Alex Magill - Writing

I’ve been meaning to add illustrations to this site for a long time.

Design is about problem solving - working within constraints to achieve a certain, set, and ideally measurable goal.

I've been thinking recently about stats driven design.

The challenge most run into by designers is being given a solution rather than a problem.

There are three things that I talk through with any client when I’m talking about websites: 1.

I think of knowledge as something like an octopus, a splotchy, wriggling ink-blot shape that stretches out in many directions and across dimensions.

I wanted to share, and document, a little bit about how I now manage this site, and how it's changed over the years.

Earlier this month I passed the decade mark for Bold Wise.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that conversations about digital projects have a tendency to become conversations about features.

Updated 03/06/2026: A lot has changed in the 8 or so months since I wrote this.

I've spent down-time moments this week playing with my sites.

There are three phrases you hear over and over again as a designer: make it look professional make it look good, and make it pop!

Note: I posted this to LinkedIn first, but wanted to record it here too.

Much of what I spend my days doing is about tangles.

There’s a folk tale about Stone Soup.

One of the challenges I face in my work is that things often feel obvious in hindsight.

Back in 2020 I wrote about the milestone of a decade of self employment, and in 2022 I wrote about re-positioning things.

It's been a very busy two years since that last Moving to Mastodon post.

I set up a Mastodon account towards the tail-end of last year when my former favourite social media platform became a billionaires personal dumpster fire.

I've been thinking a lot about why I write here, and what I get out of it, and I’ve realised it’s a handful of things.

I’ve written before (and thought a lot) about the uncomfortable aspects of design.

A lot has change in the couple of years since I launched the Bold Wise website.

There's often a challenge in moving from the ‘what’ to the ‘why’ in the projects I work on.

I was introduced to the term alphabetising the recycling on one of Merlin Mann's podcasts, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I seem to go through a cycle of thinking I ask ‘why’ way too much, and then, shortly after, that I don’t ask ‘why’ nearly enough.

For the past (checks last post date) six or so months, I've posted nothing here.

As foreshadowed I've moved the site's generator over to Eleventy.

Today, in a handful of lines of pretty much copied and pasted code, I solved a bug that’s been plaguing a client site for months - if not years.

I've now been self-employed or run my own business for over a decade.

I recently completed the Couch to 5k programme.

My first experience of running a branding project happened in my teens, before I was even aware of branding as a thing and a long time before I considered a career in design.

In previous stages of my career I framed design as a problem solving activity.

Last month I suddenly realised I knew far more about a topic than I'd previously thought.

I just switched this site over to Jekyll.

In my work there is always an urge to tread new ground, to discover, to create what’s never been created or seen before.

Design is uncomfortable.

I talk to my phone, my wrist, my iPad and, occasionally, my computer.

I find myself scribbling this diagram, and working through these ideas with people, frequently so I thought I’d write it up and share some brief notes here.

Since I founded Bold Wise — and, in fact, since I began the freelancing work that would grow into Bold Wise — my site has been a fairly empty holding page.