Web Development
It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it
I’ve been working in the tech industry for over four years now, and within that time one thing has remained constant: it’s not what you say, but how you say it. Normal office politics aside, being able to communicate effectively with your cohorts is a valuable skill, and one that I have had to learn through experience. Group projects in school don’t prepare you for the long-term hierarchical dynamic you find in a typical office. You don’t plan on seeing a classmate after the semester’s over, and typically you’re not accountable to anyone in the group (just the professor). By nature, I’m a pretty shy person. When I have something...
Read MoreNotes on being a professional
I recently discovered The Design Pro Show, a design-centered advice video blog from Andy Rutledge of unit interactive. Although I’m not a freelance designer, and I don’t work for a design firm, I found a lot of useful advice from his videos. My work publishes web content and develops software, and I’ve found treating product managers like freelance clients solves a lot of potential problems. With that perspective, I started to jot down the important things I heard Rutledge discuss in a google doc for my own use. Today I’ll share my notes. I figure since these ideas and guidelines have been invaluable to me, other designers who don’t want to...
Read More“Scandalous” website (Showtime) blurs the line between fact and fiction
It’s not a new idea in marketing: Establish credibility, deliver marketing. An obvious example is every third radio commercial which starts with a quick blast of three chords, like any other pop song, before the announcer or singer-wannabe chime sin with the “pitch.” How could this be translated to the web? Social media is the traditional approach… Anyone remember the hubub when Facebook blended fact and fiction by using photos of your friends in the ads they showed you? The backlash forced a retraction, but it’s just a sign of things to come. Showtime’s “Scandalous” took a different approach. At first glance it appears to...
Read MoreWeb design is package design
The main thing non-web people (IE clients) don’t understand about the internet is that web design is package design. It’s a wrapper around what really important, the content. This is how clients think of the web Let’s imagine a scenario where you’re a widget maker. Your widgets are friggin’ awesome. Since you started widget-making, these things have been flying off the shelf of your corner widget store. You can’t wait to get your widgets out to a broader customer-base. You say, “Man, I need to expand my widget sales by shipping them to customers that can’t come to my widget store. I need to put these things in a box of some...
Read MoreThe missing iPhone feature: “Dismiss All”
I love the new(ish) iOS update. Gone are the days where I’d need to frantically check my “Mail” App, wondering if some important work email came through the pipeline and was waiting in my inbox for me. Now I get a nice little summary of each new email I receive, lovingly pushed right to my screen. This is great! Except when I get multiple emails at a time, as is the case during peak hours at my day job, or when my personal gmail decides to sync up. Then these nice notifications become a huge annoyance. A digital wall of “Read” & “dismiss” button that come between me and whatever I might be doing on my phone. Ever been unable...
Read MoreWhy SOPA doesn’t deserve any sympathy
Who’s really the victim? While streaming the Congressional hearing n SOPA yesterday it seemed to me like the same insane, infantile, and ridiculous argument kept being made. Congressperson after Congressperson would claim “If I Google for ‘Free How The Grinch Stole Christmas’ I can’t tell what’s an illegal site and what’s legal.” By playing the victim, they are essentially claiming they’d like to watch free content, but are unable to determine a legal means to procure the content because of the illegal sources. Really? That’s like claiming “I’d like to take some Morphine, but when I rove the streets...
Read MoreElegance is overrated: The importance of just getting it done
I start very project with an ideal picture I the most elegant solution: not a single extra bit used, perfectly formatted code, efficient use of styles, minified static files, etc… Inevitably, by the end of the project I’ve abandoned the bulk of that ideal solution so I can just “get it done.” Does my client care about elegance in code? Not at all. They just want it to work, as fast as possible. Creating the most elegant solution always takes more time and in many cases, doesn’t gain much in scalability or maintenance. These concerns are things that are usually way down the road anyways, and you’re better off not worrying about them at...
Read MoreMy newest project: Lionhead
Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a website for an the independent film LIONHEAD. Although the trailer is still on its way, I implore you to check out the site because the movie looks incredible. I was extremely excited about the opportunity to get involved in such an interesting project, and now that it’s live, I wanted to show it off! Taking WordPress to a New Level Although I’m always looking for the latest and greatest tricks in WordPress, this project was all about speed. Since the filmmakers needed the site done quickly for their early round of festival submissions, I had to be quick. For me, that meant child themes, page-specific...
Read MoreWhat I learned from getting republished on lifehacker
I recently wrote a short article here discussing the benefits of a low tech break routine versus normal web surfing. After posting on Hacker News, it stuck in the top spot all day for soem reason. I was delighted! It seemed like my subject was open ended and common enough to interest a large part of the community. The following Monday, I received a tweet from the “editor-in-cheif” at Lifehacker, asking if I minded if the republished my article. I wasn’t an avid reader of the site, but I said yes without hesitation anyways. Being “republished” sounded cool, and I had heard of Lifehacker, so why not? I could try to play it cool here, but the...
Read MoreThe over committer’s dilemma
After reading Matt Swanson’s article on the difficulties of being an over committer I was overcome with empathy. I’m a constant over committer, and struggle to say “no” to just about every opportunity. That probably even gives me too much credit, I enthusiastically commit I every possible opportunity. I commit to small one-off projects for friends, longer-term work with acquaintances, and whip up my own projects all the time. Sometimes the projects are freelance, and sometimes they are simply “free.” All this serves to satiate the needling feeling in the back of my brain that I might just be missing out on something. I used to compare...
