The demand will come…
There are a lot of freelancers and budding web design companies out there who are more or less dipping their toes in the water. The hope is that they can either make a living off of web...
View ArticleOptimizing your Landing Pages, Part 1 – Initial Planning
“Optimizing Landing Pages” is an on going series that will total 20 posts. The series is written by 3.7 DESIGNS and Ross Johnson to help web professionals build sites that achieve specific business...
View ArticleOptimizing Your Landing Pages, Part 2 – Copy Basics
“Optimizing Landing Pages” is an on going series that will total 20 posts. The series is written by 3.7 DESIGNS and Ross Johnson to help web professionals build sites that achieve specific business...
View ArticleEver experienced this in the creative process?
Hate to say it but it hits pretty close to home. Anyone else? I have found that the more active I am in explaining and defending design decisions the better the whole process goes, but sometimes you...
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As designers we need to use more adjectives in our work…
Adjectives? Wait am I confused? Should I be talking about copy writing? No no, I assure you I am in fact talking about design. Like many of you I am always browsing through galleries and assessing new...
View ArticleDesign Discovery Document, What I Use to Learn More About Client Needs…
I recently posted about how to improve your creative process, and one of the core elements of that process is learning everything you can about what the client wants, expects, and needs to gain from...
View ArticleWriting for Personality Profiles (Optimizing Landing Pages, Part 3)
“Optimizing Landing Pages” is an on going series that will total 20 posts. The series is written by 3.7 DESIGNS and Ross Johnson to help web professionals build sites that achieve specific business...
View ArticleInterfaces are not allows supposed to be “pretty”
I just want to rant real quickly. There are many cases where an online/web application is not supposed to have a “pretty” interface. As designers and even developers it is easy to get excited about...
View ArticleDon’t Design for your Client, or Yourself
I recently did a presentation called “It doesn’t matter if you like it…” in which I talked to marketing professionals about how their is a fundamental flaw in the way many people go about designing, or...
View ArticleWe are all consultants
I have never been the type that has been overly pushy about my opinion. In a lot of ways that has helped me in regards to my business, as there have been times where I disagreed with a client I was...
View ArticleWorking on working on work
When running your own business, especially a small one (meaning it is myself and two helpers) I often find that you can spend just as much time (if not more) on all the details surrounding work as the...
View ArticleThe importance of controling feedback and critique
Any designer who has produced work for anyone other than themselves knows how tricky the design feedback process can be. As designers we have very specific reasons for designing a site the way we do....
View ArticleWhy you should bill for everything….
While I have a minor in business, most of the lessons that I have learned about how to run a company were through making mistakes and figuring out ways to avoid them next time around. Sometimes I made...
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Make strategy a part of your offering
Web design has reached a point of maturity where we should no longer simply be a collection of pages ripped from a corporate brochure. There used to be a time where as web designers we did little more...
View Article:active, use it damn it…
After reading a few books on usability I had an “ah ha” moment. We spend so much time trying to make our websites and applications usable, yet so many of us (myself included) forget about functionality...
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Using strategy to define scope of content
If your kick off meetings go anything like a majority of mine do, at some point or another the website owner begins to rattle off what “pages of content” they would like on the site. You may even...
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Review of Thesis WordPress Framework
They say that you should never work for friends or family (or maybe I just say that?), but when Andrew Miller of Your Search Advisor asked me if I could redesign his website and his brand identity I...
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“Mockup Present”– A Tool for Designers and Developers
I have always found that the design approval process can be extremely easy or extremely hard depending on how you approach it. Sometimes the most difficult part is ensuring that your clients understand...
View ArticleWebsite Redesign Criteria
Most companies are to the point where they have already gone through several iterations of their website. This is part of the natural cycle of your website and should be expected when you are...
View ArticleA Review of Basecamp, as Web Designers
As a creative type project management ranks on the “fun scale” somewhere between falling off a boat and getting assaulted by farm animals. Luckily the other advantages and benefits of being a business...
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