Frederick O'Brien

Albion, London

Multimedia Journalist and Copywriter at Freelance

Section Editor at Smashing Magazine

Software Engineer at The Guardian

https://t.co/cvDwA7JE45

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Articles

What Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance Can Teach Us About Web Design — Smashing Magazine

2 weeks ago | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

15 min readBest Practices,Inspiration,Mental Health,Web DesignShare on Twitter, LinkedInRoad-tripping along the line between engineering and spirituality, Robert M. Pirsig’s musings on the arts, sciences, and Quality ring as true now as they ever have. I think we, as engineers and designers, have a lot to gain by stepping outside of our worlds. That’s why in previous pieces I’ve been drawn towards architecture, newspapers, and the occasional polymath.
UK energy suppliers paid out £20m for billing mistakes in five years

Feb 15, 2025 | theguardian.com | Frederick O'Brien

Britain’s big energy providers have paid more than £20m in compensation to customers for billing mistakes over the past five years, analysis by Guardian Money has found, with British Gas paying out more than a fifth of the total. We analysed cases handled by the Energy Ombudsman, the service which steps in if a customer and energy company are unable to resolve a complaint within eight weeks of it being made.
Svelte 5 And The Future Of Frameworks: A Chat With Rich Harris — Smashing Magazine

Jan 28, 2025 | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

7 min readFrameworks,Coding,Tools,TechniquesShare on Twitter, LinkedInAfter months of anticipation, debate, and even a bit of apprehension, Svelte 5 arrived earlier this year. Frederick O’Brien caught up with its creator, Rich Harris, to talk about the path that brought him and his team here and what lies ahead. Svelte occupies a curious space within the web development world.
An Ode To Side Project Time — Smashing Magazine

Jan 17, 2025 | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

6 min readCareer,Opinion Column,Workflow,InspirationShare on Twitter, LinkedInA once-revered perk of some tech workplaces, the status of ‘side project time’ seems to have slipped in recent years. Frederick O’Brien believes it deserves a comeback. There seemed to be a hot minute when the tech industry understood the value of idle tinkering and made a point of providing ‘side project time’ as an explicit working perk.
The Timeless Power Of Spreadsheets — Smashing Magazine

Sep 23, 2024 | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

7 min readData Visualization,Research,ToolsShare on Twitter, LinkedInIn this age of endless newfangled organizational tools, the spreadsheet holds firm. Frederick O’Brien explains how, from engineering to design, they can still provide a rock-solid foundation for your work. Part of me can’t believe I’m writing this article. Applying the insights of Leonardo da Vinci or Saul Bass to web design is more my groove, but sometimes you simply have to write about spreadsheets. You have to advocate for them.
Cooking up recipe data for the Feast app

Sep 22, 2024 | theguardian.com | Frederick O'Brien

You may have heard the Guardian has a new cooking app called Feast. With thousands of searchable recipes, cook mode, and lots of other lovely features, it’s been well received on both iOS and Android. You should definitely get it. No article on its own could possibly do justice to the work that’s gone into making Feast a reality (a big book might be able to pull it off) but this is a look at a vital piece of the app - its data. There’s no recipe app without recipe data.
MDX Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Multimedia Writing — Smashing Magazine

Jun 21, 2024 | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

13 min readContent,Inspiration,MDXShare on Twitter, LinkedInBalancing the age-old simplicity of words on paper with the myriad creative possibilities of the web is a tension as old as the web itself. Leaning into that overlap can bring new dimensions not just to the things we write but also to how we write them. Prior to the World Wide Web, the act of writing remained consistent for centuries. Words were put on paper, and occasionally, people would read them.
Generator | teeline.online

Jan 27, 2024 | teeline.online | Frederick O'Brien

This feature is a work in progress so take results with a grain of salt.
Designing Web Design Documentation — Smashing Magazine

Nov 13, 2023 | smashingmagazine.com | Frederick O’Brien |Frederick O'Brien

13 min readWeb Design,Workflow,Design Systems,Best PracticesShare on Twitter, LinkedInWords alone aren’t enough to safeguard best practices in the world of web design and development. Web design documentation must be like its medium — interactive and constantly evolving. As an occasionally competent software developer, I love good documentation. It explains not only how things work but why they work the way they do. At its best, documentation is much more than a guide.
X: Social Medium

Sep 9, 2023 | audioxide.com | Frederick O'Brien |Andrew Bridge

In which followers are on sale The Band with No Name blew town in a daze of hysteria. Word of their gig had spread like wildfire and the Neon Duck was desperate to book them again. Elaine Gould hadn’t let them. Instead they were beelining down the motorway. Alan Hazard watched the tenements blur past from the window seat of the van. ‘Why couldn’t we stay?’ he said. ‘They were gagging for more gigs. The people loved me.’Gould glanced at him from the driver’s seat.