Start Here Designs: I Work for small businesses with revolutionary ideas.

Branding

  • Product Design
  • Naming & Identity Design
  • Market Positioning & Copy

Web Design

  • Information Architecture
  • User Interface Design
  • Look & Feel

Front End Dev

  • HTML & CSS
  • SEO Friendly
  • Valid, accessible, semantic &
    standards-driven

OneWed’s Wedding Inspiration App is now available!

AND I DESIGNED IT! I was able to spend a lot of time working on the design (uncommon in the startup environment), and I did a great deal of testing and re-iterating, which had a massive impact on the success of the design.

This is a really hard product to design for - we have too many content types and are trying to do too many things, because we INHERITED the project, rather than starting fresh.

But, everything we do have is really awesome, so the trick is trying to make it understandable. Go get it on the Appstore. How did we do?

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
Charles Bukowski
For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.
Timothy Ferriss, The 4 Hour Workweek (via collinmnewman)
Keeping up with my 3 item to do list for work every day has been helpful and highly successful. In general, I can only finish about 3 tasks a day anyway, but just having a list I can work on and a single item to focus on at a time eradicated the usual task list paralasys I get from looking at a long list ans not knowing where tp start (or bouncing between them).
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Keeping up with my 3 item to do list for work every day has been helpful and highly successful.

In general, I can only finish about 3 tasks a day anyway, but just having a list I can work on and a single item to focus on at a time eradicated the usual task list paralasys I get from looking at a long list ans not knowing where tp start (or bouncing between them).

Operation SiteKill : How To Market Yourself Without All The BS Much as I adore my pretty portfolio website, I’ve been thinking for awhile now that it’s more than a little useless to me AND is a drag to upkeep. So I’m KILLING MY WEBSITE and linking www.startheredesigns.com to my work-related Tumblr blog. The PortfolioAlthough I’ve been taught to show between 5 and 15 of my very best works in my portfolio, I’m finding that the nature and pace of my work make this pretty useless. As a freelancer who sometimes has lots of projects and sometimes works on one really cool thing for a year or so, my output is inconsistent. When I work on one really cool project, arguably where I learn the most, I don’t have a lot of finished work to show. As a freelancer who works with small startups, I tend to wear a TON of hats - and trying to list them all on a homepage just makes me look like a liar. Findability and The Contact FormI spend a lot of time turning down people who send me project proposals via my website. Right now because I’m contracting long-term, but also because I don’t generally find jobs through the usual routes - I get most of them through friends. I don’t need a contact form. The ResumeMy resume also seems completely useless at this point. Education - yeah. I know people who make twice as much as me in the tech field who never went to college. Useless. Yeah, I worked full time at a couple of companies once, but the only other entry in there is “Start Here Designs: 2008 - Present”. I COULD list every client I ever worked with, or even just pick the best, or I could just talk about what I do every day and people who want to hire me can take my word for it. I’m over it.Maybe this’ll come back to bite me in the ass later, but I don’t feel like I need a resume, or a portfolio, or a contact form. I’d rather talk about what I do on the regular via Tumblr and show my qualifications through my insights, glimpses of my work, challenges I’ve had, and things that I find important. I’d rather be a personality than a pile of screenshots. What’s weird is that I think this actually makes sense for where I am in my career. Really I’m only 6 years out of college, but I don’t feel like I need all the trappings of my portfolio class from ‘06. I don’t go to interviews. I don’t answer bullshit questions like “tell me about a time when you messed up”. I will never again slave over a leave-behind. I don’t make cold calls. I don’t print out resumes. I am privileged. And I’m going to abuse that.The trick, I think, will be actually making an effort to make this blog less of a “check out these minimalist posters” and more of a “look what I did today” project.
Pop-upView Separately

Operation SiteKill : How To Market Yourself Without All The BS

Much as I adore my pretty portfolio website, I’ve been thinking for awhile now that it’s more than a little useless to me AND is a drag to upkeep. So I’m KILLING MY WEBSITE and linking www.startheredesigns.com to my work-related Tumblr blog.

The Portfolio
Although I’ve been taught to show between 5 and 15 of my very best works in my portfolio, I’m finding that the nature and pace of my work make this pretty useless.

As a freelancer who sometimes has lots of projects and sometimes works on one really cool thing for a year or so, my output is inconsistent. When I work on one really cool project, arguably where I learn the most, I don’t have a lot of finished work to show.

As a freelancer who works with small startups, I tend to wear a TON of hats - and trying to list them all on a homepage just makes me look like a liar.

Findability and The Contact Form
I spend a lot of time turning down people who send me project proposals via my website. Right now because I’m contracting long-term, but also because I don’t generally find jobs through the usual routes - I get most of them through friends. I don’t need a contact form.

The Resume
My resume also seems completely useless at this point. Education - yeah. I know people who make twice as much as me in the tech field who never went to college. Useless.

Yeah, I worked full time at a couple of companies once, but the only other entry in there is “Start Here Designs: 2008 - Present”. I COULD list every client I ever worked with, or even just pick the best, or I could just talk about what I do every day and people who want to hire me can take my word for it.

I’m over it.
Maybe this’ll come back to bite me in the ass later, but I don’t feel like I need a resume, or a portfolio, or a contact form. I’d rather talk about what I do on the regular via Tumblr and show my qualifications through my insights, glimpses of my work, challenges I’ve had, and things that I find important.

I’d rather be a personality than a pile of screenshots.
What’s weird is that I think this actually makes sense for where I am in my career. Really I’m only 6 years out of college, but I don’t feel like I need all the trappings of my portfolio class from ‘06. I don’t go to interviews. I don’t answer bullshit questions like “tell me about a time when you messed up”. I will never again slave over a leave-behind. I don’t make cold calls. I don’t print out resumes.

I am privileged. And I’m going to abuse that.
The trick, I think, will be actually making an effort to make this blog less of a “check out these minimalist posters” and more of a “look what I did today” project.

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