by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
ExpressionEngine
We just finished up a particularly fun project, Casillas, Inc. They’re an amazing custom furniture maker in California. In an odd turn of events, we actually did very little design for the site and became the “backend guys” if you will. As we got into how we wanted the site to be structured we realized that because of the product names (all numbers) we needed to use the category that the product was part of in the URL structure. So for example it would read:
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Tutorials
One of our astute readers discovered a flaw in our footer design implementations recently and I thought I’d share it with you. Turns out that we have a penchant for using a background image repeating on a 100% wide footer. Also turns out that when you squash your browser window down to anything smaller than the content and then scroll over to the right that background image stops repeating! See what I mean here:
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by Nate Croft in Design,
Business,
Design Hope
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!
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by Nate Croft in Design
We do logos on a regular basis, but few are of the illustrated variety. So when I was contacted to illustrate the logo for “The Car Fairy,” I have to admit that I got a bit excited.
While I take great joy in crafting a great website from scratch, there is something uniquely satisfying about illustration. I found my trusty black notebook and cheap-o Paper Mate pen and began to sketch out some roughs to give our client a few variations. Originally, they wanted a redneck mechanic type of fellow with a tutu. Being from The South, I am quite familiar with this sort of friendly backyard car enthusiast. I knocked out a few different looks and came up with these three fellas.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Personal
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.
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by Nate Croft in Business
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.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design
When you’re working on a new design for a client, good communication is key. Just recently we’ve run into a situation where an agency keeps having us change little things to try to get the design right for them without stepping back and addressing the larger direction of the whole thing. Granted, it should have been their job to say, “Hey this is way too modern” or “We were really thinking of using some kind of weathered, worn look instead” instead of “the radius of the rounded corner doesn’t look right,” but the reality is most clients don’t know how to communicate this kind of stuff to you. Apparently even some design agencies. They just know it doesn’t feel right, and then they try to fix it with nitpicks (see Nate’s article here).
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by Nate Croft in Business
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!
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by Nate Croft in 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. iPhone apps? Them too. From Javascript to Ruby on Rails, the businesses of the world need coders.
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by Nate Croft in Design
I was having lunch with my wife a few weeks ago and during the meal I was observing the other diners. There was one man in particular that caught my attention. He was a middle aged fellow in a button-up shirt and slacks reading the paper. He seemed to be lost in his reading, mindlessly chewing the same bite for longer than usual.
As we finished up , we gathered our trash and headed towards the car. It was then that I noticed what had captured his attention. The obituaries.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Design Hope,
ExpressionEngine
Design Hope is ramping up pretty quickly, and we’re excited to announce quite a few huge partnerships. This has grown from an idea I had laying in bed the other night to an internationally supported endeavor from some of the top names in the design business. I am truly blown away by the generosity of all these companies and excited to share them with you. Check it out!
Sponsors
ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine is the only CMS we use, period. It’s incredibly flexible and powerful while using a syntax that even I can understand. We’ve tried everything else, and nothing comes close! In addition to providing an EE license, EllisLab has also offered a Forum Module and Multiple Site Manager Expansion if you need it. That’s potentially $500 worth of software for free!
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by Nate Croft in Design
If you are a designer, you probably are one because you wanted to be. Design isn’t exactly one of those fields most people happen to fall into. Most of us do this because we love it, or at least really liked it at one point.
But what happens when when passion no longer fuels the production? I don’t know about you, but for me, it means that there is a severe of lack of kick-awesome. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that “kick-awesome” is how we describe something that is even better than we could have imagined it. And lacking that means that it’s just a regular project. The client is happy with it, other people think it’s nice enough, but I know it could be better. That’s a place I don’t like to be.
Do you know what kills passion for creatives? Monotony.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business,
Design Hope
So we’ve been thinking a lot about how the economy is affecting businesses and individuals. What I find truly inspiring is hearing stories of really brave people giving up all that is safe, embracing the unknown and starting a new business in the face of an economic downturn. We know what it’s like to start a business from scratch, but I wonder if we would have the balls to do it in these uncertain times. The more I think about these people who are risking all they have in search of creating something revolutionary and forging a better life for themselves and their families, the more I want to help them out.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to design and build one lucky new business’ website for FREE. Yep, for free. Not only that, but we’re going to put the whole design process up on this blog as we go and get feedback from the community.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Tutorials
We recently had the pleasure of working with CD Baby creator Derek Sivers on a new project called MusicThoughts. It’s a great collection of quotes from musicians on everything from the music industry to life in general. In short, pretty kick-awesome! Go check it out already!
This was a challenging project from start to finish. First of all, we couldn’t modify the HTML at all, only the CSS. And second was the support for multiple languages. 10 to be exact! This had several ramifications:
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Tutorials
I just found a simple solution to a bug in IE7 and wanted to share it. I hadn’t run into this problem before, but apparently IE7 doesn’t usually show a bottom-border attribute on text links. No reason, it just doesn’t feel like it. Insert rant about Internet Explorer here if you wish, but I’m just here to provide solutions, baby.
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by Nate Croft in Design
Apparently, my inner child is alive and well and has found himself some crayons. I have always liked to doodle and draw silly things and creatures with all manner of objects coming out of their heads, but lately I have taken this pastime and mixed in a little of the ol’ graphic design creative juice and have found my own special blend of little monster love. I call them Little Tings.
These Little Tings started to come to life in the little notebook I keep on my desk, scooted over just to the right of my mouse. This notebook was originally a way for me to stop using the mail and little slivers of paper to write important things on, but it has come to contain all manner of ideas. If I were a mad scientist, this would be my secret notebook that holds all my plans to take over the world!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Design,
Business
I got a most surprising email in my inbox the other day; a request for an interview! Wait, someone wants to interview us? I have to say, we’re pretty flattered that anyone would actually ask us questions and then post them to their own blog. I mean, you never know what we’re going to say! But hey, PixelApnea looks to be the first one to take the plunge, and hopefully in the process is building up some solid content in the land of web design. Actually they have lots of good content; I just hope we didn’t soil it 
.
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business
Since Feedburner was acquired, we had to move our account over to Google and our feed URL had to change slightly. Supposedly the old link will continue to work indefinitely, but if you like to be on the bleeding edge, the new one is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/47m .
We probably don’t say it enough, but thank you so much for reading! We’re always amazed by your thoughtful insights and willingness to give back to the community. Keep it up!
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by Jonathan Longnecker in Business,
Personal
Hello and welcome to a new segment on the 47m blog! Annoying: a place where we get to vent about things that really tick us off. I think it will be very therapeutic for everyone!
Today’s topic is “people that don’t get back to us.” We get quite a few job requests that come through our site and I’d say about 30% of them never respond back to us. I don’t understand why. I mean they contacted us first! We’ve just shot them an email back to setup a time to talk. What’s the deal? Is it that hard to hit the reply button? At least tell me if you’re not interested anymore so I can take you off my list of people to keep responding to. All the checking and rechecking is quite a time waster.
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by Nate Croft in Music
I’ve tried a couple of times to start this post because it is quite difficult to describe our friend Troy, much less his music. Up until the last two years, he was that guy that you knew who popped into town, you hung out and he told you about his unbelievable adventures and hijinks, and then disappeared for another 8 months. Now, he’s still that same guy, but he just stays in town.
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