FortySeven Media

Kick Awesome Web Design, Graphic Design & Media Creation

Business Entries ~

Tips for Freelancer Websites - The Groundwork

Thursday, August 12, 2010 ~ 1:09 pm

Tips for Freelancer Websites

We have a lot of designers email us and ask for advice. One common thread lately seems to be "How do I get my freelancing career going?" Well, thanks to the Internet there's lots of ways! First let's talk about your website. Are you getting traffic? What happens when users get there? Do you even know? If you're having trouble making your website work for you then read ahead:

A Solid HTML Foundation

Obviously, if you want people to actually …

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What happens when you don’t give up?

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 ~ 10:22 am

Hello everyone! You might have noticed that it has been a little quiet around here the past few months. Despite the fact that I have alerts telling me “Post To the FortySeven Media Weblog!” every Tuesday around lunch time, I have not managed to compose even one post in ages due to a crazy amount of projects we have running. I reflected on this for a moment just now and I realized something. When you don’t give up on your dream, you will most likely succeed. But the even bigger thought …

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Get the Fear Out

Thursday, June 24, 2010 ~ 9:08 am

scaredy cat

Our doorbell rang at 10:00 last night. Ashley and I looked at each other. “That’s weird, who in the world would be at our door this late?” I said. We’re not the type to have people over at all hours of the night. Since most of our friends have kids now, everyone packs up at 8 or so to get home before the tantrums begin. But either way, no one shows up on our doorstep this time of night. 

I went …

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It’s Conference Time!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 ~ 10:52 am

Hey Everyone! How’s it’s going? It’s been a while since we’ve posted as things have been silly crazy awesome busy, but we wanted to let you know about some of the super sweet conferences we are speaking at and/or just going to. Check the video:

 

Links to things in the video:

We are very excited to be speaking/attending these events and we would absolutely love to meet you there. Let us know in the comments if …

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Being a Good Neighbor

Thursday, March 25, 2010 ~ 8:38 am

I’ll admit it. I’m not really a social person. We’ve lived in our neighborhood almost 6 years and I can count the number of times we’ve talked to our neighbors on my hand. And by talk I mean had a full conversation. So yeah, not a lot.

Several weeks ago we put our house on the market. Too many kids, not enough rooms; you know the drill. We’ve outgrown this place, unfortunately. And in preparation to sell it, we needed to finish replacing all the doors and trim we had started …

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Five Days of DesignHope

Thursday, March 11, 2010 ~ 5:06 pm

5 days of DesignHope

I’ll just come out and say it. DesignHope has taken way too long. What started as a great idea with support from some of the coolest companies out there turned into a long drawn out process that still isn’t finished. Scott, we’re sorry, man. I hope you haven’t minded being the guinea pig. We still have big plans for DesignHope, but obviously we need to get …

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DesignersMusic.com: Find & Share Great Music with Other Designers

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 ~ 11:45 pm

First off, let me say that we're psyched to finally be able to share this project with you. We believe that side projects don't work unless you're passionate about them. Well, guess what? We love music and we love design. They go hand in hand, really. So we decided that there should be a place where designers can find new music recommended by other designers: DesignersMusic

Go play with it now …

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Keep Trying to Get Better

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 ~ 9:03 am

I would guess that 90% of the people you meet deal with the same problems they’ve dealt with their whole life. Maybe they’re workaholics (lifting my own hand). Maybe they have anger issues. Maybe they’re lazy or maybe they lack self esteem.

We all have personality traits and tendencies that we’re not proud of, but that’s no excuse to accept them.

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Or maybe in this case becoming aware that you need to change something. Depending on what the problem …

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Do We Serve Ourselves or Our Clients?

Monday, November 30, 2009 ~ 4:19 pm

I fired one of our first clients last week. It was messy and no fun for everyone involved. I also managed to get a lecture from the president of that company on how to run my business and better serve the needs of my clients.

While the initial reaction for any of us would probably be thoughts of a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face (in slow motion, of course), the whole incident made me think hard about what 47m is at it's core, and what it truly means to serve …

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Design Hope: Final Logo

Thursday, October 08, 2009 ~ 9:13 am

Underdog Solutions Final Logo

Folks, we have a winner! Scott has officially declared the final logo to be Number 3 from the last round minus the tilting. Though not apparently obvious, this version was completely redone, ensuring spacing and alignment was perfect and optimized where necessary. The Solutions font was beefed up a bit, too. Good call on that one, loyal readers! Not much else to say here, really. Since we’re starting from the ground up and have such a strong and simple mark, …

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Dear Small Businesses: Some Advice

Friday, October 02, 2009 ~ 10:03 am

I would wager that the majority of web designers end up doing work for small to medium-sized businesses. And I'm sure we all have a fantastic story of how ludicrous they can be sometimes. After a few "interesting" experiences, I've had this one rolling around in me for a while. Small business people; we love you, but pay attention, alright?

