It’s kind of like the interview question, “What are your weaknesses?”

“Some people say I work too hard.”

Absolutely true.

The mantra, “Tell Your Story,” has been coming up often in both our client work and in my own personal relationships. These are two totally different scenarios, but the effect of keeping quiet about triumphs and failures is the same none-the-less.

Within organizations, an initiative is only as successful as the stories that are told about it. If the initiative is blindly rolled out without any kind of recap of past successes or acknowledgement of failures, someone, probably a hairball, will fill in the blanks.

Think about that. Someone who doesn’t want your initiative to succeed in the first place, filling in the blanks. Not where you want to be at all.

With personal relationships, the longer an amount of time goes by without talking (in real-time), the more awkward it is. This is why status updates and picture sharing on social networks are a good thing, we are each telling our own story one share at a time. Now when we do have those real-time encounters, we have context.

Without the social network we’re back to filling in the blanks about the people in our lives.

The only thing worse than not telling your story, is to stop telling your story once you’ve started. Since most things fail (citation?), most people expect failure. When a story stops, it means the thing must have failed. Which means people are already assuming the worse about you or your initiative. In fact it’s probably better to acknowledge failure, and be open about it, than to act like nothing has happened. At least your story will continue.

This is one of those easy-to-say, hard-to-do, things. At We the Media, it’s definitely not part of our culture to publicly share our story – we’re a bunch of introverted creative types. But in heeding this advice, it’s possible some of the people following us might assume we’re right on the brink of failure.

I’m here to tell you we are not.

We’re just not good at talking about ourselves.

Working on it.

I bring this up because of a necessity for the entrepreneur to hold both of these potential scenarios up and look at them honestly. What does failure look like? If it looks like giving up, then the term, “failure is not an option,” deductively means that giving up is not an option. I can live with that. What does success look like? I have no clue, one building block goes on the next and I don’t have any idea how many building blocks there are. So if I never quit, does that mean success is not an option either?

One might say we’ve had a fair bit of success with We the Media (WTM). It’s made of several building blocks, collectively making a house. But looking around, all I see are large buildings. If we ever become a large building, then all I will probably see are skyscrapers. Thinking this is like looking into the unending mirror vortex.

As I see it today, failure means quitting and success means never quitting, or maybe success is something I will recognize if it happens. Until then, it’s all building blocks over here at WTM.

“Blog on a consistent basis, if it’s one time a week, then make sure you do it…”

In reading that, it seemed easy enough – but nope! Anyhow, it’s retarded for me to even blog about blogging (no offense to the retards who read my blog). I’ve been so busy doing that I haven’t had time to really tell about any of it – so here goes.

Wait! I have to share this video from Home Skillet Fest - I think it’s rad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ok, here goes…

Nike

I do a lot of work for Nike, a lot… So much that I have had to build a team of very talented individuals to compensate for my lack of bandwidth. I can’t really say what we are working on currently but I can say what we have worked on in the past.

We launched nikecorre.com about a month ago and sportchangemakers.net a few months before that. Now we are working on managing both of these sites and doing consulting for a few bigger projects (I can’t name them and I won’t!). It’s been an amazing ride working with one of the most globally recognized brands in the world – I truly love it.

The stuff we are working on currently gets me all hyped up – I can’t wait to launch! Of course some of it will be over the course of a month, some of it all the way into January. Seems like awhile, but some of the stuff is really ambitious – we are learning how to, “Just Do It.”

Rahzel Live!

This is a project that came out of left field, but also one I couldn’t refuse. Working with Rahzel to help build him a site where he could manage all his merchandise and digital downloads has been a fun experience – the guy is the KING of beatboxing and I have been a fan since, “If Your Mother Only Knew.” This should drop soon as well.

Home Skillet Fest ’08

In another life I used to be a commercial fisherman in Alaska and it was around this same time that I co-founded a record label called Home Skillet Records. About three years ago we started throwing an annual music festival in Sitka, Alaska called……Home Skillet Fest (we’re kind of a one-trick pony). We just wrapped up this year’s show and this had to of been my favorite year. We were well organized, we had tons of merchandise, and we put a little money back into the label – that was our goal. If you follow this sob-story of a blog, you may remember my last post that was questioning the whole project. I am over that now – the festival is a great thing and my hometown is truly a special place. 

