A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be sent on a bloggers press trip to Valencia in Spain on behalf of vtravelled.com. It was an absolutely incredible experience which I will remember for a long time to come. Before departing I had expected to be amazed by the country, the weather, the [...]
I haven’t written here much recently and I think it’s about time for an update. I have a lot of different things to mention so I toyed with the idea of doing individual posts for each, but in the end I thought it would be most productive to just do them all in one fell [...]
I’ve got some rather exciting news to share today which some of you will already know about from a few tweets last Thursday. I’ve just officially joined the core WordPress UI Team – so I’ll be helping to design and develop the WordPress platform on an ongoing basis. How it All Started Since the end [...]
There are little things that I learn in this job almost every single day. Sometimes they’re just handy bits of information or useful resources, other times they’re real eye openers to things I’ve been doing wrong. I thought it might be useful to write some down in case anyone else can find some value in [...]
Alright, so this isn’t the most thrilling post-title ever. Hell, if you clicked through from Twitter then you must be either very loyal, or very bored. Accounting isn’t fun and it isn’t particularly interesting but it’s important. For legal reasons I should mention that I’m not an accountant; anything written here is based solely on [...]
For a long time, I’ve been disappointed with the quality of the currently available web design podcasts. I longed for something a little shorter and a little more down-to-earth. I got chatting to my good friends @erisds and @robhawkes a couple of months ago about this… and it turned out that they felt the same [...]
Grab a coffee, get comfortable and make sure you read this post in full. It’s dawned on me in the last couple of days that I’ve screwed up my pricing big time. I’ve made a really obvious mistake that’s meant I’ve been losing 80% of all my money. The Phases of Pricing There are some [...]
I’ve just come back from a fantastic 3 days in Newcastle where I was attending the DIBI (Design It, Build It) conference. There were many fantastic speakers but one of them covered a concept that really got me thinking. Blasting Expectations Out of The Water Admittedly I’m a bit biased when it comes to evaluating [...]
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post about my average working day. I thought that today it might be interesting to have a recap on what my hours are like now and how productive I’m being. Has anything changed? Let’s find out. Working till 4:00am Not that much has changed I’m afraid. The [...]
The Story This is a slightly delayed post on my part but I just wanted to point everyone to an article that I published on Web Designer Depot last week. As many of you already know, I’ve been working with Virgin Atlantic for the last few months and that culminated in a big launch last [...]
Sometimes, like last month, everything seems to go wrong all at the same time. Thankfully this month karma seems to have evened itself out again and a lot of really good things have happened. I thought it’d be good to catch a few small updates and a couple of lessons! What’s Going On After a [...]
This post has been a long time coming, I think it’s important that I document both for myself and for anyone reading my blog that starting a web design business isn’t all bunny rabbits and dollar signs. Just like anything else in life, there are highs, and there are lows. This isn’t meant to come [...]
I can’t believe that I nearly completely forgot about this – but as of a day or two ago this blog is officially a whole year old. Join me as we take a short trip down memory lane and see what’s gone on in the last 12 months, and where I plan on taking us [...]
This post originally started out as a comment that I was going to leave on this article over at FreelaceSwitch, but after a couple of paragraphs I decided that it was something that I cared enough about to turn into a full article. It’s a really great post about new year’s advice for freelancers, but [...]
All in all 2009 was a really good year for me and I feel like I managed to achieve quite a large amount, but I’m certainly not resting on my laurels. I’m going to do a quick review of the goals which I set myself a year ago and then dive right into everything which [...]
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these (again), but I’m going to try out a new post-schedule for this blog so I can deliver content to you a bit more regularly. Quite a lot has happened over the last few months, thankfully the overwhelming majority of it has been positive – and [...]
Last week I posted an article about how I’d created some Moo MiniCards to use as Mood Cards in clients meetings, and I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response. The only other article I’ve ever posted on this site (so far) that was more popular, was ‘The World’s Best Web Designers Are Unknown‘. So today, [...]
Last month I ordered some Moo Minicards, which I posted a review of here. I liked them so much that I’ve been trying to think of a reason to get some more – and last week I found that reason! I’ve just started working with a major new client on a very exciting project (under [...]
I’ve always been skeptical about using Facebook for social media, in fact I’ve had some heated debates with people who suggest that it’s “better than twitter” – but I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve just been taking a close-minded approach to it and if there is in fact some value to be had. I’ve noticed [...]
I have something that I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time that I want to bounce off you (my loyal readers). I’ve always had a strong interest in authoring a book, and I’ve managed to half-write several since the age of 16. This year I found myself in talks with a couple of [...]
There are too many boring articles on the internet about what to do on Twitter, and how to be “relevant” and “engaging”. I’ve been slowly working together a set of my own rules for the people who I follow over the last year, so today, we’re going to look at what NOT to do. The [...]
I extended the competition by 24 hours, but the results are now in and the winners have been chosen and verified. First of all I’d like to say a huge thank you to the awesome guys over at FreeAgent for all of their support, and another big thank you to you – everyone who took [...]
About two months ago I was in a dark place: I was working extremely hard, but I didn’t seem to be making any money, and on top of all that I got landed with the worst client I’ve ever had in my life – who ended up costing me about £8,000. My finances were in [...]
I have a really big mouth, not in the physical sense – my actual mouth is a fairly ordinary size, but in the sense that I talk a lot. Some would call me an evangelist, others would call me an early adopter, Seth Godin would call me a sneezer. The long and short of it [...]
I’ve had some really (crap) old business cards for Lyrical Media for a while now, and a couple of weeks ago when I visited dConstruct I found myself with no cards to give anyone who I met. Whilst at dConstruct I heard great things about Moo.com, so I decided to give them a try! Designing [...]
I was talking to my good friend Phil today and telling him how I was planning to take all of November off if I could turnover enough in October. For some reason he thought this was a crazy idea and started telling me I couldn’t do it – but then later admitted that he didn’t [...]
It’s finally here! After a couple of months of promising you all that this was coming soon, I’ve finally managed to get it done. That said, sticking to the old 37Signals philosophy of “Release early and often” – there’s still a lot to do. I’ll be polishing lots of bits of the site over the [...]
Last week I set up an experiment. I posted my first ever video blog, but there was a twist to it — there were 3 different versions of the same video, and everyone saw something different, and filled out a different survey depending on what video they watched. Today, we’ll take a look at the [...]
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing videoblogging for a while now, but I’ve always been a bit camera shy, and I’ve also always questioned the value of video content on blogs. Japh and I were having a discussion about this last night and one of the main things that we both agreed on [...]
I’m a fairly positive person, and most of the posts on this blog have been pretty positive, but today I’m feeling very negative and frustrated. I’m not going to bitch and moan, I’m going to try and give a constructive insight into the issues that I’m uncovering as I continue down the road of self [...]
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