Category Archives: General

Can you be a web designer without knowing HTML & CSS?

photo credit: Török Gábor (nyuhuhuu) I only listen to one podcast regularly*—the 37signals semi-monthly offering, which provides insights into the thoughts and processes at the seminal web shop. The last three episodes from the 37signals podcast have been a design roundtable discussion with Jamie Dihiansan, Jason Fried, and Ryan Singer. In actuality, this three-part series has been [...]
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Jumping back in

photo credit: Anamorphic Mike I’ve been back in the States for about two weeks. It’s been great. And tiring. Seeing friends and family has been like a non-stop amusement park. I landed in Chicago, immediately went to a wedding in Des Moines, spent the week in Minneapolis, flew to New York, came back to Minneapolis, went [...]
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Two years of blogging

It’s been two years since I started blogging. You can read my first post here. Updating a blog regularly isn’t easy—it can feel like a chore at times. Those of you with blogs I’m sure understand. As such, I’m proud to have kept mine going for two years, and to have added at least one post [...]
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Thinking versus doing

photo credit: dreamsjung One my favorite parts about designing and developing web projects is that the end result is something. A shiny new site layout, a functioning web app–it’s gratifying. But it’s essential not to get haphazardly lured into a project because of this gratification. If I dive in and fire up Coda or Fireworks, I’ll undoubtedly waste a [...]
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Ryan Singer, 37signals podcast

photo credit: cln_finch Ryan Singer, product manager and designer at 37signals, talks about the company’s design process. Download the MP3 I found this interesting as 37signals’ process relies on everyone pitching in at a variety of levels–information architecture, user experience, design and back-end development. At times, I’ll hear that these types of a role demand a person with [...]
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North, South, East … Zest?—Guided by the brand compass

photo credit: rutlo Shopping in a grocery store in a foreign country is a scary, intimidating and often mysterious experience. You don’t have your bearings. Not because of differing store layouts. I’ve circumnavigated U.S. stores like Safeway, Harris Teeter, Ukrop’s, HyVee, Wal-Mart, Lund’s, Schnuck’s, and Rainbow like my name was friggin’ Cristobol Colon. Shopping abroad is intimidating [...]
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Finding typos in my emials

photo credit: alq666 I’ve got this weird compulsion when I send emails—I often re-read them after they’re sent. Do you ever do that? Well, this compulsion is also self-inflicted pain because I instantly notice my poor grammar and typos—and often times, they are many. Not only are poorly-written emails confusing, they lessen the perception of professionalism. But [...]
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QA work with Notable

QA’ing website builds is not an easy task.  There are countless issues to check and comments to wrangle. From copywriting, to <TITLE> tags, to image exports, to functionality. Depending on the site, there is a lot that can — and will — go wrong during testing. It’s a fact of life that there will be several [...]
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Like looking into a mirror (sort of)

I’ve been on both sides of this fence. But I cringed more than I chuckled the first time I saw it … sigh. The vendor-client relationship in real-world situations–
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“The producer is an integral part of the team on digital.”

Today, Rick Webb (pictured above) wrote a WAILING blog post for Boards Mag praising interactive producers. Below are some of my favorite quotes and my reactions. There’s not been any traditional training for great interactive producers, so the people who end up in the business have usually taken a non-traditional, and thus non-replicable, path. It’s really nice [...]
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