For the first time I walked away from Home Skillet Fest stoked and ready to build the momentum for next year. It’s turned into a family project for me, with both my parents and older sister helping with the organizing – it made it so much better. In having such a solid team in PDX I was able to call on people to help with design work – which is good because I’m really only decent at web design, the print world is perplexing.

Wrap Up

All in all business is good and growing. Our team is rad. I am getting married in September. My set didn’t suck at Home Skillet Fest. I am running for my health, so I feel better, AND…

…I am more happy now than I have ever been in my life. I think I am ok with that too – it’s ok to be happy for once.

More and more I think the response to boredom from many kids in school (from 8th-12th grade) is to gravitate towards computers and the self-taught realm.  I first started playing with Photoshop (at 17), not because I was introduced in a school, but because I was excited about pirating something so expensive.  How many designers started in a similar way? 

I don’t mean to discredit those with big piles of debt, I’m with you.  But I can’t help but be in awe of those who just do it and become self-taught rockstar designers without all the fat.  Thumbs up.  

More and more the internet provides all kinds of free training – for those that seek it. I compare k12 education to my experiences in learning to play the guitar (albeit a little older).  While Django and Robert Johnson are fantastic guitar players, if not the best – I want to “play The Fucking Clash,” – three power chords, I’m good.  A well-rounded education is important, but you also have to serve them up what they want.  Especially when competing with the internet, video games, and broken families.

The web gives us power – those who are willing to sweat and just do – don’t need a college education and they certainly don’t need a resume.

I can’t say I regret college – I had a great time and learned a lot of life skills, but for what I do, I probably would have been better off diving right in.  Now I am a 27-year-old designer watching the big 30 creep closer and closer – at what point am I dated?  Scary stuff!  Thank goodness for We The Media and it’s ever expanding talent pool – I will forever be connected to the talent of youth.

Yesterday was inspiring if anything – thank you to those who I met and spoke with.

Speed is a trait of the entrepreneur, we make things happen quickly, we all think “I can do this or that.” It’s what makes us quit our jobs, it’s what makes us just start things for no reason other than our own thoughts, it’s also, as time goes by, a huge weakness. It’s super tough to rely on anyone else, but it is also absolutely necessary. Often times we think up a strategy and execute without consulting those who have proven valuable. Often times a knee-jerk reaction comes across as a painful execution and an even more painful blunder.

With the WTM website – I could have just designed and built the whole thing. But I know someone who can do it better – and without his help, WTM wouldn’t be where it’s at. It’s been a very slow rewarding process building out wtmworldwide.com piece by piece. We have more that we would like to do – but we are not rushing it. Well, maybe I am pushing it, but have realized a slow marinade is just what the site needs.

Why the entry then? We have carefully launched the We The Blog. WTB, I guess, is an aggregate of all We The Media member blogs. I’m already feeling the pressure because Nick Onken blogs way more than me – I need to keep up! It is just one more channel for us to spread our message of love for the creative souls out there.

Check it out.

Anyhow – I’m staying at the Hampton Inn with my good friend Jeff Reynolds – we will be kicking ass in one way or another (but mostly just representing the up and coming group, We The Media). I’m also looking to get invited to some really pretentious, exclusive parties – like I would be ok being the only one that is allowed to enter the room. That would rock. If you’re staying in the Hampton Inn or close – let’s greet up – it’s time to meet some geeks baby! Oh yea, be sure to get our grey (purple) buttons – they are pretty much fresh to death.

If you aren’t going to SXSW and are disgruntled, sulk the entire week at your current job so that your employer really knows how badly you want to go for next year – or – come to this site and I will be posting daily updates and pictures of all the crazy happenings.

Hope the world is treating you well.

networking gives me tears

Moving from college where one has a pseudo-something to offer to a professional setting where one gains their real value – I have experienced some profound insight. No, nothing new or original – but my tendency to learn by doing and emulating has given me the real reward of what networking truly is – connecting others.

First off – let me say something about the idea of what I call, “power-networking.” While in the short run – power networking is great, you meet all kinds of people, their baggage, and they are as interested in leeching off of you as you are of them. Be it the 3-minute elevator speech or the small talk. I hate small talk. I’ve been to a few “power-networking” events – they left me feeling small and angry. Just like I have never been good at pursuing women at a bar, I am not good at pursuing potential clients in short 3-minute bursts. It takes time to get to know me – and I am proud of that. It’s called being genuine.

