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Oh Nine

January 5, 2009 — 3 comments

Nothing feels better than the start of a new year — it’s fresh chance to take a look at where you’ve been and where you can go. While 2008 has been an incredible year for my business, I can only be excited at how much opportunity 2009 holds. Running a small design shop is very much a trial and error process, and I’ve already learned countless lessons from just the first 8 month of work — being able to grow, change, and adapt is one of the biggest benefits of running your own company. Here’s a short list of business related resolutions I’m working on in 2009.

Blog more, “surf” less

I spend far too much time each day dawdling around in the horse-troughs of the Internet, desperately trying to make sure I don’t let a single article or conversation about web design, business productivity, or general tech culture news drift by without at least glancing it over. Perhaps many of you have similar habits. While, I’ve become an expert at eyeballing information and telling myself it’s something noble like “market research,” really it’s just an information addiction. I’d like to quit in 2009.

The solution: blog more. I find that when I write more frequently, I can focus on understanding how I think and grow as a communicator (what designing is really all about). I also just have more fun producing rather than obsessively consuming. I’m shooting for 3 posts per week, and trying to develop my blog with some newer, more regular content features (e.g. found color, cafe reviews, site design critiques, new work case studies, tips, etc.). Should be fun.

Caring less about technology

Going along with the above resolution, I’m trying to distance my attention from the tech/web community just a bit, to keep my head clear and focused on my business. With so much stuff constantly floating around (new text editors, personal information managers, scm tools, css tricks, etc), it’s easy to get lost in caring about piddly little tools we all use everyday, instead of actually getting work done.

I’ve been using my current set of apps and tools for over 2 years. They all work great, and my workflow is a smooth as it’s ever been. If something new comes along that can really help my process, I’ll no doubt hear about it from a friend, and add it to my process if it helps. But spending any part of my day demoing new apps just to kick their tires seems like a total waste of time. Shiny new toys are fun, but the glare is distracting.

Out of my head

There are three places where ideas can live — in your head, written down, or actualized. Making ideas real is of course the best situation (“real artists ship” and all that), but I have far more ideas than time to realize everything. Writing things down though, and organizing them in a meaningful way, helps keep you mind calm and stress free. Even better, the process of collecting, organizing, and refining your ideas is the best way develop great new work — everything good needs a little time to marinate.

All my ideas go into a Backpack idea page, and the best one get a page of their own. Only the best, most interesting and developed ideas see the light of day, and I don’t worry about the 100 things I could do, if only I had more time.

Side projects

Going along with the goal of developing my ideas into living, breathing projects — I plan to finally kick into high gear and develop some long marinating ideas for web sites and web apps. I plan to launch two small, micro apps in the first half of 2009, as well as working on launching a few mini-magazine style websites with friends. I’ll no doubt mention all these new ideas here on the blog.

A huge part of going into business on my own was the opportunity to work on my own projects — now that I work full-time there are no excuses. Expect some fun projects this year.

Promote

I’m not very natural at self-promotion, but it’s essential to running a great business. Promoting yourself and your business is really just about being a great, persistent communicator. At this point in my life, I’m convinced that a good designer who can speak and write well will always be more successful and happier than someone who can’t communicate their work to others.

The best part about promotion is that it’s a skill that’s easy to use with practice — the more you do, the more you grow. Writing more here on my blog is of course the most obvious step in promoting my company more. I’d like to take things further, and speak at more small conferences. If anyone reading is looking for speakers for 2009, I’d love to talk — speaking at Refresh last year was a very satisfying, exciting experience and I’d love to refine that presentation this year.

That’s all folks

Here’s to a great 2009! Happy new year.

Two Dot Seven

December 11, 2008

I love Wordpress, and the wholly new interface in 2.7 just sweetens the deal. It’s a dramatic departure from the UI in previous versions (even the nice Happy Cog re-design), but well worth the upgrade.

Aesthetically, the controls just feel more polished than ever before, and the sidebar tool panel seems to take up a good deal less space than the options did horizontally. More importantly though, the new controls just seem to be more focused around the tasks of writing / editing, and that just makes the day to day experience of using it much more fun.

Have it your way

The subtle and slick ‘auto customizable’ nature of the new UI is fantastic — it only takes a few clicks to tailor the UI to just what you need to see, and nothing else. No hacking (and possibly breaking) backend code — things just bend to your whim as you toggle which options to show. It’s pervasive functionality, as just about every view can be customized to show less information. All this makes for a much lighter and easier to use UI without sacrificing any powerful features — you can simply salt the UI to your own needs.

If you’re a Wordpress fan (or enemy), the new version is definitely worth a look.

More Than Just The Interface

December 3, 2008 — 5 comments

A few days ago, Josh Gruber took a potshot at an admittedly dreadful looking Windows utility, the aptly named “Bulk Rename Utility.” For some reason, something just felt off about the post — yes, it looks like hell at first glance, but it also looks powerful.

B is for bacon

December 2, 2008 — 4 comments

Old School

December 2, 2008

Stones Throw Records gets it — their website is the proof. Just look at it. Everything is clean, well spaced and orderly. The confident, elegant use of the grid organizes all the visual hierarchies nicely and leads the eye from section to section. The minimal color palette (just orange, grey, black, and white) re-enforces the site’s visual identity, as well as isolating a consistent, single color for action (buy, learn, play, read etc.) The photography is tasty, and shows a deep love for their own design work (they shoot their own packaging very lovingly) and their artists’ music.

Taken all of this together, it’s easily one of the classiest music-focused sites on the internet today (Muxtape, RIP).

What would Madvillian do? (WWMD)

What’s so striking about the site, however, isn’t just the design. It’s that the whole site has such a confident focus on function — it was built by people who wanted to use it themselves and share their passion for music with others. Everything on the site is easy to find, simple to use, and fun to explore. Technically, the site is very well built (peep the html), offers ultra-high quality 320kps mp3s (most releases are digital first), but you don’t see or feel any of it. It’s all seamless, and in service of the experience of finding new music, and supporting their artists.

Even more surprising, this is a “community” site that lacks any of the typical social features. There’s no harrasing email-to-a-friend links, digg this, flickr that — no high-octane, freakshow music players that kill your browser and first born, no live chat, no personalized fan pages, no nothing. No bullshit. It’s just music and information, well presented. It’s old school simple, and I love it.