Preaching ”no spec work!” is easy when you have more work than you know what to do with. But as a student just starting out on your career, the temptation to do work up front for little or no pay in the hope winning a project or future opportunity is hard to resist.

I used to teach Senior Illustration Seminar at Milwaukee Institue of Art & Design. It was exciting because the entire class was full of students ready to embark on their careers as professionals. All that useless information living between my ears was suddenly valuable to those 17 people. I remember what I used to tell my students about making your own opportunities, and paying your dues. You’d think spec work sounds like a great way to be competitive and gain exposure when you’re just starting out. You’d be wrong.

Let me start by saying I’ve done plenty of spec work. It took me a long time to be confident enough in what I do to expect… ...(more)

Congratulations to Web Superhero - Veerle Pieters and the other winners of the ExpressionEngine Shootout! (I am SUCH a giant Fanclub!)

If you’re thinking of designing your own site, you must check out this post on her recent blog redesign. I think we can all agree, no one saw this coming. Unbelievable talent!!!

I’m also completely stunned (and proud) to have made the top ten. I need to thank friend and web developer Anna Brown who taught me everything I know about EE, and who contributed in some capacity to 2 sites among the top 30 Shootout winners.

Download the ExpressionEngine Core now for FREE!

Wow, okay so I’ll keep this brief as there has already been plenty written and posted on Flickr (20,333 currently) about it. SXSW Interactive - If you didn’t go this year, you need to next year. It was ten times the experience I’d expected. Amazing speakers, amazing parties. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who responded to my Free Coffee at SXSW post. In the end, there were 3 people I was unable to connect with (for more than a brief introduction). I’m sure we’ll run into each other again somewhere, and when we do, I owe you guys some Joe!

In the interests of brevity, I present my summary in Haiku form:

Hot humid Springtime.
The birds here are psychotic;
“May I see your Badge?”

Pictured Left to Right: Greg Storey, Mark Bixby, part of Jason Santa Maria

...(more)

There’s much noise lately over traffic, and whether we should all care about it or not. I think there’s a distinction to be made between being highly findable, and one of its inevitable benefits… traffic. In a recent Washington Post article, Frank Ahrens posits over another popular meme, that blogs have peaked, and invites bloggers to tell him why they blog. I saw a connection between the two, and felt compelled to respond:

(An open letter)
Mr. Ahrens,
Good article. I’m certain you’re getting it with both barrels right now, so I’ll keep this brief. I found your article through Steve Newson’s blog.

And that’s exactly why I blog.

I’m exponentially more findable when I regularly publish content relevant to my market. People who track blogs and keywords such as design, blogging, brand, creative, etc… find anything I publish containing those keywords, almost instantly. This connects me to, and generates dialogue with, new clients,… ...(more)

Thank you to everyone who’s given feedback, and endured my excitement over this project. And a special thanks to the guy who discretely accused me via email (and not in my comments) of being a ‘big fat name dropper’. 1,000% guilty!

Now, an update. After a few more rounds with ‘he who shall not be named’, we arrived at the following design. There were 2 or 3 color iterations before these, but What’s-his-face and I agree, Airbag really comes through here. Working with the worn look in Illustrator is wicked fun, and quite different than with Photoshop. Still a little left to do, but wanted to share these in progress.

Make sure you harass Old so-and-so at SXSW for a new business card. They feature these designs and are quite nifty!

And if you haven’t checked out Nick “I’ve never called Mark Bixby on the telephone” Bantock’s work yet, I highly recommend a book called… ...(more)

You heard it here first! If you are a developer, or designer who enjoys free coffee and talking about what you do for a living, contact me before March 9th and let’s plan to get together for a cup during the conference (my treat). If you’ve been blogging longer than I have (4 weeks), or know a lot about web standards and accessibility, then I want to buy you some Joe!

Free coffee and the opportunity to influence an impressionable mind? What a deal! Make no bones, I don’t want to be your friend or hang out with you at the after party. I just want to get you all hopped up on caffeine, and pick your brain! So call or email me now and let’s make plans.

See you there! I’ll be the really jittery one.

I’m working with Greg Storey on a new zeppelin design for Airbag Industries LLC. This is significant because four months ago I was sitting in a cubicle managing the marketing department for an Embedded Systems company. Four weeks ago I was publishing my first post on my own “homemade” blog. Today I’m self-employed, drawing dirigibles.

How this happened is a true testament to the power of blogging as a business tool, and it all started with some Kool-aid® I drank at last year’s Blog Business Summit in San Francisco, CA. Having been moderately burned out on web marketing for several years, the conference was exactly what I needed to get excited about interactive design all over again. With technologies like weblogs and RSS, the Internet is finally starting to resemble the communications tool we’d all been promised.

Completely sold on the connecting power of these technologies, and with a little weekly inspiration from the guys over at The Cubicle Escape Pod,… ...(more)

I’m having a really hard time hating Microsoft today. And I don’t mean their Windows® Operating System, for which I hold as much contempt as ever, but rather the Microsoft Corporation itself.

They did this thing where they allow you to hear their developers talking about projects in their own words; through blogs and video diaries such as Channel9. By doing this, they further distance themselves from the practices of companies like Apple who operate under a shroud of secrecy, developing for months at a time, then dramatically unveiling a tremendous update of some sort - who’s net effect is usually that I have buy all of my software over again to take advantage of some incremental speed increase.

What Microsoft is doing is the single most progressive and effective marketing strategy happening today. I just got to sit in (and you can too), on an hour long meeting among the top developers of Microsoft’s new ...(more)

A gaggle of ethnically diverse “twenty-somethings” with perfect skin and flawless fashion sensibility? Is that who’s really administrating the Linux server your website lives on? I know it’s not. You know it’s not. And the companies who put these people on their home pages know it’s not. So who do they think they’re fooling? And why try to fool your customer ever? Even the web host I trust to keep my site running is guilty of this chicanery (check out the guy who only has his ear in the frame). Bluehost is a great host. Their customer service is always available directly by phone, and completely capable of handling any request. Why not show these people? Their offices? Their flaws? Their commitment to doing their jobs well?

I’m reading Robert Scoble’s new book, Naked Conversations and it has started me thinking about small companies who fabricate their identity out of thin air. It’s a common mistake, but how can these companies hope to differentiate themselves or establish trust,… ...(more)

It’s official. I’m a designer who blogs. No, really. Check it out here.

Cat Morley (founder of Katz-i International Web & Graphic Design) maintains the most comprehensive list of people who share my particular disorder. Cat’s site is a clearing house for fabulous content about design, creativity, life as a freelancer, CSS, web standards, accessibility and new media.

I’ve already ordered my copy of CSS Mastery, and am gearing up to climb Mt. XML. If you’re interested in learning how to make the internet better, you should be reading these blogs:

Cameron Moll | Authentic Boredom
Author, new media specialist and CSS mogul.

Jason Santa Maria
Designer, writer, photographer, soldier of fortune and CSS guru.

Jeffery Zeldman
Design, usability and standards samurai.

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