthead in slab serif, two grey columns and a Banksy photo on graph paper
108 - html
Neil Article
An old mockup of an article page on my site built in HTML — a Geigy poster and a circle on a ruled white sheet between rainbow bars
107 - html
Neil
An old mockup of my home page built in HTML — a colour wheel logo and colour-coded corner flags on each section
106 - html
CV
My old CV as a web page — two columns of Inconsolata with Jaapokki headings — rebuilt as one file
105 - html
Slideshow
A slideshow for photographers — uncropped pictures on black, and a black-and-white contact print marked up in red chinagraph
104 - html
Design Ideas Factory
An old mockup built in HTML — a stack of paper with index tabs down the side, a stepped NEIL logo with a thought bubble, a big S and a red circle
103 - html
Dig-it/AL
A landing page mockup for Culture Republic's digital hub — five full-height colour panels of illustration and big narrow type — rebuilt as one file
102 - html
Hot Chip
The Why Make Sense? era Hot Chip site from 2015 — crossed stripes at a random angle on a random colour with every load, plus the news archive — rebuilt as one file
101 - typography
Zeitgeist
The history of the spirit of the age, from Herder and the French Revolution to Hegel and now, told over a Republican calendar year and using every axis and OpenType feature in Geist Sans, Mono, Pixel and Serif
100 - svg
Logos
A big alphabetical grid of SVG logos for different organisations — copy the code or download the file
100 - html
Good
The good-css techniques put to work on a sample magazine — an issue of The Crop with a cover, an interview, a photo carousel and back issues
98 - html
Good CSS
All 47 techniques from Vojta Holik's good-css on one standalone page — each with its code, its reasons and a live, resizable specimen
97 - html
David Devant
A photocopied fanzine discography for David Devant & His Spirit Wife — every release in order, with playable tracks and taped-in photos
96 - html
Native Components
Every cult-ui component rebuilt from scratch in plain HTML, CSS and JS — no React, Tailwind or Motion
95 - typography
The Analects
Confucius in James Legge's translation, set with ink, rice paper, cinnabar seals and bamboo-slip contents
94 - typography
Nightmare Abbey
Specimen for a variable titling face built from a single static master — weight and width axes, kerning, and how it was derived
93 - typography
Font Pairing
Pick a heading and body face from the font library — each face is only downloaded once it's selected
92 - test
Areal
91 - html
HTML Magazine
Native browser UI — dialog, popover, :has, container queries — plus variable modes on a data attribute per axis
90 - test
GSAMFA
83 - test
Woodcut
82 - test
The Radish
81 - test
Jury Games
80 - test
Crimson Pro
79 - test
Light Dark
78 - test
Newsreader
77 - test
Type
76 - test
NS
75 - test
Euclid
74 - test
Outlined
73 - test
Rotate
72 - test
Blaze
71 - test
Garamond
70 - test
Sticky
69 - test
Paradise Lost
68 - test
NS
67 - test
Xmas 2021
66 - test
Xmas 2020
65 - test
Xmas 2019
64 - test
Xmas 2018
63 - test
Xmas 2016
62 - test
Xmas 2015
61 - test
Xmas 2013
60 - test
Xmas 2010
59 - test
Xmas 2009
58 - test
Three Col
57 - test
Crop
56 - test
Rectangles
55 - test
Stack
54 - test
Retire
53 - test
Sutras
52 - test
Bookmarks
51 - test
Outlined
50 - test
Playfair
48 - test
Linktree
47 - test
Low Carbon
46 - test
QR
45 - test
Crop
44 - test
Crop
43 - test
Variables
42 - test
Baskerville
41 - test
Garamond
40 - test
FAQ
39 - test
Fraunces
38 - test
Elements
37 - test
NS
36 - test
NS
35 - test
Cardo
34 - test
Garamond
33 - test
Sabon
32 - test
Instagram
31 - test
Neilism
30 - test
NS
29 - test
Noble Savage
28 - test
Hoefler
27 - test
YouTube BG
26 - test
Garamond
25 - test
NS 2020
24 - canvas
Draw the Beard
Give the baker a beard — whiskers, bushy or fine, in four colours, with undo, trim and save. Works with mouse, pen or finger
23 - test
GSAP
22 - test
Horizontal Scroll
21 - test
Geolocation
20 - test
On
19 - test
Three Col
18 - test
Iframe
17 - test
Business Card
16 - test
Responsive Type
15 - test
Curtains
14 - test
Sticky Cards
13 - test
Tao
12 - test
Hamburger
11 - test
Glasgow
10 - test
Drag
09 - test
Arial Times
08 - test
Menu Underline
07 - test
Atomic Home
06 - test
Post-it Note
05 - test
Noble Savage
04 - test
Intersection Observer
03 - images
Quick Gallery
Ensure images fit
02 - animation
First Concept
Testing layout animations
01