I hate small talk

Here’s what I have found – generally speaking, just about every creative I have ever met has been genuine – even to a fault. And no fault of their own – it’s the fault of those who exploit them, the many who are good at brokering the 3-minute deals. I walk in both worlds – I have a business education and I am a descent designer. Seeing creative talent being exploited pissed me off the first time I saw it – it pisses me off now.

There are those of us creatives who are lucky – we meet one or two people who see value in what we do and want to help us out. Many are not so lucky. It’s easy to be cynical and say, “well, I’m not good at networking, so I will never be free from those exploiters.” This was my own stumbling block until I was introduced to a way of networking which had never occurred to me before; connecting people.

Exploiting Creative Talent is Wrong

To re-iterate – my understanding of what networking was came from a few trips to “power-networking” groups – to which I immediately reacted a resounding, “Nope, not for me.” And then through all of my hours spent developing my creative skills, I was connected into a world which I had never seen or imagined. A world that rewarded me for doing good work creatively and also boosted my network – all without sacrificing the one thing which feels right – being myself.

Through being myself and connecting, I have gotten the majority of my client work. What is this sub-sect of networking I am calling “connecting?” It’s the idea of putting people together that you have come to know through real relationships. That’s it.

To power-networkers who do nothing but networking, this is an obvious point. Know as many people as you can so that you can connect them in ways that you see fit. But here’s the one caveat – how well does one really know another when they have only spoken in 3-minute bursts. How does one know if two people would really benefit each other? The truth is, there is no way to tell – you’re just playing a numbers game and your network, while big and strong – may be a house of cards. The real relationships come from being genuine and good to others. One must give selflessly for the relationships gained through networking.

Duh George!

Networking through connecting and being genuine has an insularly benefit as well – I know, because of the people I network with. They connect me with genuine, good people. Whereas with power-networking you get all types, the pleasant and not so pleasant. I like to think, in building my network slowly with solid genuine people, I’ve been able to shield myself from what bugs me most; bad people. Bad people make shitty clients – and if I get a vibe from a client of disrespect or an air of authority, I won’t take the work.

As a creative, one has to expect the road to be bumpy. Networking and relationship building fall a distant second to the craft you love. However, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. If your idea of networking is similar to what mine was, think about the people you know and how they may help each other. It’s a pro-active thought process – once you begin, it becomes difficult to stop. By helping people get what they need, giving selflessly, I guarantee you will be better off for it. The reward rarely comes directly, but the feeling of giving is a reward in itself.

Remember, be yourself, stay genuine, and give – the success will come.

“You have good, cheap, or fast, you get to pick two.”

I have been on my own freelancing (or running my own business) for nearly six months, a few things have occurred to me. Cheap is a relative term – relative to the client paying the money as well as relevant to what you’re making across the board for all projects. Good, when doing business for yourself, isn’t so much an option as it is a requirement. And lastly, fast is the speed at which we do business period – people want everything yesterday. So do clients really ever pick two out of three? Or do they just automatically assume to run the table. After all, the customer is always right.

First off, if you aren’t looking at the project as your project, then you will never be able to manage expectations correctly. We aren’t building and selling widgets here – we have a process, it takes time, and we know how long it will be. People come to us for this expertise, and us getting walked on isn’t part of the deal. Good, cheap, or fast is as much your choice as it is your clients.

If you don’t care so much about the work as you do about getting the business, then cheap, fast, and shoddy may be your ideal option. But always keep in mind, shoddy work doesn’t ever get you more clients. Not everything need be brilliant, but maintaining your own standards, regardless of the client is important to sustainability and longevity. Most importantly, it cements a reputation.

The problem with doing work fast is the risk involved. How often do we take on work where there may be a few “hairy” areas that we haven’t quite done it before. It may be browsers issues, it may be programming functionality, or it just may be a whole lot of work we don’t see. If you agree to do work fast, make sure you are getting paid enough to bring in more people if need be.

Again, cheap is a relative term – almost one that can be thrown out the window. I think the most important thing is to be able to walk away from a project if you don’t feel happy about price tag. Remember, the promise of exposure only applies to 5% of the times it is promised. Don’t work for free. Don’t overcharge.

Avoiding the Big Carrot, or Not

As with any “advice,” all of this stuff is easier said than done. In fact, as I began writing this post – I had a project that had to be good and fast – go awry.

