A great photo can do so much to make your brand stand out – and make your personal branding memorable. One of my favorite methods of making sites feel fresh and different is to use custom photography. Wherever possible I try to avoid using stock photos – nothing worse than using the same old tired […]
GETTING STARTED
The art of organizing your work life
For the last few months, I’ve been teaching advanced web design to students at a top art school – and one thing that really surprised me was that I had to teach how to organize projects. Students initially had trouble finding where their current project files were – and they were getting easily confused as […]
Why you don’t always need a logo
Do you really need a logo? Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of different types of businesses at various stages of their development. Typically when you’re just starting out (and especially if you run a digital/online business), I recommend NOT going through a logo design process. The budgets allocated for logos are often […]
What’s in a (domain) name?
Recently one of my oldest friends came to me and told me he was starting over from scratch – now in his mid 30s he was setting out in a brand new career as a entrepreneur in the healing arts — and he needed my help. A very successful designer for over a decade, years […]
Avoid this tech nightmare: get your accounts together
Click here to get the guide The call came late at night. My friend was in the middle of her biggest product launch yet and her site had suddenly gone off-line. Panicked, she didn’t know what to do and was going to potentially lose thousands of dollars. Her former web developer was no longer available […]
Fix this simple mistake and get found!
I look at a LOT of websites from all over the world – and there’s one mistake I see over and over again that’s easily fixed. I was recently in the mood to try a new fitness class at a local studio I’ve never been to. I’d heard of them, but google didn’t display any […]
When to save and when to splurge online
Ah, money. This is one place people don’t feel comfortable talking about when working with designers. I’ve worked on everything from multi-million dollar projects to bootstrapping non-profits and after almost 12 years in business (and hundreds of sites later) I’ve learned when to save and when to spend. It may sound counter-intuitive coming from a […]
Should you start from scratch?
I often get emails from prospective clients who say they don’t need a new website since they already have one — they just need a facelift. Unfortunately, when you look under the hood of a site, there can be so many issues that it often makes more sense to start from scratch. Especially if that […]
The good, the bad and the ugly of online security
It’s a tale of the modern age – running our businesses, we’ve given all-access pass to our online identities to an assistant, employee or friend– our facebook page, website, twitter feed. But what happens when a relationship goes sour? I’ve had more clients than I care to count have their sites removed, email hacked and […]