Blogging and all that Malarkey

It was lovely to hear Laura Kalbag talk about accessibility at Revolution in Shrewsbury a week or more ago. Especially as I’ll be doing the same in Oslo in a couple of weeks. I’m returning to conference speaking at Accessibility Day 2013 (Google translated link) run by those fine people at Northern Beat. My topic is “Designing an atmosphere of accessibility” and I’ll cover how I think focussing on content first as part of responsive design, and in particular working on design ‘atmosphere’ (typography, colour and texture) helps accessible design. Then the following day (gulp) I’ll be in Scarborough at #TIDE 2013. I’m looking forward to this event enormously as I finally get to meet my CSS hero Harry Roberts and see a few old friends there too. I’ll be talking about “How to call your client an idiot without getting fired” (no guarantees) which is a lot more serious than it sounds as it’s all about encouraging better client participation in design projects. I’ve given this talk once before and this time, like the last, there’ll be no slides, just me. It’s been a while and I’m justifiably nervous about both talks for different reasons, but it’ll feel good to be back.

In this week’s show, Alex’s friend Brad Frost, who having survived his trip to Brighton, returns to talk to me about designing ‘in the open’ and what the benefits for us and the people and organisations we’re working for can be. Listen now

On this week’s Unfinished Business, Alex’s friend Brad Frost and I talked about designing in the open, pro-bono projects for great causes like the Pittsburg Food Bank and the open project he and Melissa are starting for them.

In this week’s episode, designer and co-host of ‘ that other podcast’Liz Elcoate joins me to talk about the difficulties of working alone for long periods, the difficulties of keeping your portfolio full of new work when you work under non-disclosure agreements and why we should never apologise for working with small businesses with smaller budgets. Listen now

Special guest Dan Cederholm joins me on Unfinished Business this week to talk about making money by making things, how making great schwag makes a great impression and what happened to Foamee. We discuss why on Dribbble it’s important for business to not get in the way of a great service and with Dan’s new book coming up, we talk about the process of writing and whether second editions are worth it.

Talking to Dan Cederholm on Unfinished Business this coming week, our conversation to book writing, in particular working on second, maybe even third editions of books we wrote years ago.

On this week’s show, Designer, icon artist, author and possibly Doctor Who’s next companion Jon Hicks joins yours truly to discuss differences in the ways that Jon approaches different types of clients, how publishing his day rate and availability on his web site has improved the ‘quality’ of his enquiries and who ultimately owns the work that we do. As you might expect we couldn’t spend an hour together without talking about Doctor Who. Quite a lot.

In the latest episode of your favourite soap ‘apera,’ Anna and I go off on a tangent (no really) about the winner of out ‘Daft Proposal Of The Week Award.’ We talk about how to respond to proposals and whether it’s ever appropriate to not respond at all.

Back from my holidays, all tanned and gorgeous (obviously,) I rejoined Anna to talk about Laura Kalbag’s ‘Good Designers, Good Clients’ article on A List Apart. We discuss how I was inspired by Seth Godin to start speaking again and the best bits from the last three episodes including our ‘double our day rate Fridays,’ Sarah’s approach to handling low budget enquiries and the problem of doing work under NDA and having little to show for it in your portfolio.

My friend Sarah Parmenter co-hosted this week’s show with Anna while I was driving back from holiday. This week’s topics are money related — Sarah and Anna talk about fair pricing, taking payment before site launch and educating clients with unreasonably low budgets. Anna also asks Sarah about her new venture and what drove her to start a completely different business. They discuss the importance of honesty and how working on side projects can help with motivation.