The Big Chip Awards are coming up in May, and I’m quite excited to be going again. Last year, the party was great, and it was good to see the quality and variety of digital projects going on in the North West.

Brilliant news for Jamie Clouting, who has been short listed for the award of Best Rising Star. Jamie does some excellent Online Marketing work for PushON, and will be joining full time shortly.

Virtuaffinity has been shortlisted for the Webdesign they have done for Didsbury Magazine; this project has been shortlisted for Best Commercial Website.

And it’s great to see Fudge shortlisted for Best Use of Visual Design for BGS Boys. Fudge have also been nominated for Best Use of Visual Design in the Dadi awards, for rags-to-bitches and BGS Boys. They do some stunning Flash Website Design.

Should be a good night!

As you’ll notice, I’m all for CSS based Web design, I prefer this method because it’s more flexible and updates can be made to the design by changing one file rather than each html page.

It’s also good for search engine spiders and screen readers, making it more accessible to visually impared users.

Manchester NTI offer a range of CSS courses, from beginner to advanced CSS.

• CSS and Web Standards Website Design (Beginners)

• CSS and Web Standards Website Design (Intermediate)

• CSS - Advanced Layouts and Accessibility

I came across Anna Sui’s new microsite - Fantasy Rocks, it shows beautiful flash design.