The bigger the carrot the bigger the bite – I committed to something because in theory it could be done (assuming nothing went wrong) and it was a client/project that when added into a portfolio made it considerably beefier and more legitimate. Thankfully when this project did go awry, there was budget to pull in extra people with fresh eyes. You stare at anything long enough and you’re just going to make your problems worse.

“Grandma always said, haste makes waste”

So the lesson learned, for me, is to set realistic goals with fall back plans – a goal isn’t realistic if it involves my team working 16-18 hour days trying to build something complex. When you’re tired, work gets sloppy. The culprit in this case can easily be guessed, IE6, and troubleshooting bugs at the eleventh hour when you should be arriving at a solution is painful. We ended up having to put up a placeholder page to encourage users to download IE7 or Firefox 2 – something I have never had to do. We had a fix within a couple of days, but missed our deadline – the one we agreed to.

Shackleton would shake his head, “Leadership on the Edge,” is stressful – not your little web project.

Hopefully, the character of our little conglomerate was defined in crisis and we can move forward with a fresh set of lessons learn – or maybe we cave and lick our wounds behind desks at an agency, but for some reason I don’t think that will happen. The big eye opener for me with this particular project was the stress – working for yourself is just bigger. Bigger projects, bigger dollars, and bigger stress – handling that is a skill set in its own. My goal is to practice what I preach. Best of luck to me, and to anyone who reads this.

With any creative work, the longer you expose yourself to it, the more stale it becomes. That’s why, about three months ago, I got the itch to redesign my site.

So here we are, one year ago and change I launched version 2.0 of eleven3. Today I launch version 3.0 – and yes I am just as excited as my last redesign. There are a lot of reasons for my excitement, but mainly it’s just a new look, a new focus, and more flexibility. Gone is the rigid and closed-source Movable Type and arriving is the flexible, fluid, WordPress.

Continue reading for the off chance of relating to the requirements of the relaunch, the design phase, the challenges of coding the front-end, and the use of WordPress and a plethora of plugins that now make up the site. A lot of work went into it, my hopes are that it is well received.

Redesign Requirements

The Tools
There are many examples out there of great tools facilitating great work – but let’s not forget the old adage, “It’s a Poor Craftsman that blames his tools.” I had become the poor craftsmen. Movable Type was my tool and I had grown fully tired of it. It kept timing out when I created new entries and the comment spam kept getting worse and worse. Overall the system felt bloated and rusty. In the end – your tools can put you in a rut, the old adage is only half true.

The Focus
If version 2.0 had something to say to new visitors, it would have been, “Hey! Look at my portfolio.” My life has change considerably since then and the portfolio is no longer my focus. There are two main reasons for this change. After blogging for about a year I found out how much I really enjoyed it, and then I realized how secondary and unimportant my blog seemed in the context of the rest of the site.

Notice the hierarchy of the page and the prominence of the portfolio.

My content wasn’t really findable and old posts just seemed to die. My primary focus in the redesign has been to put the spotlight on the content I am generating, both old and new.

The other reason I have decided to place my portfolio as a secondary element is due to the fact I have started a creative shop called We The Media – this is where the main body of work will reside. I will discuss WTM and it’s goals in another entry.

Inspiration and Design

There were many steps and components to the project – but I would say one of the most important is the feedback I received from some really talented designers. Without them pushing me to explore further, I may have stopped short of what I feel has evolved into a solid site. While my name is on it, it was a group effort.

Sketches
As with any web design project, I started by sketching out a few ideas in my book. I will be the first to admit that my drawing skills directly straddle the line between almost mediocre and really really bad (ironically my webdesign skills were described the same way once).

This sketch was nowhere near my final design other than in layout, initially I wanted to do something more ornate.

Inspiration
Danielle, my fiancee, came home one afternoon with a pile of old magazines from the 40′s, 50′s, and 60′s. Immediately I discarded the vintage coolness factor and traded it in for the, “Where are we going to put all this crap,” attitude. As always, I was proven wrong and over time I grew to love these magazines. The ads were so rich and copy-driven, the pages so big, and the content had substance. So one night I started scanning them in and collaging them together in photoshop. This ended up being the foundation for the site.

My good friend Nicholas Galanin should write about why I chose to use those ads – he has a way of describing his work that gives it depth and artistic merit. Me? I just say things like, “I used those ads because I thought they looked cool.” Lame lame lame.

