Business Entries ~
Five 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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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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Front-End Design Conference Presentation Notes
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
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
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
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
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
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
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:
- 1 ExpressionEngine License
- 1 Discussion Forum License
- 1 Multiple Site Manager License (3 Sites)
- 1 Solspace Tag Module License
In addition to me speaking, Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …
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Design Hope - Only Ten Days Left To Enter!
It’s crunch time for anyone that wants to submit their new small business for Design Hope! Come May 22, that’s all she wrote!
Be sure to tell any and every new small business owner you know that they could possible get a free website package worth $15,000!
Speaking at Front-End Design Conference
It’s official! Mr. Dan Denny (aka webdesignfanboy) is putting together the Front-End Design Conference, a single day event with a focus on content, presentation and behavior.
Not only are we talking about a design conference near the beach, but there are some primo speakers lined up. If you don’t count me, that is! Yes, I’ll be doing a presentation as will Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …
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This Is Why You Aren’t Relevant
I keep hearing this word. Relevant. It seems to be everywhere. It hasn’t yet reached the obnoxious level of say, “extreme,” but it is popping up all over the place. People are suddenly, and desperately trying to be relevant.
Things, people, and companies that seem to be so relevant today planned that relevance months, or even years ago.
“What’s the problem with that?” you might ask. Well, relevance has to do with relating to things and people right now. If you are spend all your time being concerned with being relevant, …
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Picking Nits
There is a very definite line between the drive for excellence and the desire to nit pick something to death. Excellence has the good common sense to recognize itself. Nit picking knows only picking. Doesn’t matter what it picks as long as there is picking.
I like to call this Nit Harvesting.
But let’s face it, picking nits is fun! At least for the person picking them, because it sounds like they know what they are talking about!
Rather than a little selective hand pick here and there, there are …
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Start A Coding Business
The world has changed since I've entered the ranks of the employed. You used to be able to show up somewhere, work hard and advance in that business. That is no longer the norm. What now? How are people getting ahead?
I don't claim to have definitive answers, but I can tell you where there is amazing opportunity for growth. Coding.
That's pretty generic I know but that is sort of the point. Almost everything that is technologically exciting has some sort of code attached to it. Twitter, Facebook? Code built. …
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