Read MoreCitizenside will hawk your iPhone pics to media outlets
Citizenside will act as your agent and sell your mobile photos of current events to media outlets. As Lifehacker reports, Citizenside will pay out between 50% – 75% fo the royalties earned by your content. The company has “exclusive rights” to your content once you’ve uploaded it, but they can later drop that status if they determine the content isn’t valuable enough to hold onto exclusively. Every major news outlet these days has a user-submitted portion of their web property. With the advent of smart phones, everyone and their mom has a camera on them at all times. When something important happens someone in the 24-hour news cycle is...
Read MoreWhy I take sketch breaks instead of internet surfing
Staring at a pair of monitors for 10+ hours a day can get rather taxing. That’s why I pepper in small breaks throughout the day, like most people. When I need five minutes to untangle my brain I reach for my pile of art pens and the closest post it note (the back of a print out will also suffice). Compared to the things I used to do on breaks, like surfing the web or secretly playing a iOS game, sketching has a defined end point. Once you put the pen down, nothing jumps up on my monitor or flashes on my desk to tempt me to resume. By doing something nontechnical, it’s very unlikely the break will stretch on for too long because once I’m done doodling,...
Read MoreHow to build a site in an afternoon
Being a designer & front-end developer at a startup web publishing company, I’m asked to do quick work on small sites with very a short turn-around time. I wont get into the details of exactly what sites I’ve been working on but they’re usually “brochure” sites that consist of less than 15 pages and are used for marketing to end users or other businesses. Having done more than a handful of these types of sites, I’ve learned how to get them done as fast as possible without sacrificing much in the way of maintenance, browser compatibility, or performance. Feel free to disagree with my approach or offer critiques. I do not contend...
Read MoreDr. Waddles Wiki – an experiment in wikihacking
What do you get when you add a plush kitty cat + wiki’s source code? Aside from an hour of my life I’ll never get back, you get Dr. Waddles Wiki. If there’s anyplace for such hi jinks, it’s the internet. Know the doctor? Any additions/suggestions to his bio are welcome in the comments section of this post.
Read MoreA WordPress Revolution: Child Themes
For a few years now when I’ve built out a small site for a pet project or a client, I’ve used WordPress to power it. WordPress is intuitive, easy to install, simple to maintain, and has a huge variety of free plugins at it’s disposal. It’s easy enough for a client to change their content, avoiding the bi-monthly emails to do this or that page x & y. That ends up saving me time, and them money, so everyone wins! Ok, so what? The benefits of WordPress aren’t exactly a secret, and even though the platform started off for blogging, it’s morphed into a catchall small-business website builder that can handle mom & pop’s trinket...
Read MoreCustomer Retention: Groupon has spoiled us
A typical morning routine: 7:30 AM: I run by my favorite coffee shop on the way to work and grab a cup o’ joe for the road. Every morning I do so, the clerk (and owner of the establishment) presents me with a fresh “punchcard” and makes his first stamp in the upper left corner. The card reads “Hartford Coffee: Buy10 drinks and get 1 free” and has 16 little circles in which 16 little stamps are meant to be placed as a customer returns to purchase a drink. 7:45 AM: Check email…. drink coffee… 8:00 AM: I leave the coffee shop for work, and promptly toss the punch card in the trash or my pig-stye of a backseat. Perhaps I’m...
Read MoreThings I’ve learned at an Internet startup #1
Long hours are part of the deal. It seems like every startup has it’s contingent of employees that espouse the benefits of enforcing a strict 40hr work week with no overtime or weekends. As an employee of a startup, this line of thought is appealing, even lucrative, albeit unproductive and off-base. As I stumble into articles like this one at Stack Exchange (was recently upped on Hacker News), the more I begin to wonder about the validity of such thinking, and more importantly, the point of those articles… Are they aimed to inspire startup companies to shape their work cycles around a manageable 40hr work week? Or are they simply trolling for over-worked...
Read MoreBalsamiq – my new favorite wireframing app (FREE!)
There’s a ton if great wireframing applications out there, but if you’re like me they’re overkill. I don’t need a be vey of tools and features to quickly map out a ui element. I usually resort to the ole pen and paper. When that’s just not enough, or when I need to share the wireframe, I turn to my new favorite app, Balsamiq. They offer just enough essential tools to get a basic wireframe up and running without the clutter of extra bells and whistles. By keeping it simple, and using a nice “sketchy” aesthetic, you’re forced to get to the point and jot down your idea. This eliminates needless distractions and time-wasting...
Read More3 biggest reasons design contests are a raw deal
There are a ton of reasons why design contests are a raw deal for both the designers and clients. At worst, they rip off designers and make the client seem like a two-bit operation. At best, they only appear to do so. Last month, I got an email from a local Mac dealership, Mac HeadQuarters. This place isn’t a trendy Apple store, just a regular-looking Mac dealer. In fact, the furnishings in the store couldn’t be more dissimilar to a typical Apple store. Instead of the obsessive elegance Apple stores are known for, Mac HQ is covered in mauve carpet, accented with retro-yet-still-uncool wood paneling on the walls. It feels like your uncle’s basement....
Read MoreAbout Me
I'm a web designer & front end developer for the ecommerce and web publishing company Juggle.com and writer for the music blog PlaybackSTL.com.
When I'm not scribbling wireframes, tweaking CSS, or trying to find yet-another way to describe sounds with words, I doodle, play guitar, try to write and kill zombies.