The Grid
After being exposed to Khoi Vinh’s gridding exercise from SXSW ’07, I have applied it to everything I do. I usually opt for the 12 column grid and this project is no different. What a wonderful approach. For those Photoshop users out there, here is a great little plugin for setting up a quick grid, courtesy of Andrew Ingram. I’ve never heard an argument for not using a grid – but I am certainly open to it.

The Elements
Tape – My early comps had tape in them – it just wasn’t the masking tape. It was more like the transparent tape with lines in it and is really hard to tear. It also was really hard to make it work – which is why it was eventually ditched.

The masking tape was an evolution from that and I am quite happy with the outcome, for now at least.

Rounded Corners – The first version I did felt really boxy. It was one of those things you feel, but don’t necessarily have the courage to overcome till someone says something. I slowly migrated from the abrupt edges to the rounded corners. While it may not necessarily go with the look and feel of the ads in the background, it does separate the side bar in a way which gives it a “site within a site” feeling. A goal I wanted to accomplish with the new sliding sidebar approach I am trying.

The Side Panel - I’ve been using mootools for a few projects lately and as stated above, I am experimenting with a new solution to avoid the long scrolling sidebar. I’m not a fan of blogs that scroll forever, unless one updates the content more than once a day.

By creating a consistent look and feel, I was able to have continuity across the four panels and allow the user to access the information without leaving the page or having to scroll down. It also separates the content into groupings of information that become clearer by looking at the navigation. What’s worse? A click or a scroll? Who knows, but what has a fun factor?

The Carpet - It was around 2am when I came across an old advertisement in a vintage Esquire Magazine. For many reasons, it seemed like the perfect footer for the site. It was greeny, shaggy, and had the little up curl which had so much potential for customization. Eventually it became what is visible now.

I think it’s a carpet ad, but I am not totally certain.

Front-End Fun

Browser Compliance
Ask anyone who builds websites what the biggest thorn in their side is? I have no doubt the majority will likely name Internet Explorer 6.0. At the time of writing this post, IE6 has 36.6% browser share. I’m not sure what the breaking off point for IE6 users will be, but for my personal site – it was almost 36.6%. Eventually I caved under statistical pressure and rest assured the site is working just fine in Internet Explorer, but it did not get by without my nasty poem.

MooTools and (Slimbox)
I wrote code for the sliding panels not too long ago and used it for a few projects. Once I had the moo.fx implemented, I moved on to setting up lightbox – another favorite piece of JavaScript trickery. Unfortunatly, MooTools and Lightbox didn’t seem to be compatible, and that is when I stumbled upon Slimbox – a Lightbox clone. Once again I was happy having my fade to black photo slides.

Standards
I was so tempted to keep this site as “Transitional” and keep my target=”_blank” tag in some of my external links, yet I decided to go strict. Why? So I could shake my tail feathers just a little bit more. Seriously though, standards are very important and if I am going to sell clients on their importance, I have to walk the walk myself.

A splash of WordPress

This was my first attempt at migrating a Movable Type blog from a WordPress blog. It was surprisingly easy and it makes me very happy to be in the WordPress camp. There are a few reasons for this.

Ease of Maintenance
I handle all WordPress maintenance in Dreamweaver and do not have to rely on an internet connection to get between different templates. I know Movable Type had a way to do it – yet it seemed like an afterthought. Using a WYSIWYG editor to edit code is nonsense. I had gotten to a point where I hated logging into make any edits. Not to mention having to rebuild the entire site for things as simple as a date change.

MT4 has been released and I hear good things, but as I stated – it was too little too late for me.

Extensive Plugin Library
I am using several plugins to make this baby hum. The development community for WordPress is huge and getting plugin to work is much easier than in Movable Type. Just about every little thing I had the, “I wish it did this,” thought for was actually floating around somewhere and just needed to be tracked down. Brilliant!

Putting it all together

After extensive testing, a migration to Media Temple, and a lot of little tweaking, eleven3 Version 3.0 is ready for all the scrutiny and praise it deserves. It will always be a work in progress, but at least now I feel liberated to make the progress. Now if only I could figure out a way to make the size of the document go from high to low without sacrificing aesthetics or functionality.

I decided to write this post because I always liked it when designers wrote out in detail their processes – it’s how I learned myself. For some people, this will be a big repeat of what they already know. But I am hoping that others will find it useful in discovering their way as a designer. It’s a great field and everyday I feel fortunate getting to do something I absolutely love.