Hiring a designer is a tricky process. You’ve got to pick someone, sometimes out of nowhere, pay him a bunch of money as a deposit, and hope that he comes up with something you love. Chances are good that whatever you need designed is something you care a great deal about (especially if you’re a […]
CategoryDesign
I’ve been obsessed with making things for as long as I can remember. Eventually, I grew up and turned into a designer. I’m infatuated with design in all its forms. In spite of that, I’m pretty bad at writing about it. Expect one post every two years.
How I broke up with a tyrannical beast
Last week, I made an important, life-changing decision. One that I should have made years ago, but I’ve cowtowed to abuse for too long. From here on out, I will no longer be developing websites that work in IE6. I will, instead, be using the fabulous IE6 Update script on all of my websites. (There’s […]
These dog days are for the birds!
Well, apparently my business should be slowing down right about now as everyone runs off on summer holidays, but it’s emulating a steamship more than anything else. (Which is nice, except that my house looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane.) I’ve been insanely busy but have been trying to keep balanced (relatively speaking): […]
Think before you ink: a treatise on decision-making
I get asked questions about my tattoos a lot. It sometimes strikes me as strange—I have seven of them, which I suppose is quite a few, but they’re all really tiny black symbols—so it’s hardly as though they’re at all surprising. A few years ago, before I quit my job to launch a business, I […]
How to win your designer’s eternal love
Bad clients are notorious among designers. We complain about them constantly, we’ve devoted a hilarious-yet-heartbreaking website to them, and we swap horror stories like badges of honour, rolling our eyes in empathy and disgust. We spend so much time complaining about the bad clients that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the good clients. Lately, I’ve been working […]
For the love of shoes
Please note: this week I’ve been totally swamped with work-work-work-work, and since I’m still in a cast and typing the four thousand emails a day that run my business often makes me frustrated and dizzy, I am utterly exhausted. I wrote this article some time ago, and while it doesn’t have anything to do with […]
One-handed girl seeks extra set of hands (or, I’m hiring!)
I’ve really been focusing on trying to build my business these days, and I’m lucky in that it’s been working, for the most part. Of course, this means that I keep running out of time for all those fancy things I like so much, like sleeping and drinking martinis. It’s reached the point at which […]
My love affair with WordPress
Yesterday, I received two emails from different clients, both inquiring about building WordPress-based websites. I responded, as I usually do: “WordPress is awesome! I love building sites with WordPress! Let’s do it!” I’ve found that I’m using it as the backbone for a lot of my websites these days (including the entirety of this one!), […]
Let’s talk about text, baby
I love type, but I find that most days, I don’t get much of a chance to really play with it like I like to. I miss the luxury of school (anything that costs more than a pair of Louboutins is a luxury), where we’d be given typography assignments that let us play around with […]
What’s on the outside counts, too!
Two years ago, I made an incredibly rash decision. I was standing in front of a row of boxes, a little worse for wear due to an excess of celebration the prior evening. A sick feeling settled over me, and I decided to run with the impulse. Two hours later, I was a blonde. (Actually, […]