Business & Tech articles

Whenever a company posts a job opening for a web design employee or freelancer, they typically include a set of hard and soft skills they’re looking for. Hard skills are design skills that are measurable and well-documented. For instance: A degree in a web design-related field; Aptitude with Sketch or Photoshop; Training in color theory and responsive design. Your portfolio and résumé serve as proof of hard skills. Soft skills, on the...

Sadly, some clients can be just as sensitive, and triggered as online trolls; You recommend an update to a logo they designed themselves (even though you didn’t know that at the time); You disagree with their suggestion that paying for backlinks is a legit marketing strategy; You ask them to clarify what “I don’t like it” means in response to the mockups you delivered. Before you know it, they’re providing irrelevant feedback, slinging...

If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all! We all have personal tragedies. Sometimes those tragedies are more than anyone could handle, and that’s when you encounter some very basic, intense emotions. For some it’s the fiercely stark task of overcoming, shutting out all else; for others, it’s thoughts of helplessness. Unfortunately, most people will run the gamut of these polar emotions. I’ve been through all this and...

One of the problems with coining a term like “user experience” or its acronym counterpart “UX” is that it opens up the floodgates for other trendy experience-related acronyms to enter the web design lexicon. CX, DX, EX, HX, JX, PX, UX, (U)XD... Is all of this really necessary though? While I don’t think you need to go adding EX or JX to your vocabulary anytime soon, it’s still a good idea to educate yourself on what these X acronyms...

Are you experiencing full wanderlust with a side order of burnout in the first week of the new year? Has the post-holiday gloom got you down? Are you starting a new decade in your office, wondering if you’ll make it to the next? Would you love to see a bit of the world before you’re too old to enjoy it? Here’s the good (great) news: one of the best things about being a web professional is that we can pretty much work from anywhere — as long as there...

We’ve all been there. It’s 4pm on a Friday afternoon, you’re already in your “weekend outfit” (underwear and hoody combo) and you get an email. It’s Client X: Hey, erm, I’ve just had a couple of thoughts, can we talk? Wearily, you reach for the phone. Sure enough, the “couple of thoughts” become a rambling monologue on the virtues of asymmetric grid layout, mouse-controllable content and parallax scrolling (“that shouldn’t...

You know, I remember the good old days when all you had to worry about at Halloween was how to stop a gang of sugar-crazed 8 year-olds throwing eggs at your house. Not any more. Here are 5 emerging technologies that are bound to give you the creeps: 1. Quantum Supremacy Perhaps the biggest tech news of 2019 came last month when Google announced “by mistake” cough that they’d completed a “10,000 year” calculation on their Sycamore quantum...

Over the last few years, everyone’s been talking about Dark Mode. It’s said to boost productivity and focus while reducing eye strain. It’s also supposed to be better for your battery life. But is that the whole story? Research into the matter suggests that Dark Mode might not be so healthy for us after all. Today, I want to take a look at what the data suggests and how you can use this information to determine how and when Dark Mode should be...

Whenever a hiring boom like this happens, you have to consider how it could work against you. Sure, there are more job openings. However, that means that more UX designers (and designer wannabes) are going to come out of the woodwork, trying to snag up the highly coveted gigs. So, let’s assume that you’re all starting from the same place: with the baseline skills UX designers are expected to have like empathy, user testing, and wireframing....

There’s nothing nice about asking the question “How old is too old to …?” So, I’m going to start by getting the answer out of the way, right now:  You’re never too old to…  …become a web designer… …transition from web designer to UX designer… …become a full-stack designer-developer powerhouse… …or do whatever the heck it is you want to do. Whatever your goal might be, age isn’t going to hold you back. The only...

Currently, the answer is a resounding, “What? No… why would you even ask?” But this article isn’t about current AIs. True artificial intelligence is a long, long way off; and frankly, if we run face-first into the singularity, I doubt that our digital progeny will be interested in building interfaces for us. Learning algorithms are getting a lot smarter, and the number of things we can do with them is rapidly expanding. Current implementations...

Someone defaced your website, posted a rude or lewd image, and called you the adult equivalent of a doodyhead? Ah well, time to grab the backups, and maybe switch hosts. You can’t really be faulted for thinking that. In popular culture, hackers are either nefarious, villainous, and often very good-looking nerds, or else they’re helpful nerds of varying appearance who are there to provide comic relief, and tell the world what a horrible...

For most designers – freelance or in-house – generating new business can be a dreaded part of the job. But it necessary to maintain and sustain growth and find new clients. When it comes to finding design work, is there a best way to find jobs? Do you pitch for new business or rely on other methods to find work? Reasons to Pitch for New Business There are so many places that freelance designers can pitch for new business, including job boards,...

When companies become misaligned, different departments may be working toward entirely different goals – in some cases, these goals may be at odds with each other. This is a challenge for the best companies out there, not to mention a startup in the midst of rapid growth. The result is a lack of collaboration as well as a lack of a shared vision and internal conflict. In some cases, misalignment can even be fatal. More than 90 percent of startups...