It’s Hard To Hit A Goal You Don’t Have
Jon and I were talking earlier today about goals and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts with you. Many of us have these vague and vaporous ideas we like to call goals. That’s me included. We call them goals, but really they are just dreams at this point. Why? Because we have no plans to make them reality.
I’m defining a goal this way: “A goal is a desire to achieve a result measurable in concrete terms.”
“I want to see the world.” That’s a dream. “I want …
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Meet Scott Schuster of Underdog Solutions - Winner of Design Hope 2009
It’s always good to put a face with a name, and that’s why we want to introduce to you Scott Schuster of Underdog Solutions. He is the winner of Design Hope 2009. So, while we are getting busy cooking up some logo options for him, watch the video below and get to know Scott (and family) a little better.
Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) in Design Hope ~ (2) Comments ~Outlook is Broken
Fixoutlook.org is a fabulous initiative from our Design Hope sponsors Campaign Monitor and Newism. It sucked bad enough when Microsoft decided to use Word to render HTML emails in Outlook 2007. With one fell swoop they took email designs back 7 years. Now they’re saying Outlook 2010 will do the same. In fact they’re not even going to change the rendering engine at all. It *barely* supports tables, no CSS position and …
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ExpressionEngine Giving Free Licenses at Front-End Design Conference
Just another reason to come to the Front-End Design Conference this year: ExpressionEngine will be giving away 5 EE Packages at my session on "Why ExpressionEngine is Great for Designers." Each package includes:
- 1 ExpressionEngine License
- 1 Discussion Forum License
- 1 Multiple Site Manager License (3 Sites)
- 1 Solspace Tag Module License
In addition to me speaking, Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …
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Design Hope - We Have A Winner!
That’s right, we have finally chosen a company to receive this kick-awesome Design Hope web package. So, who made it? Underdog Solutions, a new indie iPhone developer. Scott, we’ll be in touch with you shortly.
We had the absolute hardest time picking just one. We had so many entries that it took several rounds of evaluation even after we had narrowed it down to just eight entries! A big congratulations to Underdog Solutions, and really to all you brave folks out there chasing your dreams.
Stay tuned to the blog …
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Design Hope - Time To Read And Choose
We are getting excited here at FortySeven Media. Why? Because the deadline for Design Hope submissions has come and gone and let me just say, we have a lot of reading to do! 
Jon and I will begin the fun, and very difficult task, of reading through all of your submissions and choosing one of you to get a kick-awesome website! Thanks again to everyone who helped spread the word and to everyone who entered.
We should be able to announce the winner by …
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Setting Up Custom Category URL Structures in ExpressionEngine
We just finished up a particularly fun project, Casillas, Inc. They're an amazing custom furniture maker in California. In an odd turn of events, we actually did very little design for the site and became the "backend guys" if you will. As we got into how we wanted the site to be structured we realized that because of the product names (all numbers) we needed to use the category that the product was part of in the URL structure. So for example it would read:
http://site.com/products/sofas/10-123/
And if …
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Repeating Footer Background Image Scrolling Issue
One of our astute readers discovered a flaw in our footer design implementations recently and I thought I'd share it with you. Turns out that we have a penchant for using a background image repeating on a 100% wide footer. Also turns out that when you squash your browser window down to anything smaller than the content and then scroll over to the right that background image stops repeating! See what I mean here:
It's not a huge deal, but if you …
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Design Hope - Only Ten Days Left To Enter!
It’s crunch time for anyone that wants to submit their new small business for Design Hope! Come May 22, that’s all she wrote!
Be sure to tell any and every new small business owner you know that they could possible get a free website package worth $15,000!
The Car Fairy - Design Process
We do logos on a regular basis, but few are of the illustrated variety. So when I was contacted to illustrate the logo for “The Car Fairy,” I have to admit that I got a bit excited.
