Clever
I was thinking there was something odd about this logo—then it hit me and it brought a smile to my face.
Tools We Use: Textmate
Blue Flavor is a Mac house, and we use a lot of tools to get stuff done. Far and away, the best tool I and others here use is Textmate.
Businesses Being Nice: Bookjournals.com
The other day I ordered a few of these awesome handmade journals (made from re-furbished hardback books) from bookjournals.com, and had one of the best customer service experiences ever.
Here’s what they did right:
The WaSP Curriculum Framework
The WaSP Education Task Force recently announced their WaSP Curriculum Framework, which they’ve been working on since March 2008. Having joined the effort myself (though not that long ago), it is great to see the results of that work start to come to life.
Who Do You Design For? Answered.
Today, Brian Haught over at Smashing Magazine asked “Who Do You Design For: Clients or Users?”.
Understandably, Brian didn’t have a lot in the way of answers. I can’t fault him too much for that, it’s a difficult question to answer. It’s also one I’ve asked myself many times over the years and one whose answer is core to the design philosophy here at Blue Flavor.
Incentivize Me
When it comes to keeping your employees motivated, there are a variety of strategies companies rely on to help them do their dirty work. Since I’m always curious about what makes people tick (and since it’s kind of my job to figure it out), lately I’ve been calling on my friends to help me learn.
Despite working in extremely dissimilar fields, my friends’ answers to the question “What incentives really motivate you at work?” have been remarkably similar. Here are some strategies lifted from the ad hoc Incentives Research Project I’ve completed over drinks in the past few months.
The Folly of Idle Comparisons
There is a constant discussion here at the Blue-labs about idle comparisons: “Photoshop vs. Fireworks”, “Apple vs. Windows”, “Smurfs vs. Snorks”, “Rails vs. Django”, etc. and whether they are valid. I feel these types of comparisons are interesting, sure, but they do little for our community.
Casual conversation series
Over on my personal site, I recently posted the first in what I expect to be a regular series of casual audio conversations with interesting web professionals. The plan is for the conversations to be relatively short (20-30 minutes), unscripted, and as casual as possible. They’re not overly pre-planned nor produced especially well. They’re simply record-‘em-and-post-‘em Skype chats with people I want to know more about.
The first in the series is a discussion with Matt Brown, a wonderful freelance web designer we met at a local Refresh Seattle gathering. Matt has a lot of interesting things to say about his recent move into freelancing and other industry topics. Please do check it out, and keep an eye out for more of my casual audio conversation. You can even subscribe to the podcast feed, if you like.
Keith's Sweet Interview with Web Designer's Interviews
If you’ve got a few minutes and are interested in the pros and cons of the mobile web and mobblogging, check out Keith’s recent interview with Web Designer’s Interviews (who, by the way, have just launched a rockin’ new site!).
And while you’re at it, check out recent interviews with Jeff and Nick, too!
Work-From-Home Fridays
One of the greatest things about working at Blue Flavor is that we have great bosses who let the team work from home on Fridays.
Working from home gives me separation—a space away from standard office interruptions—so I’m usually much more inclined toward creative work. I come up with better ideas and feel calmer overall about the creative process. I also use my alone time to think and write up blog posts, since an office environment isn’t always conducive to the kind of concentration writing requires.
Allowing your employees to work from home would certainly not work for every company, but for agile agencies like ours—where email, IM, and Backpack Journal keep us connected even while apart—it can be a great way to reset at the end of each week.
Giving employees a little trust and space strikes me as a sensible, humane way of doing business, and I highly recommend it.
More Entries
- Time for a Web-Forward Movement
- Posted by Kenny Meyers on August 4th, 2008
- For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on August 4th, 2008
- New SXSW.com
- Posted by Tom Watson on August 1st, 2008
- On Partnering and Client Relationships
- Posted by Keith Robinson on July 30th, 2008
- Information Architecture Deliverables: Site/Navigation Structure
- Posted by Tom Watson on July 29th, 2008
- Advanced Django template tags and filters
- Posted by Jeff Croft on July 28th, 2008
- Looking Backwards: Productivity and the GTD Effect
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 28th, 2008
- A Review of Silverback
- Posted by Nick Finck on July 25th, 2008
- Fall Speaking Schedule
- Posted by Keith Robinson on July 24th, 2008
- How We Decide What To Charge You
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 23rd, 2008
- Take Me To Your Budget!
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 21st, 2008
- Blue Flavor Featured in Practical Web Design
- Posted by Keith Robinson on July 20th, 2008
- Using Twitter and Other Tools to Grow Business
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 16th, 2008
- Categories vs. Tags
- Posted by Tom Watson on July 15th, 2008
- Using ExpressionEngine with Multiple CSS Files
- Posted by Kenny Meyers on July 14th, 2008
- Slides From BizJam: Entrepreneurial Success by Design
- Posted by Keith Robinson on July 10th, 2008
- A Day in the Life at Blue Flavor
- Posted by Tom Watson on July 9th, 2008
- CSS3, jQuery and Attribute Selectors
- Posted by Kenny Meyers on July 7th, 2008
- New Work: Playbook (formerly Clockwork)
- Posted by Tom Watson on July 3rd, 2008
- Sponsoring SummerMash 2008
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 2nd, 2008
