Introducing Matt Felten

Through years of countless projects, tight deadlines, and more, it’s an honour to bring on the always fabulous Matt Felten as our first full-time hand-on-deck. Helping out with all our print design and front end development, Matt brings a multitude of different talents that keeps the team moving up and onward!

Read MorePublished May 4, 2011 in News and Announcements

The Social Network Fever

It’s without a doubt that the web design and development industry is in a nice little bubble. It seems that, no matter who I talk to, more people than ever have a consistent amount of work coming in. Not surprisingly the types of clients are a big part of this change. More and more people who have been saving money because of the recession are feeling a little more comfortable in the economic environment that we have going on now. But with this, a few problems arise that we need to remind ourselves about before it’s too late.

Read MorePublished March 31, 2011 in Business

How Is Your Music Affecting Your Productivity?

Some people can work with music, some people can’t. For the people who can, though, they’ll attest to the inspiration music brings to creativity and how some music can influence the style of work, etc. In fact, some designers (myself included) listen to certain genres of music for the pure reason that by doing so, the mood it brings about will be brought through the design. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. A big part of music is about feeling it, and sometimes if you try to force certain types of music on yourself, it ends up failing pretty epically on your end.

Read MorePublished April 27, 2010 in Miscellaneous

Finding Gigs vs. Finding Projects

The design and development community is over-saturated to say the least. We’re competing for any given client with a number of others that didn’t use to be as large some 3 or 4 years ago. Anyone who grabs a warez copy of Photoshop and Dreamweaver automatically calls themselves web designers. People constantly keep undercutting, and we’re all losing by the end of it. This isn’t a new topic by any means – we know the state of the industry we work in. We’re in it for our reasons, and we stay in it because we love what we do.

Read MorePublished April 20, 2010 in Business

Freelancers: Do You Lead Alternate Lives?

I’ve been entertaining this idea in my mind for a little while now. Since I’ve been (poorly) attempting to manage my days with blocks of time for work, play, etc – I always find myself not being able to take a step away from work. While I love my job, it’s flexibility, and the outcome, I never find enough time to enjoy one of the main reasons I started freelancing: to spend time with my son.

Read MorePublished April 15, 2010 in Business

How to (Properly) Transfer Over to Your New Host

I’ve been through a good deal of hosts over the last few years. Whether I’ve interacted with them directly, or heard opinions through IT departments, it’s tough to find a good place to host your files. The guys with great support often have crappy servers, and the guys with awesome servers often have crappy support. It’s sad to say, then, that I can never remember how to transfer over everything properly and always end up messing something up.

Read MorePublished April 13, 2010 in Miscellaneous

Stop Designing Logos, Start Developing Brands

Yes, I said it. We focus way too much on the quality of a logo that we never spend enough time on the brand. In an article I posted on the DesignInformer a week ago I spoke about what a brand is – something people often get confused about. But it’s too often that we take brand and logo to be one in the same. Here’s my challenge: take the logo out of the mix, and focus on developing the brand properly.

Read MorePublished March 30, 2010 in Business, Design and Usability

Why “Throwing Something Up” Isn’t Worth It

We’ve all been in this situation before. We start working for that “perfect” client who seems to agree with you on everything. Everything is hunky-dory, and then they do something that pisses you off. Now, this is fine when that something comes later in the project when you don’t have to hold the grudge for too long, but what happens when it happens in the beginning? What happens when you put in that something extra they didn’t even pay for, and it ends up being a project in itself?

Read MorePublished March 23, 2010 in Business, Design and Usability

Why Bloggers Need Analytics and Usability Testing

I’ve recently been acquired by an online community to work as their editor. My job, while managing writers and their articles, promotion, et cetera, is to improve the community. So now that I’m starting and looking out into the future of where the blog is going, I realize that there are certain things that we need to know as editors, bloggers/writers to do our job properly.

Read MorePublished March 16, 2010 in Blogging, Design and Usability