While I take great joy in crafting a great website from scratch, there is something uniquely satisfying about illustration. I found my trusty black notebook and cheap-o Paper Mate pen and began to sketch out some roughs to give our client a few variations. Originally, they …
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Speaking at Front-End Design Conference
It’s official! Mr. Dan Denny (aka webdesignfanboy) is putting together the Front-End Design Conference, a single day event with a focus on content, presentation and behavior.
Not only are we talking about a design conference near the beach, but there are some primo speakers lined up. If you don’t count me, that is! Yes, I’ll be doing a presentation as will Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Fabio Sasso of Zee Design Studio, …
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This Is Why You Aren’t Relevant
I keep hearing this word. Relevant. It seems to be everywhere. It hasn’t yet reached the obnoxious level of say, “extreme,” but it is popping up all over the place. People are suddenly, and desperately trying to be relevant.
Things, people, and companies that seem to be so relevant today planned that relevance months, or even years ago.
“What’s the problem with that?” you might ask. Well, relevance has to do with relating to things and people right now. If you are spend all your time being concerned with being relevant, …
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Communication and the Big Picture
When you're working on a new design for a client, good communication is key. Just recently we've run into a situation where an agency keeps having us change little things to try to get the design right for them without stepping back and addressing the larger direction of the whole thing. Granted, it should have been their job to say, "Hey this is way too modern" or "We were really thinking of using some kind of weathered, worn look instead" instead of "the radius of the rounded corner doesn't look right," …
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Picking Nits
There is a very definite line between the drive for excellence and the desire to nit pick something to death. Excellence has the good common sense to recognize itself. Nit picking knows only picking. Doesn’t matter what it picks as long as there is picking.
I like to call this Nit Harvesting.
But let’s face it, picking nits is fun! At least for the person picking them, because it sounds like they know what they are talking about!
Rather than a little selective hand pick here and there, there are …
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Start A Coding Business
The world has changed since I've entered the ranks of the employed. You used to be able to show up somewhere, work hard and advance in that business. That is no longer the norm. What now? How are people getting ahead?
I don't claim to have definitive answers, but I can tell you where there is amazing opportunity for growth. Coding.
That's pretty generic I know but that is sort of the point. Almost everything that is technologically exciting has some sort of code attached to it. Twitter, Facebook? Code built. …
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The Good Idea Obituaries
I was having lunch with my wife a few weeks ago and during the meal I was observing the other diners. There was one man in particular that caught my attention. He was a middle aged fellow in a button-up shirt and slacks reading the paper. He seemed to be lost in his reading, mindlessly chewing the same bite for longer than usual.
As we finished up , we gathered our trash and headed towards the car. It was then that I …
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Design Hope for Startups 2009: Sponsors
Design Hope is ramping up pretty quickly, and we're excited to announce quite a few huge partnerships. This has grown from an idea I had laying in bed the other night to an internationally supported endeavor from some of the top names in the design business. I am truly blown away by the generosity of all these companies and excited to share them with you. Check it out!
Sponsors
ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine is the only CMS we use, period. It's incredibly flexible …
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Where The Heck Is My Passion?
If you are a designer, you probably are one because you wanted to be. Design isn’t exactly one of those fields most people happen to fall into. Most of us do this because we love it, or at least really liked it at one point.
But what happens when when passion no longer fuels the production? I don’t know about you, but for me, it means that there is a severe of lack of kick-awesome. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that …
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Design Hope for Startups 2009
So we've been thinking a lot about how the economy is affecting businesses and individuals. What I find truly inspiring is hearing stories of really brave people giving up all that is safe, embracing the unknown and starting a new business in the face of an economic downturn. We know what it's like to start a business from scratch, but I wonder if we would have the balls to do it in these uncertain times. The more I think about …
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Styling Right-To-Left Text with CSS on a Multi-Lingual Site
We recently had the pleasure of working with CD Baby creator Derek Sivers on a new project called MusicThoughts. It's a great collection of quotes from musicians on everything from the music industry to life in general. In short, pretty kick-awesome! Go check it out already!
This was a challenging project from start to finish. First of all, we couldn't modify the HTML at all, only the CSS. And second was the support for multiple languages. 10 to be exact! This had several …
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