Blogging and all that Malarkey

On this week’s show, Designer, icon artist, author and possibly Doctor Who’s next companion Jon Hicks joins yours truly to discuss differences in the ways that Jon approaches different types of clients, how publishing his day rate and availability on his web site has improved the ‘quality’ of his enquiries and who ultimately owns the work that we do. As you might expect we couldn’t spend an hour together without talking about Doctor Who. Quite a lot.

Back from my holidays, all tanned and gorgeous (obviously,) I rejoined Anna to talk about Laura Kalbag’s ‘Good Designers, Good Clients’ article on A List Apart. We discuss how I was inspired by Seth Godin to start speaking again and the best bits from the last three episodes including our ‘double our day rate Fridays,’ Sarah’s approach to handling low budget enquiries and the problem of doing work under NDA and having little to show for it in your portfolio.

My friend Sarah Parmenter co-hosted this week’s show with Anna while I was driving back from holiday. This week’s topics are money related — Sarah and Anna talk about fair pricing, taking payment before site launch and educating clients with unreasonably low budgets. Anna also asks Sarah about her new venture and what drove her to start a completely different business. They discuss the importance of honesty and how working on side projects can help with motivation.

I sometimes work with other designers helping them to translate their design atmosphere and wide screen layouts into responsive designs. Breaking down their designs into systems is big part of what I do. In practical terms that means working through what are sometimes dozens of static visuals to identify patterns of typography, use of colour and layouts, both smaller modules and whole page compositions. From these patterns I classify and identify elements and compose stylesheets based on them.

I cannot pass up this opportunity to link to this week’s fabulous Happy Monday interview with Seth Godin.

I’m generally bored of interview shows, that’s why we have guest co-hosts instead of guests and this week on Unfinished Business, my CSS hero Harry Roberts steps in while I’m on holiday. Anna asks him about his sudden decision to leave his full-time job, the events that led up to it, and what he plans to do next. Harry shares his advice for people struggling to balance work and personal projects. They also have a sneaky chat about object oriented CSS at the end even though it’s not really business related but something had to replace the usual ten minutes of banter about soap and apes.

It seemed apt to post these lyrics today. My person favourite version of this song is on Billy Bragg’s Tooth & Nail album. Listen on Spotify.

In the final chapter of the contract episode trilogy, Anna asks me about writing a contract for working with agencies, we discuss which browsers and devices we should mention, termination fees, and who owns the content at the end of the project.

It’s episode 29 of Unfinished Business and part two in a series about contracts and the Contract Killer. Anna and I talk about how a good contract sets the tone and lays the foundations for a mutually good business relationship. We get down to the nitty gritty of the first few Contract Killer clauses including specifying deliverables, price and payment terms. Oh. And I mentioned ze Chermans but I think I got avay viz it.

Finally, yes finally, Anna and I get around to the first of two, maybe three, episodes about contacts. We talk about the ‘ Contract Killer,’ why we think it’s important to always use a contract and why some people think otherwise. We discuss the essential elements that should go into every contract and why, on top of any legal benefits, how a good contract says a lot about how you do business and why writing yours should be a creative challenge you should relish. (Don’t miss the gag wheel and ice-cream banter after the show. It’s a scorcher.)