Blogging and all that Malarkey

This post is an extract from my chapter in Smashing Book 3, titled ‘Designing Atoms and Elements’ written in March 2012. Has a client ever said to you: “I don’t like the design”?

If you’re an ‘everyday’ web designer or developer — instead of one who’s perhaps made of plastic or maybe carved out of soap — we think you’ll love this week’s episode of Unfinished Business. Anna and I talk about being nominated for awards and being made into action figures and how that’s made us feel. We discuss whether it’s acceptable to make you or your company look bigger than you really are and whether sites such as Agencies Rated can really help freelancers.

In this week’s episode of Unfinished Business, award winning Anna Debenham and I talk about our worst business mistakes and disasters, what went wrong on the worst client projects and what we learned from them. I also wants to know why Albanians steal my soap, plus there are confessions galore about shampoo and Taylor Swift.

In this week’s episode, Anna and I talk about secrecy, about what we can say about the business we do and what we can’t. We talk about non-disclosure agreements and why it’s important for everyone to sign one, plus why I wrote and published my plain speaking Three Wise Monkeys NDA. I gets all emotional about Alex’s twenty-first birthday and can’t quite believe that Anna’s never heard of Blackpool illuminations.

While Anna’s away in Amsterdam, I talk with designer Laura Kalbag about Star Trek Into Darkness, how we name our wifi networks and whether location really affects our businesses. We discuss about how to find good sub-contractors and the differences between working for clients direct or via third-parties.

In this week’s episode of the nation’s favourite creative business podcast, I tell bad Dad jokes and Anna doesn’t laugh. We answer listeners’ questions about charging expenses and project assets to clients and when it’s appropriate to charge for ‘learning’ time. We talk about making the transition from a steady job to running a new business and why it’s important never to burn bridges, and how to compete with bargain basement website designers.

I’m struggling to believe it quite frankly, but The CSS Zen Garden was planted ten years ago today. I don’t think we should underestimate the importance of The CSS Zen Garden in the history of the web. Its influence still resonates today. Now it’s back accepting submissions and making some of us feel very old.

People seem to like Rock Hammer, our little “curated project library for Hammer For Mac ” We designed Rock Hammer to help us here at Stuff and Nonsense design faster using HTML and CSS and we use it every day to do just that. Talking about Rock Hammer, some news:

This week on Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about biscuits and business software. Anna explains how she uses FreeAgent to keep track of her finances and berates me for not trying it. We talk about back-up software and how Stuff and Nonsense use Dropbox to collaborate with clients during projects. I run through my favourite design tools including Gridset and Typecast and no discussion about software would be complete without bemoaning how Adobe are abandoning Fireworks.

In this week’s sillier than normal episode of Unfinished Business Anna and I exchange notes on our workplaces and the tools we use, from hardware to software. I get distracted by Mutton Bustin’ (but honestly, who wouldn’t?)