We Understand it's Your Baby

If anyone can sympathize with a small business owner it's a small web design shop. We know you busted your tail, working night and day to …

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Speaking at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 ~ 4:00 pm

The European ExpressionEngine CodeIgniter Conference

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a workshop at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden, Netherlands October 22-23, 2009. I’m really excited about this trip because 1.) I’ve never been out of the country and 2.) The group of people at this conference are amazing. Honestly, I’m quite humbled by the lineup. How did I get to be invited again? I can’t even list them all here, but include household names …

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Minimizing Distractions on Your Mac

Thursday, August 13, 2009 ~ 2:47 pm

So this little blog popped up a couple of weeks ago called Minimal Mac. Yeah, yeah Macs are minimal; we all know that right? Steve Jobs hates buttons, blah blah blah. Ok, but how about when you're using them day to day?

As we've become more involved in the community I've been finding myself more and more distracted as of late. I'm trying to work, but there's a new RSS feed I need to read. Or a new email that just came in. Twitter just never stops. Ever. …

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Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) in Design ~ Business ~ Apple ~ Personal ~ (7) Comments ~

Front-End Design Conference Presentation Notes

Monday, August 03, 2009 ~ 10:26 am

Hilton in St. Petersburg, FL

Well, Nate and I made it back from our trek to the sunny St. Petersburg, FL and the Front-End Design Conference where I was a speaker. Let me tell you right now; we both had a great time. Dan Denney (@webdesignfanboy) went all out for his first event and went out of his way to make us feel welcome. From the coffee cups with our cartoon characters printed on it to the swank afterparty, we …

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Design Hope: First Logo Designs

Monday, August 03, 2009 ~ 9:45 am

Just as we promised, we’re putting this whole design process out for feedback (good and bad!). For those us you just finding us, Scott Schuster of Underdog Solutions, a startup iPhone development shop, won the contest a few months ago. Here’s the list of what he’s winning, but for now we’re finally jumping off here with some initial logo designs.

Scott had talked quite a bit about his dogs, and even went so far to reference them in his company name, so we thought …

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Write it Down

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 ~ 7:49 am

Continuing on our theme of planning and making goals, I want to talk for a minute about why it's important to write things down. I'll be the first to say that I have failed miserably at this over the past year. In my never ending attempt to "de-clutter" my life I've tried to put everything in the computer and rid my desk of all those pesky pieces of paper. Well, I think I may have been wrong on a number of levels. For now we'll focus on why you need to …

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Be Thankful

Friday, July 10, 2009 ~ 2:25 pm

I've been trying to come up with something to write about for a couple of days now and just realized that there's nothing wrong. If you think about it, we usually write when we're upset about something or when there's a problem we're trying to fix. Maybe we like to vent or rant all the time, but I thought it might be nice to take some time and tell you what's good in my life. Not that my life is better than yours! I'm just finding the good in what I've …

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It’s Hard To Hit A Goal You Don’t Have

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 ~ 9:16 am

Jon and I were talking earlier today about goals and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you. Many of us have these vague and vaporous ideas we like to call goals. That’s me included. We call them goals, but really they are just dreams at this point. Why? Because we have no plans to make them reality.

I’m defining a goal this way: “A goal is a desire to achieve a result measurable in concrete terms.”

“I want to see the world.” That’s a dream. “I want …

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Outlook is Broken

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 ~ 7:56 am

Fix Outlook

Fixoutlook.org is a fabulous initiative from our Design Hope sponsors Campaign Monitor and Newism. It sucked bad enough when Microsoft decided to use Word to render HTML emails in Outlook 2007. With one fell swoop they took email designs back 7 years. Now they’re saying Outlook 2010 will do the same. In fact they’re not even going to change the rendering engine at all. It *barely* supports tables, no CSS position and …

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ExpressionEngine Giving Free Licenses at Front-End Design Conference

Thursday, June 04, 2009 ~ 10:18 am

Front-End Design Conference + ExpressionEngine

Just another reason to come to the Front-End Design Conference this year: ExpressionEngine will be giving away 5 EE Packages at my session on "Why ExpressionEngine is Great for Designers." Each package includes:

In addition to me speaking, Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …

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Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) in Design ~ Business ~ ExpressionEngine ~ (8) Comments ~
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Design Hope for Startups 2009
Stuff we Love

BestChristianDesign is helping give churches inspiration for their next project. Good call, guys.

Seth Godin reminds us to enjoy and take advantage of the uphills.

Stop announcing your new project. Just do it.

Rock and Roll people, Rock and Roll.

To all you staff designers out there, here’s a link for you. (via @ryanlascano)

Fascinating look into the music business.

Derek Sivers posts some great advice about balancing your life.

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Rad Deals
Troy McNeil - Things I said

Troy McNeil
Things I Said

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@ryanirelan Hate that, too. Was hoping it would grow on me but too many panes all over the place. Too much like my desktop :D

Thu 9:53 | Follow
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I've noticed I'm not noticing my spelling errors. I need more sleep.

Thu 9:40 | Follow
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