News + Media
June 7 Making Widgets vs. Selling Originality
This is a design company. Or at least I thought it was. As I look at our summer calendar and recent project launches, I’m starting to notice development work and maintenance arrangements becoming larger parts of the business. I can think of a few reasons to explain how this came to be.
One reason may be an influx of designers being asked to reach beyond their comfort zone as more complex web technologies become commonplace. It could be that our clients are starting to ask for the same complicated things, so we’re spending more time adapting an existing design into ever more interactive experiences. It could also be that the particular software we specialize in, ExpressionEngine, is gaining a wider following and more clients in need of advanced features and consistent maintenance work.
October 23 Regular Hours, Lunch and Co-workers
As of early September, Gridwork is no longer being operated from my living room. Goodbye to the endless distractions and errand running that slowly seemed to take over all my free time. At first, working from home was tremendously liberating. I found myself spending many more hours on being creative and less in meetings or on busywork. However, over time I completely merged personal time with work time, which usually meant working off and on from early in the morning until late at night. To regulate this social life killing regimen, I began spending more and more time at a nearby café. Now, I love coffee as much as any native northwesterner, but there are severe consequences for consuming vast quantities of caffeine.
March 9 Seasonal content, independent publishing
Clearly, I am not a natural blogger. Four posts a year does not a blog make. I’ve always had a thing for marking seasonal changes, and it looks like blogging will inherit those impulses. As a child, I would rearrange all the furniture in my room whenever the temperature hit an arbitrary number of my choosing (e.g. the dresser moves to the north wall when the overnight low hits 20°F). For ongoing design projects, I tend to roll out larger changes and pages every three months or so. And when I can resist summer fruit from Chile, my body appreciates food appropriate to the current season.
Nevertheless, one of the biggest surprises I’ve learned about building a small business is how vital it is to write well and often. If it’s not new client proposals, it’s maintaining existing relationships. There’s so much jargon and assumed knowledge with design and the internet that “writing clearly” is almost oxymoronic. So heading into year three of sole propriety, I’m setting a goal to increase the amount of content on this site, hopefully in more ways than lame seasonal posts.
November 3 Commence Rainy Season
Autumn has turned from a shockingly bright, crisp, leafy delight into a bluish-gray, waterlogged, baked potato gloomfest. Growing up in the NW, I learned to force myself to like this time of year. Attentions turn towards staying home and assembling puzzles, reading anything within reach, and trying to do all the things I said would get done when the rain finally came.
Fortunately for business, without sunny distractions, its easier to find the diligence required of a more ambitious workload. For a change, I am looking closer to home for new projects. The past 18 months of building Gridwork involved working primarily with clients scattered across the country. Meetings are always conference calls, collaborations always online. Normal human contact comes from working at a coffeeshop or cruising Fred Meyer (although Halloween provided an adorable respite).
June 26 When it rains, it pours
Spring has come and gone. The northwest spent several weeks under drizzly, cooler than normal weather, and suddenly summer has arrived. And with it, a new city, new projects, a new office/home. In fact, almost everyday brings entirely new ups and downs. Without the familiarity of work to stay rooted in, I’d probably be drowning under the weight of it all. Since my first year in college, life seems to oscillate between long bouts of nose-grinding routine and short bursts of everything changing all at once—it is both terrifying and liberating.
The new city: Tacoma, WA, about halfway between Highway 16 and Pt. Defiance State Park. It’s a big, but secondary city about 30 minutes south of Seattle. So far, I’ve spent very few days actually getting out and exploring, although I’ve managed to get lost driving around several times, which is one of my favorite ways of discovering new places. And there are several fantastic grocery stores and farmers markets scattered throughout almost every neighborhood.
February 6 Launching at 70%
It took a bit longer than I expected to fit all the pieces together so that this site would be presentable for soliciting new clients and promoting our services. The design is about 80% of where I’d it to be, and copy is only about half done, but there aren’t any horrible mistakes and embarassing copy like there was before. Next week, I’m hoping to finish designs for the contact page, the footer and the journal where these posts will end up.
Now that things are moving along and the site isn’t too embarassing, I’ve had the graces from the pMachine folks to be listed in their Professionals Network. And after 8 months of learning to start a business, Gridwork has finally begun netting enough clients to hopefully approach a self sustaining wage later this year. Between managing the new work, moving to Tacoma and putting more energy into this site, it’s going to be a busy spring.
January 14 This site will launch in one week
After dragging my feet for 8 months on developing a company site I’m setting a deadline. By next Saturday, this site will be functional and free of half-written/abandoned pages. If I want to make this work, then it’s time to put on a decent public face and start recruiting new clients. Not having a decent online portfolio or company profile has been weighing on me, and the guilt just gets worse the longer I put it off. I may need to forgo some of the snazzy diagrams and interactive effects, but at least there will be something here besides “content tk”.
One of the main motivations for this has been implementing the Getting Things Done productivity methodology. Now, I’ve always made to-do lists and I’ve always clamored for order in my workspace, but I had no idea that personal productivity and organization could be taken to this level. Despite the cheesy cover and annoying hype surrounding this book, it really has changed my life in a way that I’ve always wanted it to. With these newfound project management skills, taking on the design of this site has never felt more approachable. Keeping track of news and ideas about Gridwork on this site is part of keeping my head clear. After all, I started this company in the first place so that I could spend more time in the relaxed, creative state that GTD claims to enhance.